Any advice for a someone starting to go to the gym?

sotiriagioulo8747

I've been trying to lose weight for years now never worked and I've joined the gym recently but instead of feeling better I always feel bloated when leaving and I actually just weighed myself and I'm up 1kg ( 2 pounds) is that normal?

xbowhunter

Let you in on a little secret. You don't have to exercise to lose weight.

if your not losing weight your eating too much.

springlering62

If you’re new to exercise and experiencing “that” pain - you know, the duck waddle, the screaming quads, can’t lift your shirt over your head- your body will respond by retaining water.

The pain is caused by micro tears in the muscles. Those micro tears heal, tear again, heal again, eventually making the muscle stronger.

But the first time…..yikes!!

So you know what happens? Your wise body retains water -as it always does when you’re ill or injured or have had surgery- for the purposes of healing. When the healing is done, voila! The extra retained water leaves the body.

Retained water “adds” temporary weight.

People new to weight loss can be over-enthusiastic, hurling themselves into cutting calories or working out harder than they ever have before. They’re surprised when their weight goes up, but this is perfectly normal.

Stick with it. It’ll balance out.

In the meantime, take it slow. Slow loss is best, and gently winding up instead of going whole hog on exercise will be a lot kinder- and give you more likelihood of sticking with it.

nossmf

More specifically, the OP asked if it's normal to weigh more AFTER a workout than BEFORE. The answer is sure, it can happen, and the difference is all about how much water you drank during the workout compared to how much you lost between sweating and breathing harder.

Another fun fact: weighing yourself is not an exact science, and you can get results that make zero sense whatsoever. Such as weighing before using the bathroom, then use the bathroom, yet weigh MORE after eliminating waste.

Do not worry about short-term changes in weight, especially not records taken minutes or hours apart. It's the trend over weeks and months which matter.

springlering62

The scale can make you mental. Don’t let it rule your life.

As @AnnPT77 always says, I try treat the scale like a fun science fair project. Sometimes it’s more like an armed and angry Dalek, but for the most part, it’s “hmmm well that’s interesting”.

AnnPT77

Ayup to both posts above. And yes, you're normal.

One scale reading is just a momentary snapshot of my body's temporary relationship with gravity, and one seen through the lens of an imprecise device at that.

There's one quibble I'd have with Springerling62, though: In my view, one need not be extremely sore post workout in order to have some muscle-repair-related water retention that will - for a while- mask continuing fat loss on the scale. Personally, I'm not even convinced that one needs to be sore at all, necessarily. It just needs to be (probably) an activity that's either new, or a bit more challenging than what our body has recently become accustomed to.

Every person's body can behave a little differently. Watch yours over a period of time (ideally without freaking out ) and you'll learn your personal patterns. That's a science fair experiment, too. Also useful and empowering. Bodies are weird, but smart.

Hour to hour or day to day multi-pound/kilo scale-weight change is not about fat gain/loss, and - unless we're talking trends over many weeks to months or more - it's certainly not about muscle gain/loss (unless the person has a serious muscle wasting health condition).

It's water fluctuations or waste in the digestive tract on route to the toilet - high, high odds. In my world, that makes it not worth a second's worry. (Did you know that stress can increase water retention, too? No lie.)

I'm just going to drop this here, strongly suggest you read it, @sotiriagioulo8747 - especially the article linked in the first post of the thread:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10683010/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-fluctuations/p1

I think it might help you feel better.

Best wishes!