Lesson learned...I am finally losing weight again!

wmweeza

I have been religiously tracking every bite of food I eat for several years and going to the gym the last 9 months for 3 days a week and physical therapy 2 days a week. Oddly enough my weight loss COMPLETELY stalled! I had horrible pains recently in my back (unrelated, it's arthritis) and my doc forbade me from working out for almost the last month...and guess what? My 9 month plateau broke! Guess when I joined my gym? 9 months ago.
It was my muscles retaining water. I was working out every week without fail with no breaks, yet no weight lost, even though my clothes were fitting better. I have steadily been losing weight the last 2 weeks that I've had time off.
So, lesson learned: The scale may not budge even if you are doing everything right. My plan from here on out is to workout as usual for 2-3 weeks a month, and then take a week just for swimming and light yoga to give my muscles a break, I think that should fix the scale issue

jelleigh

That's really interesting! Can I ask how many lbs of water you were retaining from that? I've been curious if I'm retaining since I started doing a weight routine 6 weeks ago. I feel/look better (which is enough honestly but I'm still curious) but haven't lost anything scale wise .

cmriverside

There's a lot to unpack here.

First, were you eating the exact same number of calories both while you exercised and then now that you've quit?

How much weight are you trying (needing ) to lose? Is it just a few pounds?

I hope people reading don't take this as a, "Whew. See? I am going to stop exercising." Because that would be a shame. You can always lose weight - it's about figuring out how much to eat. Exercise is/was NOT the limiting factor here.

corinasue1143

Arthritis could be the key here. Arthritis plus exercise could affect water retention, neat, and ??
Someone else can state it better than I can.

JPaigeWatts

wmweeza wrote: »

I have been religiously tracking every bite of food I eat for several years and going to the gym the last 9 months for 3 days a week and physical therapy 2 days a week. Oddly enough my weight loss COMPLETELY stalled! I had horrible pains recently in my back (unrelated, it's arthritis) and my doc forbade me from working out for almost the last month...and guess what? My 9 month plateau broke! Guess when I joined my gym? 9 months ago.
It was my muscles retaining water. I was working out every week without fail with no breaks, yet no weight lost, even though my clothes were fitting better. I have steadily been losing weight the last 2 weeks that I've had time off.
So, lesson learned: The scale may not budge even if you are doing everything right. My plan from here on out is to workout as usual for 2-3 weeks a month, and then take a week just for swimming and light yoga to give my muscles a break, I think that should fix the scale issue

Sometimes our bodies just need rest from hard exercise, especially when we are under doctors care for an issue. I applaud you for knowing there are still ways for being physically active (ie, swimming, etc...) that can still help keep you physically fit without the added stress on your body when your body says “no”.

puffbrat

A stall on the scale from water retention for muscle repair generally shouldn't last 9 months. It sounds like you were eating at maintenance and doing unintentional recomp, but are now losing water weight.

Like @cmriverside asked - are you eating the same number of calories now that you were when exercising?

I wonder if you were overestimating your exercise calories, and by eating those back as intended you were eating at maintenance.

NovusDies

So when your stall broke did the scale catch up completely with your fat loss? In other words if you were trying to lose 1 pound per week for 9 months you would have lost close to 40 pounds of water. Otherwise you were not retaining a pound of water for every pound of fat loss to zero out the scale losses.

AnnPT77

Another possibility: Over-exercise - too much volume, frequency, and/or intensity ** - tends to bleed activity out of daily life, in compensation. That can also lead to slowed weight loss.

I'm not suggesting this would be the one and only thing going on, but could be a contributor.

Five pounds or so would be high-ish water retention for someone at/approaching a normal bodyweight, and it doesn't just keep increasing and increasing to hide gradually increasing fat loss. I agree with others: Something else was going on, in a stall of 9 months.

** How much is "too much" exercise? Varies by individual, and especially varies with an individual's fitness level. "Too much" for a li'l ol' lady my age (64) who might be starting out on a new exercise program after decades of inactivity is not "too much" for a well-conditioned elite athlete, obviously. But there is some amount of "much" that's "too much" for each of them.