Why am I gaining weight?
janhiness
Posts: 32 Member
I've gained 4 pounds this past week. I'm getting so frustrated. I've upped my cardio and my weight training so I would expect to lose but every time I step on the scale I'm up 
. I'm also realizing I'm really backed up any tips?
. I'm also realizing I'm really backed up any tips? 0
Replies
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Jan,
I'm in the same boat! I been following a VERY strict keto diet for the past 2 weeks and I was up a pound this morning! I don't think keto is for me. I also feel very sluggish and bloated since being on keto. I can't take even looking at bacon and butter! I've also been exercising 5 days a week and still up a pound. I'd love to hear what people say about the weight gain. I hope you find some answers. Good luck!0 -
Besides weight gain I love keto. I don't feel sluggish at all. You know how the saying goes different strokes for different folks. Keto definitely isn't for everyone. Honestly 2 weeks isn't enough time to know if it's for you though. I'd at least give it a month.0
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I lose more weight on Keto when I don't exercise. I say...stop working out....and focus on eating!!! I went three weeks with weight gain or no loss, then I started losing again. I try not to focus on the scale. Try to go a whole month without even looking at the scale. For me Keto is not a diet, but a way of life. So, no matter what the scale says I am not stopping. Don't give up...I felt like giving up early on...I am glad I did not.0
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Besides weight gain I love keto. I don't feel sluggish at all. You know how the saying goes different strokes for different folks. Keto definitely isn't for everyone. Honestly 2 weeks isn't enough time to know if it's for you though. I'd at least give it a month.
You are right keto is not for everyone, and also 2 weeks it too short for anything you wanna change in life. It was hard the first 2-4 weeks, but then once I was keto-adapted I felt awesome. I cannot see myself changing from this WOE.0 -
Jan, you diary looks good. I would say you need to eat more. Eat all your calories each day, even if you go over a little bit. It sounds counter intuitive, but you may be eating too little.0
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im on my second week of keto, and have had one heavy lifting day (moving furniture) and i was up 2 lbs the day after. i think my gain had to do with water retention from recovery. perhaps that may be something? a couple days after, i dropped the lbs and some. im trying out a new mantra: it goes like this: consistency consistency consistency.
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weight loss isn't always linear. from looking at your diary, i highly doubt you are gaining body mass. the scale isn't the end all be all. I find my numbers tend to fluctuate a few pounds daily. it was disturbing at first, but when I realized that my clothes were still fitting better and my body measurements were still decreasing despite what the scale was telling me..i put less emphasis on what I actually weighed.
with the increased cardio and weight training you could be retaining water for repair. it could be a time in your monthly cycle where you retain more water. if you are eating at a deficit, you wont be gaining in terms of mass.
http://www.livestrong.com/article/351391-water-retention-in-muscles-after-exercise/
being backed up is also probably a contributing factor. some things that might help are fiber made from psyllium husks, foods containing sugar alcohols, and/or a magnesium supplement might move things along. I also found that decreasing carbs can disrupt your gut bacteria and eating fermented foods or taking a probiotic can help.
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I'm trying to eat more but it's hard since I'm not hungry. I actually forced myself to eat dinner last night.0
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Sore muscles cause an inflammation response that causes water retention. TOM causes water retention. Losing fat causes water retention as the cell sometimes fill up with water while the body is deciding whether or not it can handle that loss. Sometimes I think my body likes to randomly retain water just to piss me off.
Also some days we are hungrier than others. One day I will eat very little, the next I will eat like a starving wolf. It evens out.
Consistency plus time...hang in there.
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Similar feelings. Low Carb for a long time. Keto for one month.
I was stalled at the same weight for a month. Read Jimmy Moore's book and changed my macros - went Keto. Amazing initial results. Lost 5 lbs in 9 days. WOW. Stayed at that weight for 10 days, then gained 4 back. Stayed there since. So in 30 days I actually only lost 1 - 2 lbs.
I think a lot of it was water fluctuations. I keep going a little stricter on carb reduction and protein moderation. I use flexibleketo to caluculate keto level with macros. I've been solidly over 2 the entire time.
Any experienced keto people out there think that actually getting the finger pricker to test glucose and ketones could help find more of a perfect balance of macros that would help?
I am not feeling great. Sluggish. Tummy aches. Headaches. There could be a lot of reasons why...but maybe I'm overdoing the carb restriction or overdoing the fat.
Any thoughts on the actual monitoring to help with results and to feel better?0 -
Jan,
I'm in the same boat! I been following a VERY strict keto diet for the past 2 weeks and I was up a pound this morning! I don't think keto is for me. I also feel very sluggish and bloated since being on keto. I can't take even looking at bacon and butter! I've also been exercising 5 days a week and still up a pound. I'd love to hear what people say about the weight gain. I hope you find some answers. Good luck!
Sluggish actually sounds like induction flu, which is common. Make sure you're getting plenty of water and electrolytes. Don't restrict sodium intake, because you can end up deficient (which might be contributing to how you feel). Also, make sure you're eating enough. It's easy to under eat on this way of eating, and not eating enough can exacerbate the initial transition symptoms.
Like someone else said, take a break from the exercising right now. Your body is under enough stress switching to fat burning, especially if you were a big carb-eater before.
Odds are, the weight increase is water weight. If you've been working out 5x a week since before you went keto, odds are good that you didn't have much in the way of glycogen stores to be lost, hence why you're not seeing big losses like some people get. Also, from the looks of your profile pic you don't really have much (if any) weight to lose.
I say stop focusing on the number on the scale, and start focusing on other markers of health and fitness. If you haven't seen this already, I recommend checking out this article. It's not keto, necessarily, but the point you'll find is that she's more fit and in better health, despite being a few pounds heavier after she changed her focus.
