Water weight or muscle ?
FitnessFreak1821
Posts: 242 Member
Ok so during my period i was 158 pounds to almost 159 pounds(sept 23-september 27). September 29th went down to 157. I work out 4-5 days a week. I have been feeling sore all over for few days and it's not letting up. It's not extreme just alittle stiff and sore all over more so in the mornings. I seem to be staying at 158 pounds last 2 days. So i went up a pound and there is no way its fat. I have been keeping myself at a deficiency , eating pretty healthy(eat put once to twice a week but stay in my calorie limit) My calorie deficit should lead to pound to pound and half weight loss by now. I eat 1500-1700 cals and I burn usually 300-400 cals during my workouts (including after burn). I stop my fit bit once I have been relaxing and my heart rate goes down to resting.
How long does water weight stay after a work out ? Are there ways to get rid of it? Could it be muscle? My scale isn't saying I'm gaining fat but I know these scales are just an estimate.
How long does water weight stay after a work out ? Are there ways to get rid of it? Could it be muscle? My scale isn't saying I'm gaining fat but I know these scales are just an estimate.
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Replies
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Gaining muscle is a SLOW process - you'd be lucky to getting a half pound a month. Actually being sore and timeline says water weight.
And it will go when it goes and you have some time to heal basically. Don't sweat it. Do take rest days.5 -
wunderkindking wrote: »Gaining muscle is a SLOW process - you'd be lucky to getting a half pound a month. Actually being sore and timeline says water weight.
And it will go when it goes and you have some time to heal basically. Don't sweat it. Do take rest days.
Thanks, its just alittle discouraging when I have been working hard to try and get to my goal. To see the scale go up. I have to keep remembering that the scale is just a number and it's most likely water weight because I know deep down I have been doing my best. I have lost all the weight before after my first pregnancy I can do this again2 -
I think we've already explained that the way you are using your Fitbit is not ideal (for example concerning the time after you stop exercising till you stop your fitbit/reach your resting heart rate: including that time is inflating your calorie burn, your fitbit doesn't measure 'afterburn').
Regardless: gaining muscle is a slow gradual process, think months and longer. Short term fluctuations like you're having: due to water weight retention and/or fluctuations of food waste in your system (in your case most likely water retention).
Your fluctuations are very minor by the way, I've had times where I went up 5 or 6 lbs over the course of a week, the last time it was from some high sodium meals combined with my period. The solution? Patience
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If you're in a deficit, you're not likely gaining muscle. But water weight will fluctuate. Do you weigh less now than a month ago? If so, you're on the right track. If it has been less than a month since you've been tracking, give it more time.1
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XoXashleighXoX wrote: »Ok so during my period i was 158 pounds to almost 159 pounds(sept 23-september 27). September 29th went down to 157. I work out 4-5 days a week. I have been feeling sore all over for few days and it's not letting up. It's not extreme just alittle stiff and sore all over more so in the mornings. I seem to be staying at 158 pounds last 2 days. So i went up a pound and there is no way its fat. I have been keeping myself at a deficiency , eating pretty healthy(eat put once to twice a week but stay in my calorie limit) My calorie deficit should lead to pound to pound and half weight loss by now. I eat 1500-1700 cals and I burn usually 300-400 cals during my workouts (including after burn). I stop my fit bit once I have been relaxing and my heart rate goes down to resting.
How long does water weight stay after a work out ? Are there ways to get rid of it? Could it be muscle? My scale isn't saying I'm gaining fat but I know these scales are just an estimate.
Water retention.
I used to just retain 2-3 pounds worth of water when I ovulated and premenstrually, but now that I am close to menopause it's 6-10 pounds at ovulation.
