Good evening everyone! I have a question, which came to mind specifically after reading the Beginners Guide to getting Bigger blog on this site. I'm not new to fitness, nor dieting, nor even lifting weights, I've lost 45 pounds in the last 5 years and brought my body fat percentage from 34% down to around 18%. I'm a 50 year old female, 5'4" and anywhere between 117 and 119 pounds. Here is my question (with some background first): A good friend of mine that is also a personal trainer and works with me roughly once a week has told me he would like to see me gain roughly 3-5 pounds (muscle). He explains to me that if it's muscle, my clothes will pretty much still fit the same, inches may even go down, but he's concerned at my age of my weight being too low. He's an awesome guy and pretty knowledgeable, so I tend to listen to him. So I've been trying to eat more good calories. Good protein. (I generally have around 100g per day, and drink tons of water). If I gain weight from the good calories I'm eating, and do measurements in another 3 weeks, is there a really good possibility that the weight gain will be muscle and not fat? Because I will probably be really upset if it's "fat" weight. (We do body caliper measurements). He also told me I need to cut back on my cardio. I was doing 5 days a week between 30-45 minutes, because I don't need to burn the calories like I did when I was trying to lose. I explained to him that it is very, very hard to go from a "need to lose weight" mindset to a "no more losing, time to gain a little" mindset. But I'm trying. I hope this wasn't rambling, and for some reason I think that I will get some really good support and answers on this board! As I was reading the blog mentioned above, I was thinking to myself, this sounds really familiar, hasn't Joe been telling me this? Have a great night, everyone! I look forward to reading responses Barbara
