Toning and Cardio

jenn_miles

So i have been losing weight for months now and doing well. I always focused on Cardio and never did any strength training. I recently started strength training and now I have hit a plateu, I am barely maintaining my weight:ohwell: Any suggestions? I was wondering if anyone else had this trouble?

CrystalT

If you just started strength training, you are probably gaining muscle weight. That's a good thing! The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn. Have you been taking any other measurements? You are probably still losing inches.

Also, are you still doing your cardio? Strength training doesn't burn nearly as many calories as cardio. If you have replaced the cardio instead of adding on top of it, that could the problem.

SHBoss1673

There's a lot of things involved with changing a routine to involve strength training, some of which will involve weight gain, almost none of which are a bad thing. First, in the first few weeks, you'll encorporate more muscle fibers in your work, this increases the amount of glycogen being stored near the muscle sites, glycogen is a relatively heavy substance and can make it seem like you have plateaued, you haven't, it's just a chemical change in your body, once your body becomes used to it, you will again begin to lose. Also, more muscle use induces more water retention, this goes along with the glycogen, but it still factors in. Lastly, although I doubt this one, is that you could, possibly have gained muscle mass, if you are at a calorie deficit, I doubt that would be noticable (it's very difficult to gain muscle mass while at a caloric deficit), more likely you would gain some definition, and maybe a small amount of localized fat redistribution in the areas that are being used more frequently, which makes it LOOK like your muscle are more well defined.

In any case, give it a month or so, it should even out, and then you will probably see the weight loss go back to your normal amount, although with such a small amount to lose for you, you won't see very large weekly losses, I would focus more on body fat % than weight loss at this point IMHO.