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My personal experience:
I just took a look at my “Before & After” pictures that span May-Nov 2019. I lost 57Kg of fat and put on about 13Kg of muscle. It was interesting to look back at the slideshow just now!
Although it is difficult to distinguish the muscles growing vs. the fat shrinking, it looks to me like my increase in muscle mass started to be noticeable from around the 3 month point. By “noticeable” I mean that the “definition lines” started to be visible although major increase in mass isn’t apparent.
The increase in mass looks like it started around the 4-5 month point, at which point I had progressed past the “do my best” beginner workouts, and had established the required strength, endurance and range of motion to take the next steps, so to speak.
So I first noticed my strength, endurance, range, and muscular definition increasing, and later noticed the size increase.
I would like to encourage you to keep at it, and don’t chase results. Do what you’re doing with the goal of being happier, having fewer health complications and pains, a little bit of vanity which is totally fine, and let the rest take care of itself.
One of the things that can be very defeating is to assume you will have reached an arbitrary goal by an arbitrary time-frame. Try to shift your perspective to realize that you’re doing all the right things, perhaps there’s some efficiency tweaks but that’s another story. Keep going and don’t measure your progress against anybody else but you!
(I want to acknowledge that my story is not normal. Nobody should ever lose 10Kg+ a month. I’m one of these a__holes that has to do 50% of what most people need to get the same results though and that’s a blessing. I also have digestive and nutrient-absorption issues but I’m not sure how much that plays in.)
No AJAX