Because of this, I compare myself to the same point in my cycle last MONTH and don't worry about last WEEK.2 -
XoXashleighXoX wrote: »Ok so during my period i was 158 pounds to almost 159 pounds(sept 23-september 27). September 29th went down to 157. I work out 4-5 days a week. I have been feeling sore all over for few days and it's not letting up. It's not extreme just alittle stiff and sore all over more so in the mornings. I seem to be staying at 158 pounds last 2 days. So i went up a pound and there is no way its fat. I have been keeping myself at a deficiency , eating pretty healthy(eat put once to twice a week but stay in my calorie limit) My calorie deficit should lead to pound to pound and half weight loss by now. I eat 1500-1700 cals and I burn usually 300-400 cals during my workouts (including after burn). I stop my fit bit once I have been relaxing and my heart rate goes down to resting.
How long does water weight stay after a work out ? Are there ways to get rid of it? Could it be muscle? My scale isn't saying I'm gaining fat but I know these scales are just an estimate.
Incorrect usage of Fitbit - totally inflated calorie burn.
Fat ain't fast - gain or loss.
Muscle even slower.
Not muscle.4 -
Using heartrate for guesstimating calories burned for a strength workout is about as accurate as sacrificing a chicken and measuring the arterial spray (that's assuming the chicken is hypertensive too).
.
Wrong tool and waiting for your HR to return to resting before stopping a bad estimating method is just making it worse.
Heartbeats do not equal calories but soreness and inflammation can equal water weight gain.
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I don't get .... so whats the point of the fitbit if it's not a good tool? Obviously It's just a estimate of what your burning, I knew that. I'm not doing the estimate myself. I use the "work out" option when I work out and it is a FitBit 2. How am I suppose to use it ?
I have also heard of other people not stopping the workout on the fitbit until heart returns to rest and recording the estimate calorie burn. .so maybe that is wrong? How do you guys use your fitbit?0 -
XoXashleighXoX wrote: »Ok so during my period i was 158 pounds to almost 159 pounds(sept 23-september 27). September 29th went down to 157. I work out 4-5 days a week. I have been feeling sore all over for few days and it's not letting up. It's not extreme just alittle stiff and sore all over more so in the mornings. I seem to be staying at 158 pounds last 2 days. So i went up a pound and there is no way its fat. I have been keeping myself at a deficiency , eating pretty healthy(eat put once to twice a week but stay in my calorie limit) My calorie deficit should lead to pound to pound and half weight loss by now. I eat 1500-1700 cals and I burn usually 300-400 cals during my workouts (including after burn). I stop my fit bit once I have been relaxing and my heart rate goes down to resting.
How long does water weight stay after a work out ? Are there ways to get rid of it? Could it be muscle? My scale isn't saying I'm gaining fat but I know these scales are just an estimate.
Incorrect usage of Fitbit - totally inflated calorie burn.
Fat ain't fast - gain or loss.
Muscle even slower.
Not muscle.
How do you use the fitbit then ? I have a fitbit 2 so quite old. And I have also heard of others not turning off the work out until heart returns to normal? ....I'm curious how you use it if I'm using it wrong ? I want to use it properly 🤔0 -
Thanks everyone, I'm hoping it's just water retention. I am about 4 pounds down in one month so I think I'm in the right direction!0
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XoXashleighXoX wrote: »I don't get .... so whats the point of the fitbit if it's not a good tool? Obviously It's just a estimate of what your burning, I knew that. I'm not doing the estimate myself. I use the "work out" option when I work out and it is a FitBit 2. How am I suppose to use it ?
I have also heard of other people not stopping the workout on the fitbit until heart returns to rest and recording the estimate calorie burn. .so maybe that is wrong? How do you guys use your fitbit?
I use an Apple Watch not a FitBit but the concept is the same. Stop your workout when you stop working out. The only reason anyone is continuing to let it run is because they want it to say they burned more calories than they really did. You may be burning marginally more calories than when at a pure rest but not nearly as many as your tracker is trying to estimate since you are telling it that you are still working out.
