Question for those who added calories and lost weight

Minoesh

*sigh* It doesn't seem to be working. Hoped on the scale this morning and I'm up 2 1/2 pounds. I just finished TOM so that shouldn't be a factor. I worked out over 2 hours yesterday. I ate a lot, but I'm just trying to hit the numbers I was given. I'm so confused and Upset. I really thought this was what I was doing wrong. :-((((

You did not gain 2 1/2 pounds of fat in a day. In order to do that you would have had to eat about 8000 Extra calories.

When you workout, you actually cause microscopic damage to the body. Extra calories (in the form of protein mostly) are then used to repair that damage, so they are shuttled to the muscle. When you do long, strenuous cardio sessions, you also burn lots of glycogen in addition to fat. The body in trying to prepare for the next time you do that, will store more glycogen in the muscles you worked hard. Both of those processes either require extra water to store stuff in or produce extra water from the chemical reactions. The actual process of fat burning also produces extra water as a by-product. This is why I tell my clients to trust me and hide their scale for at least a month. And after it's worked I'll gladly accept the flowers and hugs of gratitude.

As for your question about how many calories people are consuming, I am between 2000-2300 on days I don't exercise and up to 3000 on days I do exercise and I don't count the fitness classes I teach or exercises I teach my clients as exercise, only my own personal workouts. I don't focus on the scale, but more on body fat %. Yes, because of the amount of exercise I do, I weigh more then the average woman my height. I'm 5'6" and 190 pounds. But I'm also 19% body fat and in a size 8. When you do a lot of exercise like we do, sometimes the scale isn't the best indicator of health or fitness. Relax. Fat loss happens when you don't stress about it.

This is such a great post, very encouraging - thank you so much!

katt742

It only took about a week for me. I was stuck at my weight for months. I upped my goals from 1200 to 1500 and a week later I had lost 2 pounds.

graysmom2005

I'm also wondering about water consumption. I'm drinking TONS AND TONS of water. Much more than I was. I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the weight going/staying up?

JHR323

I have experienced this as well. I was doing WW for a long while. When they switched to the new program, I stopped losing and started maintaining. I then started to eat fewer points than what they gave me due to this. As a result, I did lose weight, but I believe I was also eating too few calories. I don't know how many calories I was actually eating at the time. When I switched to MFP and started tracking calories and eating more, I did gain. At most it was 3.5 pounds, but saw 2 lbs up for the longest amount of time. It took me about a month to see it go back down. Which just happened today I don't know if it was a fluke, but only time will tell. I also changed my WO routine during this time to a more intense program (from P90 to Turbo Fire), and was seeing results in my body, but not on the scale. Hopefully, the scale is now catching up with the changes I've been seeing!

LauraMarie37

I'm also wondering about water consumption. I'm drinking TONS AND TONS of water. Much more than I was. I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the weight going/staying up?

If you are doing a higher protein diet than normal (it sounds like you are based on what you said), you need water to process that extra protein.

I think, based on everything you said, try the extra calories and extra water for a month. Since you workout so intensely, your body may need more time to adjust. If your weight consistently goes up and up, then you can abandon it, but if it just goes up and hovers for a while, continue and see if your body slowly trusting that there will be enough calories.

I also noticed that when I started eating more, my performance shot up - I gained muscle more quickly and was able to break through some fitness barriers I had struggled with for a long time.

graysmom2005

BUMP. It's still there! Grrrrrrrrrrrr!:sad:

Mommyof3texans

When I decided to bump up my calories, I planned to do it gradually and give it a few weeks before making any other changes. I went from 1200 to 1300 and that worked so I have stayed with that for now. I didn't gain at first since I was still at a deficit and my body needed the extra fuel.

graysmom2005

I have bumped it up quite a bit, but only because I was at SUCH a deficit. Like this morning I taught Pump and Spin. I even paused my watch in between classes (about 15 min) and still burned over 800 calories. I'm trying to eat those calories back...or at least 80% as I plateaued for over a year eating probably around 1200 calories most days, and then working out 2 hours. I'm going to give it a couple more weeks. If the scales stays up, I'll have to totally reevaluate.