Gaining weight, not losing.

matchbox_girl

I know! I know....I shouldn't even look at the scale, but I do. Started working out and staying under my calories last week, and I have gone up 2-3 pounds instead of down. Come on, now, friends....what am I doing wrong?

diannethegeek

If it's only been a week and happened right after you started to exercise, my guess would be water retention in the muscles due to the exercise. It's really, really common to see a slight gain on the scale when you start a new exercise routine.

Other things to look at would be to check your food logging to be sure it's as accurate as possible. Most people accidentally underestimate their calories by forgetting to log things or estimating portion sizes or using bad entries in the database, etc.

Weight gain could also be from stress, or too much sodium, or TOM, or probably a dozen reasons I can't think of. Give it another week or two before you panic.

cwolfman13

Give it more time...you can't really tell anything in a week. If you weren't working out before and you just started, you're going to retain a lot of water for muscle repair.

bwogilvie

A week is nothing. If you were accurate in logging calories, then I agree that it's probably water retention. Note that exercise machines and MFP's database are often generous with their estimates of exercise calories, which trips up a lot of people. For a reality check, I'm a 151-pound, 46-year-old male, and my exercise burns are about as follows (measured with Garmin Edge 800 cycle computer and Garmin Forerunner 620 running watch, both using Firstbeat's proprietary algorithm):

Walking at 3 mph: 240 calories/hour = 4 calories/minute
Running at 7.5 mph (8:00 pace), with some hills: 780 calories/hour = 13 calories/minute
Cycling at 17 mph, with some hills: 500 calories/hour = 8.3 calories/minute

MFP's database, on the other hand, estimates 828 calories/hour for cycling 16-20 mph at my weight. That's 166% of my actual burn, or 66% more than I consumed! That would wipe out a 300-calorie deficit right there.

Ninkyou

You changed your exercise so you are retaining water for muscle repair. It's temporary.