Also, just from looking at a couple of your recent threads it seems you are on a workout program you used before with success and are already having success this second time. Don't get hung up on day to day numbers and focus on keeping up what is working. It seems like you are not taking the overstated exercise calories and consuming them, so I think you'll continue to make progress by doing what you're doing. Stop your workout when you stop actually working out and you'll get more realistic (although still possible somewhat overstated) exercise calorie burn values.4 -
Fitbit calculates all day burn - and can help to track exercise stats. What do you mean by turning it off? Do you take it off? Do you have it linked to MFP? Keep in mind even if it is 100% accurate (best to assume it is off by at least 10% until you have a few months of weight loss data to back it up) the 300-400 burned during exercise also includes what you would have burned if you were not exercising.
But for the question at hand: changes in scale readouts in the course of a day or even a week are more likely water shifting than anything else. Compare weight data points over time to see your overall weight loss trend.0 -
I understand COMPLETELY - I was stuck at the same weight for what seemed like forever (it was 1.5 weeks, I'm a baby) I was consistently at a deficit and doing, at minimum, two work outs a day of 45 minutes... my scale even had the audacity to have me gain a pound after a day that I was at over 1000 calorie deficit (combined food and work out, I'm not starving myself, TRUST ME) and then this weekend, my "whoosh" came and I went from 186 to 183 and things are back on track. It's so easy to get bent out of shape when you weigh daily. And even though I KNOW this..I still weigh daily and still let it freak me out. In the back of my head, I know if I'm eating right and doing the right "all the things" the weight will come off. Just keep the faith and keep doing what you're doing, and maybe if after several weeks there is no change - then maybe it's time to look into what might be up... is some hidden food/supplement sabotaging you? Are you calculating your exercises calories wrong and eating too much back? Good Luck!2
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nanastaci2020 wrote: »Fitbit calculates all day burn - and can help to track exercise stats. What do you mean by turning it off? Do you take it off? Do you have it linked to MFP? Keep in mind even if it is 100% accurate (best to assume it is off by at least 10% until you have a few months of weight loss data to back it up) the 300-400 burned during exercise also includes what you would have burned if you were not exercising.
But for the question at hand: changes in scale readouts in the course of a day or even a week are more likely water shifting than anything else. Compare weight data points over time to see your overall weight loss trend.
Turning off meaning like I turn off the work out setting on my fitbit. (I don't have it connected to my Fitnesspal) I hope that make sense because I know there's different fitbits. Mine is the old fitbit2.1 -
AKTipsyCat wrote: »I understand COMPLETELY - I was stuck at the same weight for what seemed like forever (it was 1.5 weeks, I'm a baby) I was consistently at a deficit and doing, at minimum, two work outs a day of 45 minutes... my scale even had the audacity to have me gain a pound after a day that I was at over 1000 calorie deficit (combined food and work out, I'm not starving myself, TRUST ME) and then this weekend, my "whoosh" came and I went from 186 to 183 and things are back on track. It's so easy to get bent out of shape when you weigh daily. And even though I KNOW this..I still weigh daily and still let it freak me out. In the back of my head, I know if I'm eating right and doing the right "all the things" the weight will come off. Just keep the faith and keep doing what you're doing, and maybe if after several weeks there is no change - then maybe it's time to look into what might be up... is some hidden food/supplement sabotaging you? Are you calculating your exercises calories wrong and eating too much back? Good Luck!
Yeah it is frustrating...I know I'm right on track but yet I am obsessing over the number on the scale which I know isn't good. I'm definitely not over eating I got a food scale so I am measuring everything...logging all my food and drinks I put into my mouth (well I mainly drink water have a coke zero now and then and two teas a day with one sugar. I don't drink juice anymore ). I should add once to twice a week I might let my calorie intact go close to my maintenance calories but that's because i enjoy some junk ...I just try not to go over board. Trying to have a good balance.
As far as I knew I was using my fitbit2 correctly but finding out I'm not cause I don't turn off my work out setting until my heart rate goes back to normal. I thought as long as my heart is still up in fat burning rates I should consider the estimate. My heart rate does go back down pretty quick so its not like calorie estimate would be that off. I usually burn 300-500 calories..
