MORE gain - what is going on

goatelope

Hi, I could really do with some support.

I’ve gained 2.8 lbs this week despite working out consistently (6 days per week for a month now), and sticking within calories (1400-1500 per day).

I am really demoralised - I just can’t understand what I am doing wrong

AnnPT77

Probably looking at water retention on the scale, for whatever reason. Bodies are weird, but if you didn't eat a cumulative 9800 calories over your actual (not estimated) TDEE, you didn't gain 2.8 pounds of fat, so it's either water weight or extra digestive contents in transit.

As an uneven eater, my weight is routinely up and down by a few pounds every week, but - trusting my process via experience with it - I'm quite confident I'm losing fat ultra slowly overall (with a brief break in that loss trend over the holidays 😋😆). Over the last 7 days, my weight has varied by 1.8 pounds: 125.8 a few days ago, 127.6 a few days later, at 126.2 this morning. That's just what it does. 🤷‍♀️

Weight loss is a trend over weeks to months. Current weight bounces around over days to even small numbers of weeks.

https://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations

963Nitro

Or you're pregnant

Crlion43

You could be gaining muscle. Are you measuring all of your food to make sure it is those calls per day. Also after a strength workout your body retains water.
Are you weighing yourself at the same time every time you weigh? Weight can fluctuate a lot over the day.

AnnPT77

Crlion43 wrote: »

You could be gaining muscle. Are you measuring all of your food to make sure it is those calls per day. Also after a strength workout your body retains water.
Are you weighing yourself at the same time every time you weigh? Weight can fluctuate a lot over the day.

Pretty sure 2.8 pounds in a week is not mostly muscle, especially at 1400-1500 calories. Sadly, multi-pound muscle gain tends to be a thing of many weeks to months, even under ideal conditions. I wish it were otherwise! 🙁

The pregnancy question is provocative, but in a premenopausal women, hormonally-related water retention is well within the realm of possible (some women gain/lose more than 2.8lbs, cyclically) . . . and it happens at different times in the cycle for different women, it seems like.

@goatelope, if you are premenopausal, have you tracked calories/weight long enough to know what your menstrual cycle water-weight patterns are? (Not that it can't change, over time, just to make life fun . . . . 😬🙄).

callsitlikeiseeit

elisa123gal

What Ann ^^ up there says.. the exercise causes false water weight gain and can take six weeks to stabilize. If you are on point with your calorie deficit the scale will start moving very soon.