If nothing else, give keto a solid month, before you give up on it.0 -
I looked at your diary. It is wonderful.
I wish mine looked that good. Try drinking 8 cups of water a day for a few days.
Dan the Man from Michigan0 -
I've gained 4 pounds this past week. I'm getting so frustrated. I've upped my cardio and my weight training so I would expect to lose but every time I step on the scale I'm up. I'm also realizing I'm really backed up any tips?
My brother, who is a professional fitness instructor, says the working out..especially changing it up or increasing it, can result increased blood volume. The little torn fibers in the muscles are reshaping to accomodate the growth...blood (and water) is needed for the repair.
Speaking from experience, I understand the frustration with the scale. There could be a number of reasons not all negative in your case. I agree with the others here that you're not puting on fat. If it isnt blood/water than it's probably muscle. Muscle burns more calories which is a positive. It's denser than fat which explains some weight gain. A scale showing Body Fat % would probably show BF percentages going down.
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baconslave wrote: »Sometimes I think my body likes to randomly retain water just to piss me off.
LOL
Yes. I really have to remind myself to look at the overall loss as sometimes there is just no reason for a weight gain!
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When I did some strength training last week, I gained immediately. It's just your body freaking out over changes. I would lay off on the exercise a bit, just get some fun activity outside that you enjoy rather than "healthy training". With keto, the scale is just another tool like anything else to warn you of consistent cumulative backsliding, but I've found the scale pretty inaccurate for predicting how well I'm doing on keto from day to day. My clothes are a better gauge of progress. Are you clothes getting tight again? If not, ignore the numbers.0
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-I would double check your protein levels- depending on how heavy you lift you may need more protein than the standard .08/ per lb calculation. You might want to check that.
- Does your scale have a body fat percentage/hydration measurement if not and you plan to continue to use the scale while doing LCHF, you may want to upgrade.
- I would also say check your water since you are backed up. I add lite salt to my water and have a liquid magnesium supplement that I add to my last jar of water at night with electrolytes.
- Also, are you using scale to measure or just eyeing?
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I have gained recently and i've been doing keto for 10 months. it is frustrating at times. but i'll admit, since september i haven't been watching portions at all, and i'm getting less exercise. i use fitnesspal to track my positives-- but not my negatives.
this post at eating academy that shows an up-and-down weight graph of one person on a keto diet (scroll down far): http://eatingacademy.com/weight-loss/got-grit0 -
If you remember nothing else, remember this: the game is won – or lost – not by the infrequent big changes, but by the frequent, deliberate, and repeatable small ones. This is where grit comes in.
Sure, there are genetic freaks and lucky ones out there, for whom none of this matters. But for the rest of us – because we live in, and are surrounded by, a food environment that is chronically toxic to about two-thirds of us – re-building our bodies requires consistent and deliberate change.
This is from the link lebowski (the Dude!!!) posted.
I can't stress this enough. I've lost almost 70 lb now. How? Consistent AND deliberate choices. Every day. I've been slowing down the closer I get to my goal. My weight bounces up at least 2 or 3lb before I lose every week now. Up, down, waffle... waffle. The overall trend is down, though. So do I quit because it took me almost 2 weeks to drop anything last time? Heck no. Water fluctuations be damned. I have grit and know how to focus it so that it is effective. KCKO. Every meal. Every day. Every week. Deliberate choices and consistent choices over time will get you what you want. It's in your body's best interest, in its view, to be a turd and fight to keep everything the same. You have to be more determined that things will change. Eventually, you will win. Unfortunately we can't choose the rate, even though we want this crap off our bodies yesterday. But the body, under the right conditions can't, and won't, hold out forever.
Be gritty.
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Baconslave, I really needed to pick up what you put down! Thanks for that. I have been feeling very down on myself the past couple of days because my weight hasn't done anything and I think my scale might be broken (how did my trainer do that???). I've had a couple of freak outs because I feel like I should be doing better. I'm trying really hard to not allow myself to talk myself out of this. I'm tired and I'm tired but I have to keep going. I'm going to try to think about it like reading a book. If I stop now, I'll never know how the story ends. Thank you for your encouraging words.0
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I'm with baconslave. I bounced up and stuck over Thanksgiving, weighing in at 273.6 on November 21st, but I trusted the process and Saturday (Dec 6th, two weeks later) finally saw a tiny loss and now I am down to 268. If you're eating within your goals (macros and calories), just relax and practice a little patience.0
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^^^^^
Agreed- i weighed myself before thanksgiving because between carbs & TOM i knew i would go up- finally today i went back below weight beofre thanksgiving LOL
KCKO !!!
every day every bite-0 -
fludderbye wrote: »^^^^^
Agreed- i weighed myself before thanksgiving because between carbs & TOM i knew i would go up- finally today i went back below weight beofre thanksgiving LOL
KCKO !!!
every day every bite-
That too. Between a 700 mile car ride(each way), slightly elevated carbs and my moron TOM starting the Saturday after Thanksgiving, just forget it, lol.
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I think grit has been whats been keeping me on this track for a long time. I didn't start with keto, I had started with a South Beach-styled diet in late 2011. However I plan on keeping up with a LCHF diet for the rest of my life, unless there's some significant science that leads me to change.
For me, my accomplishment is really blood work. In mid 2011, I had my highest H1ac of 6.1 and fasting glucose of 102. Pre-Diabetic. Both tests declined gradually since then. But the big drop happened this October. H1ac of 5.6, and blood glucose of 86.
I feel like I'm on the road to normalizing0 -
Mr. Lebowski ("that rug really tied that room together") and baconslave, thank you for your wise words, I really needed that encouragement and reminder how I got here from a year ago: One deliberate choice at a time. Stay 80 gritty!0
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