Thank you, good luck to you too!
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Are you using a weight trending app? I find it reassuring to see the weight trend beyond the fluctuations. I use Libra for Android, for iOS there's Happy Scale.1
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XoXashleighXoX wrote: »XoXashleighXoX wrote: »Ok so during my period i was 158 pounds to almost 159 pounds(sept 23-september 27). September 29th went down to 157. I work out 4-5 days a week. I have been feeling sore all over for few days and it's not letting up. It's not extreme just alittle stiff and sore all over more so in the mornings. I seem to be staying at 158 pounds last 2 days. So i went up a pound and there is no way its fat. I have been keeping myself at a deficiency , eating pretty healthy(eat put once to twice a week but stay in my calorie limit) My calorie deficit should lead to pound to pound and half weight loss by now. I eat 1500-1700 cals and I burn usually 300-400 cals during my workouts (including after burn). I stop my fit bit once I have been relaxing and my heart rate goes down to resting.
How long does water weight stay after a work out ? Are there ways to get rid of it? Could it be muscle? My scale isn't saying I'm gaining fat but I know these scales are just an estimate.
Incorrect usage of Fitbit - totally inflated calorie burn.
Fat ain't fast - gain or loss.
Muscle even slower.
Not muscle.
How do you use the fitbit then ? I have a fitbit 2 so quite old. And I have also heard of others not turning off the work out until heart returns to normal? ....I'm curious how you use it if I'm using it wrong ? I want to use it properly 🤔
Start and stop a workout on the device when you start and stop a workout - not when your HR lowers to some level.
Simple as that.
May leave it on for 1-2 extra min after you have stopped the workout, so you have a log of your HRRecovery speed - which is good indication of fitness improvement. Then you can look and compare workout HR graphs down the road.
If you had a really good workout, it could take a long long time for HR to lower to prior resting level - and the whole time it's elevated it has nothing to do with burning extra calories.
The extra calories used to beat the heart a tad faster is nothing compared to what the muscles use when actually being used. Leaving Fitbit doing a per sec logging and estimating calorie burn per HR-based calculations is way overestimating that energy use.
And then to specific usage.
HR-based calculations for calorie burn (it's not a measurement of calories burned, it's totally a calculation to estimate what it may be) are ONLY a best case scenario (and caveats even then) for steady-state aerobic exercise, so same HR for long periods of time.
Anaerobic (lifting, sprints) is opposite that, intervals (lifting, many workouts) with HR up and down is opposite that.
Inflated calorie burn.
Now, how bad is inflated to the scheme of things?
If this is 15 min a day 3 x weekly, and you are otherwise very active daily or do other steady-state aerobic - no big whoop.
If this is 60 min or longer 5-6 x week, and you are otherwise sedentary in daily activities - now it could start to matter for the inflated calorie burn.
The farther you are from best use scenario the more inflated calories burn, and the more exercise done with little daily activity the more it matters.
For lifting, you can start/stop a workout on Fitbit, and if you do it frequently, manually log a workout later for same time/duration called Weight Lifting, let Fitbit give a calorie burn figure - that'll overwrite the prior bad estimate.
Then again - it sounds like none of that data for workouts is being accounted for to change your eating level anyway since not synced to MFP - is that right?
Curious how long and what is the workout done when you see 500 cal burned?3 -
XoXashleighXoX wrote: »XoXashleighXoX wrote: »Ok so during my period i was 158 pounds to almost 159 pounds(sept 23-september 27). September 29th went down to 157. I work out 4-5 days a week. I have been feeling sore all over for few days and it's not letting up. It's not extreme just alittle stiff and sore all over more so in the mornings. I seem to be staying at 158 pounds last 2 days. So i went up a pound and there is no way its fat. I have been keeping myself at a deficiency , eating pretty healthy(eat put once to twice a week but stay in my calorie limit) My calorie deficit should lead to pound to pound and half weight loss by now. I eat 1500-1700 cals and I burn usually 300-400 cals during my workouts (including after burn). I stop my fit bit once I have been relaxing and my heart rate goes down to resting.
