How quick can muscle be built?

I've been exercising alot over the past week and a half and introduced different, toning exercises into my routine. Kept the same calorie intake etc.

Except I've maintained/gaiend weight but I don't feel like I've gained.

Is it possible I built up a pound or two of muscle in a week and a half?

There's a lot of misconceptions about building muscle, but anyway:

1: You can not build any muscle unless you are in a calorie surplus. If you are not eating at least 500 cals over maintenance, you will not see any muscle gains. You will see strength gains, but that's due to better nerve recruiting in the motions you're performing, and not due to having more muscle.

2: Even as someone new to building muscle, a pound or two in a week and a half is just simply probably much faster than you're going to get. For a male, who is doing everything absolutely perfectly, the fastest he could expect to gain muscle is .5 to 1 pound a week. He'd also probably be eating 4000+ calories per day of all the right foods. At the best possible times.

3: "Toning exercises", if I understand what you're talking about correctly, will probably build little to no muscle. Building muscle requires you to cause damage to the muscle and thus have it repaired, which means heavy lifting. This translates to lifting to the point of complete failure after about 8-10 repititions, for multiple sets.

So realistically, you might expect .2-.3 pounds of muscle per week, if you really start eating a lot with high protein, and moderately high carbs (With simple carbs like dextrose immediately after workout), and doing a full-body lifting routine with 8-10 reps to failure for 3-5 sets, about 3 times per week.

If you gained a pound or two, it's probably just normal weight fluctuation due to factors other than fat or muscle content.

if by toning excercise you mean weight lifting it is possible you gained a little muscle plus some water weight that generally accompanies increased weight lifting activity.

I just started weight lifting again after about 9 months of not doing anything.  I gained about 3-4 pounds a week after I started and then started going back down from there.  Most of it was water but some of it was muscle.  I didn't feel like I had gained either, i actually felt better.

Keep in mind though I was lifting heavy weights 3x/wk for 40 minutes.  If you are really just doing "toning" whatever that means, I wouldn't expect the same changes.

My two cents - ibez and liz have it.

I've been doing some toning exercises for 12 days now with some cardio as well.  I weighed myself today and haven't lost, just maintained too.  However I measured myself and lost 0.5 inch from my thighs and hips, and stomach.  I don't think I've added any muscle though.

It's probably just normal weight fluctuations.  Perhaps next week you'll lose more since it didn't show this time.  Hang in there.

If you gain weight for the first few weeks after starting just as a normal process..my question is why and when does that weight go away?  It isn't gained from extra calorie consumption.