I've hit a plateau over the last 2 weeks, where I haven't lost or gained any weight. Normally, this would be very upsetting to me, but it's not. Even though the scale says I'm still the same weight I was 2 weeks ago, my clothes tell me otherwise. When I get stressed out about my weight, I usually Google the question to see if other people have experienced the same problem. I found an interesting article about muscle gain and it helped put everything into perspective.
Here is a small piece of what I read.....
So if we take all of those factors into account, how much muscle can you realistically expect to gain over the course of a year?
Based on the research I've looked at, as well as my own personal experience, the average beginner will gain somewhere between 2 and 5 pounds of muscle per month in the first 2-3 months of training [5, 6].
However, you won't keep building muscle at the same rate forever, and gradually your rate of progress is going to slow down.
What this means is that over the course of a year you're looking at gaining somewhere between 20-25 pounds of muscle. This averages out at approximately 1.5-2 pounds of muscle per month.
Although I haven't seen many studies on muscle growth in women, my best guess is that gains in the "average" female are approximately half those seen in males.
As you probably know already, there are plenty of people running around trying to convince you that they have "the secret" — be it a training program or nutritional supplement — to gaining 50 pounds of muscle in [INSERT COMPLETELY UNREALISTIC TIME FRAME HERE].
And who knows, maybe a few of them are telling the truth. But I'm pretty sure that a lot of them are using anabolic steroids and passing off their results as "natural." Either that or they're simply making it all up.