How long does water weight stay after a work out ? Are there ways to get rid of it? Could it be muscle? My scale isn't saying I'm gaining fat but I know these scales are just an estimate.
Incorrect usage of Fitbit - totally inflated calorie burn.
Fat ain't fast - gain or loss.
Muscle even slower.
Not muscle.
How do you use the fitbit then ? I have a fitbit 2 so quite old. And I have also heard of others not turning off the work out until heart returns to normal? ....I'm curious how you use it if I'm using it wrong ? I want to use it properly 🤔
Start and stop a workout on the device when you start and stop a workout - not when your HR lowers to some level.
Simple as that.
May leave it on for 1-2 extra min after you have stopped the workout, so you have a log of your HRRecovery speed - which is good indication of fitness improvement. Then you can look and compare workout HR graphs down the road.
If you had a really good workout, it could take a long long time for HR to lower to prior resting level - and the whole time it's elevated it has nothing to do with burning extra calories.
The extra calories used to beat the heart a tad faster is nothing compared to what the muscles use when actually being used. Leaving Fitbit doing a per sec logging and estimating calorie burn per HR-based calculations is way overestimating that energy use.
And then to specific usage.
HR-based calculations for calorie burn (it's not a measurement of calories burned, it's totally a calculation to estimate what it may be) are ONLY a best case scenario (and caveats even then) for steady-state aerobic exercise, so same HR for long periods of time.
Anaerobic (lifting, sprints) is opposite that, intervals (lifting, many workouts) with HR up and down is opposite that.
Inflated calorie burn.
Now, how bad is inflated to the scheme of things?
If this is 15 min a day 3 x weekly, and you are otherwise very active daily or do other steady-state aerobic - no big whoop.
If this is 60 min or longer 5-6 x week, and you are otherwise sedentary in daily activities - now it could start to matter for the inflated calorie burn.
The farther you are from best use scenario the more inflated calories burn, and the more exercise done with little daily activity the more it matters.
For lifting, you can start/stop a workout on Fitbit, and if you do it frequently, manually log a workout later for same time/duration called Weight Lifting, let Fitbit give a calorie burn figure - that'll overwrite the prior bad estimate.
Then again - it sounds like none of that data for workouts is being accounted for to change your eating level anyway since not synced to MFP - is that right?
Curious how long and what is the workout done when you see 500 cal burned?
Oh I see, I do Sydney Cummings programs on youtube..so hiit, Tabatta and strength ..sometimes combined. She does alot of different work outs.Love her videos! I lost 42 pounds with her after my first baby only to have got pregnant with my 2nd last year right when I hit my goal the first time lol so I'm at it again and trying by hardest to get back to 130s.0 -
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XoXashleighXoX wrote: »I don't get .... so whats the point of the fitbit if it's not a good tool? Obviously It's just a estimate of what your burning, I knew that. I'm not doing the estimate myself. I use the "work out" option when I work out and it is a FitBit 2. How am I suppose to use it ?
I have also heard of other people not stopping the workout on the fitbit until heart returns to rest and recording the estimate calorie burn. .so maybe that is wrong? How do you guys use your fitbit?
Imagine you sit on the sofa. You watch a horror movie, your heartrate goes up at some point. You're still just sitting on the sofa, doing nothing. The elevated heartrate doesn't mean you burn more calories. Likewise, Imagine you do a 100m sprint. You're super fit. Your heartrate goes up, quickly comes down again. You do the same when you're super unfit. It takes a long time before your heartrate comes down. The calorie burn for both will be the same if you have the same weight. Heartrate doesn't mean calorie burn. Calorie burn means doing something that actually does burn calories.
