thigh muscles from walking

i powerwalk A LOT and due to this i've gotten really bulky thigh muscles. i'm short so my thighs kind of just look like stumps--i hate it. is there any form of exercise i can do to make my legs look leaner and thinner rather than bulky? oh, and i'm a girl by the way.

wait a second--i keep telling you it's muscle, lol. it doesn't feel like fat at all. i asked my father who used to be into weight training if he thought it was muscle or fat, he felt it and he said it was "definitely muscle" and i can feel it too. also, i'm not in a calorie deficit. not at all. if i were then i wouldn't be gaining weight.

 

susie, the last time i increased my calories i gained weight very quickly: 10 pounds of nothing but fat (this was a year ago). i'm REALLY scared to do it again and i'm pretty sure that it wouldn't be in all water weight (i don't weigh myself much anyway. i just take my measurements). and i never said i was obese, i'm just not at a low weight. the last time i checked, which was a little less than a month ago, i was about 115 lbs at 5'2".

but i guess my question is: how can you be sure that the weight gain will not be "real weight" if it's happened before? i wouldn't be so hesitant if it weren't for the fact that i've tried this before and failed. moreover, the weight that i gained when i increased my calories a year ago didn't come off until i dropped below 1000 again..

I never meant to imply that you were obese.  I suspect you're on the opposite end of the weight scale, to be honest.  I just wanted to show you an interesting article that might help you to see that eating as little as you are isn't good for you and can, in fact, make your body prone to gaining weight.

I know you say it's muscle but the thing is that you can gain fat *inside* muscles and that makes it look like the muscle's getting bulkier when it really isn't.  I have a very hard time believing you're gaining actual muscle because that's basically impossible to do without (a) lifting heavy weights and (b) eating lots of protein and (c) eating more calories than your body is burning.  And it doesn't sound to me like you're doing (a) or (b).

When you increased your calories last time, how much did you increase by?  And for how long?  You may not have given your body long enough to trust that you were going to continue to feed it.  Was it with mostly healthy foods and a good balance of protein/carbs/fat? 

The reason I'm sure it will be mostly water weight is that what happens when you start feeding your body properly again is that your muscles grab onto some carbs for energy ('cause they don't trust you to give them more later) and the carb molecules wrap themselves up in water.  That's to be expected.  And, once the muscles get used to being fed on a regular basis, they let go of some of that back-up fuel and the water goes with it.  I suppose it's possible you might gain a pound of fat (not ten though!) over the month of eating more but that should also come back off once your body stops thinking it has to store every spare scrap of energy you give it and lets the metabolism fuel up.  1500 calories/day is less than *anyone* with a healthy metabolism will burn in a day.  So, once your metabolism is healthy (should take no longer than two months - probably less), you'll lose fat on that number of calories.

Seriously, you really have to listen to this advice. You would have to be some kind of genetic freak to gain muscle on so few calories and with no lifting. Even with some serious heavy lifting you would not be able to gain muscle with your calories so low so there's no way your going to by walking. Your body is definately trying to replace muscle with fat due to starvation mode, muscle takes more calories to maintain than fat so it would rather burn muscle for fuel and turn every extra morsel of extra food you may consume into fat. You should definately take the advice about upping your calories, scary as it may seem, because starvation mode is a no win situation. I starved myself down to 92lbs at 5ft 1 and here I am now battling at 163.8lbs.

Original Post by susiecue:

I never meant to imply that you were obese.  I suspect you're on the opposite end of the weight scale, to be honest.  I just wanted to show you an interesting article that might help you to see that eating as little as you are isn't good for you and can, in fact, make your body prone to gaining weight.

I know you say it's muscle but the thing is that you can gain fat *inside* muscles and that makes it look like the muscle's getting bulkier when it really isn't.  I have a very hard time believing you're gaining actual muscle because that's basically impossible to do without (a) lifting heavy weights and (b) eating lots of protein and (c) eating more calories than your body is burning.  And it doesn't sound to me like you're doing (a) or (b).

When you increased your calories last time, how much did you increase by?  And for how long?  You may not have given your body long enough to trust that you were going to continue to feed it.  Was it with mostly healthy foods and a good balance of protein/carbs/fat? 

The reason I'm sure it will be mostly water weight is that what happens when you start feeding your body properly again is that your muscles grab onto some carbs for energy ('cause they don't trust you to give them more later) and the carb molecules wrap themselves up in water.  That's to be expected.  And, once the muscles get used to being fed on a regular basis, they let go of some of that back-up fuel and the water goes with it.  I suppose it's possible you might gain a pound of fat (not ten though!) over the month of eating more but that should also come back off once your body stops thinking it has to store every spare scrap of energy you give it and lets the metabolism fuel up.  1500 calories/day is less than *anyone* with a healthy metabolism will burn in a day.  So, once your metabolism is healthy (should take no longer than two months - probably less), you'll lose fat on that number of calories.

 you can gain fat inside muscles? i didn't even know that was possible, do you have a link to an article explaining how that happens?

 

also, last time i increased by about 100 a month until i went from about 1000 to 1800-1700 (there was one month during which i increased by about 300, so it didn't take 7 months). i didn't start gaining until i hit about 1500 though and i gained 10 pounds in 2 weeks.

also, i was eating *mostly* carbs with a few vegetables and some protein (coming from mainly yogurt and the chicken in frozen meals). all i'm really eating now is carbs: breads, cereals, etc. could this be a factor? i thought it was simply calories in/out. lately i've been eating a lot of junk because i thought you COULD lose weight no matter what you were eating as long as you were eating less than you burned. so i've been getting a lot of crappy stuff in my system like chips and cookies, but very small portions but i'm not eating any vegetables or protein. does this matter at all (in terms of weight, not general health)

Links on intramuscular fat:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intramuscular_fa t

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/issa108.htm

Most of the links I found were about "marbling" of beef - which is an example where we can actually see intramuscular fat and which seems to have been a whole lot more thoroughly studied than intramuscular fat in humans.  (I guess that's because there's more money to be made from it in the beef industry?)

Officially, it is calories in - calories out.  For some people, though, it can get a little more complicated.  For example, people who are insulin resistant find that they can gain weight on seemingly few processed carbs but could eat a lot more "good" food (whole grains, vegetables, protein, nuts, unsaturated oils, etc.) and lose weight.  I don't know enough about undereating to know whether or not it could put your body in that state, but maybe?

Edited: If you gained 10 pounds in 2 weeks, that was not fat.  In order to put on a pound of fat, you need to eat 3500 calories more than your body burns.  To gain 10 pounds in 2 weeks, you would have to have eaten about 2500 calories per day *over and above* your base metabolic rate.  Essentially, you'd have to have eaten a bare minimum of 4000 calories/day.  You might have felt fat and bloat-y, but it was just water.

thanks for the links.

although *all* 10 pounds may not have been fat a lot of it MUST have been, because people were commenting on how i looked less thin and that my legs looked thicker. i also was measuring myself and gained about 2 inches around my waist..

 

with water weight gain, will there always be bloating?