Weight lifting & weight gain - help!!

ema_lou8

Motivation needed please! A bit of back story - been on calorie controlled diets on and off (mostly on!) for the past 15 years. Im short & I put weight on VERY easily. I have only ever paid attention to the scales and I feel "happy" at 8.7 - 8.10 although over the years I have always had the issue of being "skinny fat" at the weight. I recently crept upto 9st and so decided another health kick was in order but this time I'm trying weight lifting (doing squats, deadlifts, trx pull ups, etc 3 times a week) combined with a high protein (80g a day) diet, albeit still low calorie at 1350 a day.

Problem - I'm putting weight on, I'm 9.1 this morning...I know in reality this is nothing but I REALLY struggle with seeing the scales go up when really I still wanted an overall weight loss.

I really want to build my strength and stamina as well as building the muscle definition that I have always lacked but seeing weight gain makes me want to give up! I know muscle weighs more than fat etc but I've only been training for 3 weeks?! In terms of cardio I do a 10 min power walk on the treadmill to warm up before lifting and sometimes a 500m row too.

Words of advice/motivation anyone??

djcolloid

Weight fluctuates a lot so make sure you're consistently 9.1 St, and always weigh at the same time each day (like right out of bed).

Dieting can be pretty fluid, if you notice your weight climbing too fast, cut 100cal from your total calories in the coming weeks.

If you don't want to do that, then cardio is the only option. I won't consider power walking as cardio, so add running to your workouts instead. HIIT workouts are also good for cardio, look that up too.

The max amt of lean muscle u can gain per week is around .5 lb/week. Of course this is the best scenairo, and u will definitely gain fat along with muscle too. To counteract this, supplement your workouts with more running (weather's getting warm too) and monitor what you're eating closely. Good luck :^)

LeanButNotMean44

bryanliang7 wrote: »

Weight fluctuates a lot so make sure you're consistently 9.1 St, and always weigh at the same time each day (like right out of bed).

Dieting can be pretty fluid, if you notice your weight climbing too fast, cut 100cal from your total calories in the coming weeks.

If you don't want to do that, then cardio is the only option. I won't consider power walking as cardio, so add running to your workouts instead. HIIT workouts are also good for cardio, look that up too.

The max amt of lean muscle u can gain per week is around .5 lb/week. Of course this is the best scenairo, and u will definitely gain fat along with muscle too. To counteract this, supplement your workouts with more running (weather's getting warm too) and monitor what you're eating closely. Good luck :^)

There's some right up here but also a lot of wrong.

Weight DOES fluctuate and you should weigh yourself at the same time of the day.

As far as the weight gain, if you have only been lifting for 3 weeks your muscles are likely retaining water. Just give it some time and that will subside. Contrary to what bryanliang7 said above, a female will NOT gain .5 lbs/week in lean muscle. You would be lucky to gain that in about a month.

Give it time, continue to weigh yourself, track your food/drink (are you weighing solids/measuring liquids?) and everything will fall into place.

ema_lou8

LeanButNotMean44 wrote: »

bryanliang7 wrote: »

Weight fluctuates a lot so make sure you're consistently 9.1 St, and always weigh at the same time each day (like right out of bed).

Dieting can be pretty fluid, if you notice your weight climbing too fast, cut 100cal from your total calories in the coming weeks.

If you don't want to do that, then cardio is the only option. I won't consider power walking as cardio, so add running to your workouts instead. HIIT workouts are also good for cardio, look that up too.

The max amt of lean muscle u can gain per week is around .5 lb/week. Of course this is the best scenairo, and u will definitely gain fat along with muscle too. To counteract this, supplement your workouts with more running (weather's getting warm too) and monitor what you're eating closely. Good luck :^)

There's some right up here but also a lot of wrong.

Weight DOES fluctuate and you should weigh yourself at the same time of the day.

As far as the weight gain, if you have only been lifting for 3 weeks your muscles are likely retaining water. Just give it some time and that will subside. Contrary to what bryanliang7 said above, a female will NOT gain .5 lbs/week in lean muscle. You would be lucky to gain that in about a month.

Give it time, continue to weigh yourself, track your food/drink (are you weighing solids/measuring liquids?) and everything will fall into place.

Thanks for your words of advice, I am meticulous with counting calories and include absolutely everything. I overestimate the things that are tricky to measure too, just in case. I actually find it easy to count cals because I have always seen results from doing it in terms of weight loss but never been 100% happy with the result of dieting alone.

Yes I did think that any muscle gain at this early point would be highly unlikely although I didn't previously know about water retention so it's good to be able to settle my mind about the weight gain, small as it is.

Thanks for the encouragement, I'm LOVING weight training so will ignore the scales as best I can and keep on at it!