Gaining despite eating within calories and exercising?

NZblue

I've been at this for a couple of years, now. I originally started as a fitness thing, then progressed to trying to lose weight for our wedding. Nothing happened.
And now I've put on ten kgs since starting.

Has anyone else had this problem?

I eat within calories, and make overall pretty healthy choices. I eat small portions and exercise daily.
Currently, I'm doing the shred and zumba on a daily basis.

Does anyone else gain, despite all efforts to lose weight?

I know some of it is muscle, but I'm struggling to believe that 10kg of muscle gain is to blame..... I don't look more muscly or anything.

kateroot

Are you weighing and measuring all your food? Sometimes we overestimate portions, and even a little bit can add up to hundreds of extra calories a day. I use a food scale and measure everything when I hit a plateau, so I can be pretty sure about my calorie intake. Are you doing any strength training? I know 30 day shred has *some* strength training, but incorporating heavy lifting really helped me shed fat. Maybe see a personal trainer about strength training, if it's something that interests you.

DancingVe

Have you spoken to your doctor about this? If you are doing everything correctly, perhaps there is a medical reason.

CMmrsfloyd

1 - Are you absolutely positive of the accuracy of your food logging? For example 2 tbsp (32g) of peanut butter is usually around 200 calories, but that's 2 *level* tbsp of peanut butter, if those tbsp are actually heaping instead of level it can add up to nearly 400 instead of 200. 1/4 cup (28g) of certain types of shredded cheese may be 80 calories but if you're packing it into that 1/4 cup you may end up with more than 28g and therefore more than 80 calories. And so on and so forth. LOL I measure and weigh everything that I consume at home for accuracy. Even produce.

2 - If the exercise is newly more intense than usual, you might be holding onto water weight. Likewise if your sodium intake is high, you may be retaining fluid from that as well.

3 - Any chance you have any issues such as PCOS or any thyroid or metabolism issues? Those things can make it harder to lose weight even when you are doing everything that is recommended for the average person. Sometimes there are very particular changes that have to be made for people with certain conditions to see any real progress.

4 - You're going to get a lot of very fit people telling you that you did not gain 10kg of muscle if you are really eating within your maintenance calories or at a deficit. It takes additional energy to actually put on muscle weight. Even if you did build a little new muscle as a beginner, you'd probably have been dropping some fat at the same time and the scale would not have moved up due to the muscle. As long as you are really within your calories as you feel you are. I took before& after measurements from doing the Shred and plugged them into a couple of bodyfat calculators online - one said that I lost a lot of fat and a little muscle and one said I lost fat and actually gained a very small amount of muscle (I think I gained a tiny bit of new muscle as a beginner but lost fat in the process as well, as the second calculator indicated though perhaps not to the extent that it indicated) - regardless, the scale did go down 5 lbs during the 37 days it took me to complete it b/c I was eating at a caloric deficit.

Anyway, I would say start getting REALLY precise about your logging - measure and weigh everything, see if you can be absolutely sure that you have been eating the portions you thought were correct. My idea of a serving of shredded cheese and what the scale REALLY tells me is a serving of shredded cheese are quite different. LOL Take a day or two of rest from the exercise and lower your sodium intake and drink lots of water, then re-weigh to see if some water weight disappears. And if all else fails, see your dr. for a quick once-over to make sure there's nothing standing in your way. Good luck.

P.S. Also take measurements on various points of your body so you can compare them after a few weeks - sometimes we see results in our measurements before we see results on the scale, probably has a lot to do with that dang water retention from exercise. :-)

NZblue

I looked back over my diary for the last couple of months. It's not portion size. It's the little nibble here and there.

I'm pretty anal about portion size. But it's those little bites of this and that (which I track) that are the culprit! I'm gonna keep a reign on those!

Thanks for the suggestions!