When you started exercising, how did it affect the scale?

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suzievv
suzievv Posts: 410 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
When you started a new exercise routine, how much did it affect the scale? When did you notice the scale go up because of water retention? How long did that last? After a while, did you lose water weight?

I logged for quite a while without adding any new exercise. Recently I have increased my activity level and tried new exercises, and I'm wondering what to expect.

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  • mmapags
    mmapags Posts: 8,934 Member
    edited November 2018
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    Yup, water weight for a couple of weeks til it normalized.
  • quiksylver296
    quiksylver296 Posts: 28,442 Member
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    Water weight for as long as my muscles are sore. Once they aren't sore any more, I tend to lose the water weight, too.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    This didn't really happen to me until I started lifting. There was nothing when I started walking...a small uptick when I started running and then it went down as soon as I wasn't sore. When I started lifting it basically gave me a new baseline because with lifting I always have a little bit of inflammation and soreness going on...still lost weight, it just gave me a higher baseline than where I was before and my actual scale loss was a little slower as fat loss was always masked by some marginal level of water retention. I didn't really care as I wasn't focused on the number on the scale...I could see my body changing for the better and my health markers were improving at every quarterly blood test so I was all good.
  • carlaringuette
    carlaringuette Posts: 158 Member
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    Thank you for your post. I just posted a similar question. I have been walking 10k steps and doing a 1 hour workout at the gym everyday except Tues/Sun. I lost 5 pounds very quickly and then nothing. BUT my clothes are much looser and things are tightening up. So I am happy with the results but that number on the scale always haunts.....
  • sardelsa
    sardelsa Posts: 9,812 Member
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    If I change my routine my weight goes up at least 2-3lbs (which is a huge swing for me). It takes a few weeks to see movement again as that becomes my new normal weight.
  • mmapags
    mmapags Posts: 8,934 Member
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    carlaringuette wrote: »
    Thank you for your post. I just posted a similar question. I have been walking 10k steps and doing a 1 hour workout at the gym everyday except Tues/Sun. I lost 5 pounds very quickly and then nothing. BUT my clothes are much looser and things are tightening up. So I am happy with the results but that number on the scale always haunts.....

    Honestly, if I'm looking and feeling better, who cares what the scale says. Look for a post by mom2mangoes (I think is her username) it's in the maintenance section. She gained weight but reshaped her body in an awesome way! She called it something like "failed at maintenance" I'd post the link but I'm on my phone and it's a pain.
  • kami3006
    kami3006 Posts: 4,978 Member
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    mmapags wrote: »
    carlaringuette wrote: »
    Thank you for your post. I just posted a similar question. I have been walking 10k steps and doing a 1 hour workout at the gym everyday except Tues/Sun. I lost 5 pounds very quickly and then nothing. BUT my clothes are much looser and things are tightening up. So I am happy with the results but that number on the scale always haunts.....

    Honestly, if I'm looking and feeling better, who cares what the scale says. Look for a post by mom2mangoes (I think is her username) it's in the maintenance section. She gained weight but reshaped her body in an awesome way! She called it something like "failed at maintenance" I'd post the link but I'm on my phone and it's a pain.

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10698672/maintenance-failure-gained-all-the-weight-back-w-pics/p1

  • mmapags
    mmapags Posts: 8,934 Member
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    kami3006 wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    carlaringuette wrote: »
    Thank you for your post. I just posted a similar question. I have been walking 10k steps and doing a 1 hour workout at the gym everyday except Tues/Sun. I lost 5 pounds very quickly and then nothing. BUT my clothes are much looser and things are tightening up. So I am happy with the results but that number on the scale always haunts.....

    Honestly, if I'm looking and feeling better, who cares what the scale says. Look for a post by mom2mangoes (I think is her username) it's in the maintenance section. She gained weight but reshaped her body in an awesome way! She called it something like "failed at maintenance" I'd post the link but I'm on my phone and it's a pain.

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10698672/maintenance-failure-gained-all-the-weight-back-w-pics/p1

    Thank you! :*
  • HoneyBadger302
    HoneyBadger302 Posts: 1,974 Member
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    Starting a new workout routine that leaves me especially sore will have an upswing of around 3 pounds (give or take). When I first returned to working out (after too many years of being lazy), it took several weeks to come back off, and like another poster said, my baseline changed as well.

    Now, it tends to come off faster (a week or so at most, almost never any longer) and I've got enough data in my trend app to see how it works for me - I'll woosh down, then trend a bit higher than the woosh, with an uptick in the middle, then level out, then woosh again. Rinse and repeat. Overall though, trending down, slowly but steadily.
  • hesn92
    hesn92 Posts: 5,967 Member
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    When i first started lifting, my weight went up and didn't go back down for like 3 weeks.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,187 Member
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    I tend to weight train in my rowing off season, and not much otherwise. When I was tracking super-meticulously, I saw about a 2-pound otherwise-unexplained gain when I started weight training in Fall, and an offsetting 2-pound loss in the Spring when I stopped.

    If you're on a weight loss trend, the water weight (however much it is) will soon be outpaced by your fat loss, even if a similar amount of extra water weight sticks with you for the long term like it did for me. My prediction: Give it a few weeks, shorter if you're losing fairly fast, toward the longer end if you're losing slowly, and it'll eventually be lost among daily fluctuations even if you're maintaining weight.

    If you do add scale weight, but know (such as from logging) that you didn't eat enough calories over maintenance to explain that much gain, you know it's water weight from the exercise, so nothing to worry about, right?

    Best wishes!
  • suzievv
    suzievv Posts: 410 Member
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    Thanks everyone!!! This is all very helpful.
  • Danp
    Danp Posts: 1,561 Member
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    Lost about 20kg-25kg before I started exercising (cycling). When I started I noticed exactly zero change in my rate of weight loss. None. This is easily explained as when I started exercising I was quite naturally more hungry and as a consequence naturally ate more food to fuel my more active lifestyle.

    So no change in weight loss but HUGE gains in health and fitness.

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