Weight gain when exercising is very normal. Here’s what you should know about the weight you saw on the scale after your workout.
You’ve been working out regularly (good for you, Glen Coco), but when you go on the scale you discover that you’ve put on a few pounds. Your first questions are “why am I gaining weight?” and “how, specifically, am I gaining weight?” Gaining weight after working out shouldn’t be cause for alarm, even if it can be tempting to allow a higher number on the scale mess with your brain (particularly if you feel you’ve been doing all the “right” things).
Here are four reasons why, despite exercising and eating well, you could still put on weight.
Exercise
Do you believe that rigorous spin class helped you lose a few pounds? It’s probably just water loss from perspiration. Additionally, water retention may be the cause of the scale reading being higher (which sometimes happens after exercise). The lesson: Why do I gain weight so easily may be explained by the amount of water in your system, which has a significant impact on your weight.
According to Jeffrey A. Dolgan, a clinical exercise physiologist at Canyon Ranch in Miami Beach, Florida, “water makes up approximately 65 to 90 percent of a person’s weight, and changes in water content of the human body can shift the scale by ten pounds or more from day to day.” One of the main reasons diuretics are so popular is that they flush the water out of your system, which only leads to temporary weight loss and has no effect on how your body is made up.
Your Metabolism and Your Hormones
Gaining Weight Right After a Workout?
You exercise, yet you’re still gaining weight. Have you ever noticed that the scale increases right away (or even one or two days) following a rigorous workout? Dolgan thinks that’s typical and doesn’t necessarily indicate that you’re gaining weight.
Muscle, fat, bone, the brain and neural tube, connective tissue, blood, lymph, intestinal gas, urine, and the air we transport in our lungs are all included in a person’s scale mass, according to him.
The percentage of mass in each of these categories can change by up to 15% immediately following a training routine. According to Dolgan, intense workouts can result in variations in weight due to variables including hydration level, inflammation from muscle injury repair (also known as delayed onset muscle soreness), and even the volume of blood and urine.
So there you have it: it’s probably not the kind of weight gain you think it is if you are gaining weight while exercising and eating healthily.
Putting On Weight While Exercising Through Strength Training
It’s a frequent misconception that “muscular is heavier than fat” when stepping on the scale, according to Dolgan. “A pound of fat weighs the same as a pound of muscle, yet muscle weighs more because it has a higher density than fat.”
Your scale weight may rise while your body fat % may fall if you start to alter your body composition through exercise, adding more dense muscle mass and losing body fat. According to Dolgan, since these changes take place over weeks and months rather than hours or days, the scale is useless for monitoring them. With all of these in mind, it is normal to gain weight when exercising. (Are you concerned that weight training will make you bigger? The reason why weightlifting won’t make you bulky is explained here.)
Weight Gain from Muscle vs Fat
The scale is not the best instrument for tracking progress if your objective is to increase your level of fitness since, as was already mentioned, it cannot tell you how much of your body weight is made up of muscle versus fat. Additionally, spending too much time asking “why am I gaining weight?” or “why do I keep gaining weight?” can occur from frequently monitoring the scale when weight loss isn’t necessarily your aim. And who wants to constantly consider their pounds?
Tell tale Signs You’re Losing Weight
When aiming to get fitter, people should steer clear of the scale and focus more on using objective measurement methods like body composition to monitor their development.
Even if self-weighing is one method of tracking progress, it shouldn’t be the only one. Furthermore, worrying about it with daily weigh-ins is not worth it (and, as a result, fretting about gaining weight while working out and eating healthy).
Remember that decreasing weight does not indicate that you are more fit; it simply indicates that you are lighter, which has very little meaning. Remember that if you’re working out but gaining weight, it’s possible that your workouts are successful but that you need to change your diet if you want to see benefits in terms of weight loss.