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XoXashleighXoX wrote: »Ok so during my period i was 158 pounds to almost 159 pounds(sept 23-september 27). September 29th went down to 157. I work out 4-5 days a week. I have been feeling sore all over for few days and it's not letting up. It's not extreme just alittle stiff and sore all over more so in the mornings. I seem to be staying at 158 pounds last 2 days. So i went up a pound and there is no way its fat. I have been keeping myself at a deficiency , eating pretty healthy(eat put once to twice a week but stay in my calorie limit) My calorie deficit should lead to pound to pound and half weight loss by now. I eat 1500-1700 cals and I burn usually 300-400 cals during my workouts (including after burn). I stop my fit bit once I have been relaxing and my heart rate goes down to resting.
How long does water weight stay after a work out ? Are there ways to get rid of it? Could it be muscle? My scale isn't saying I'm gaining fat but I know these scales are just an estimate.
Water weight is considered muscle mass for all intense and purposes, so no you didn't gain fat over night.0 -
Perhaps you meant Lean Body Mass (LBM) which people incorrectly think is only muscle, but is rather everything not Fat Mass (FM) actually, which includes water weight.
So LBM includes water weight.
And muscle weight.
And bones.
And other fluids.
And ligaments.2 -
XoXashleighXoX wrote: »nanastaci2020 wrote: »Fitbit calculates all day burn - and can help to track exercise stats. What do you mean by turning it off? Do you take it off? Do you have it linked to MFP? Keep in mind even if it is 100% accurate (best to assume it is off by at least 10% until you have a few months of weight loss data to back it up) the 300-400 burned during exercise also includes what you would have burned if you were not exercising.
But for the question at hand: changes in scale readouts in the course of a day or even a week are more likely water shifting than anything else. Compare weight data points over time to see your overall weight loss trend.
Turning off meaning like I turn off the work out setting on my fitbit. (I don't have it connected to my Fitnesspal) I hope that make sense because I know there's different fitbits. Mine is the old fitbit2.
I have a fitbit charge 2. I strongly recommend connecting it to MFP so then you don't need to worry about adding in your exercise separately. Although I would set up the weight loss section on fitbit to have the same goal loss as on MFP (eg. to lose 1lb a week), I think it's fixed now, but certainly at one point if they weren't the same then it did funky things, so I always set them to be the same. However, I've had my fitbit linked to my MFP for years now and it's just so much easier than needing to add in exercise separately.
The way fitbits work is that they estimate the amount of calories you burn during the time that you are doing a certain activity. It counts the calories which you get from just being alive during the time that you did the exercise as well as the extra calories you get. So if you turned your fitbit on a workout and then went to bed (leaving the workout running), then in the morning when you realise and turn it off again it will say congratulations you burnt ~500kcals for that workout, good job. But that's just the calories you've burnt by being alive during the night. This is why it's problematic if you wait a bit and then stop your workout because you'll actually be double counting the calories (because MFP is set up to take the "just being alive" calorie burn into account). This is one of the reasons that people tend to say that fitbits and similar over estimate calorie burn because it's not actually showing what most people ~think~ it's showing. They ~think~ it's showing how much extra calories they've burnt, but it's not extra, it's total.
Edit: I'm also going to say that a fitbit isn't 100% accurate whatever. It's a tool to estimate calorie burn and it's not too bad, but it's better at some things than others. Running, walking and cycling it's pretty good at estimating burn. Weights and HIIT less so. But the thing to remember is that it is only a tool. The best way of working out how much it works for you is by sitting down, calculating what your weight loss "should" be according to the numbers in your fitbit/food logging. And then working out how much you're actually losing. I did this exercise once and discovered that it's estimates combined with my logging style is pretty much spot on. But this will vary, and I do sport that I cannot wear my fitbit for and have to estimate calorie burn separately. So it's very individual in how much it is correct. With this I know that I can eat back those extra calories I get from exercising, but if yours comes out that you're looking at it over estimates your daily calories by around 100kcals a day (for example), then it's just something you need to mentally adjust for.0
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