weight loss till today

selig0730

I have lost 62 pounds since October and 58 on MFP since November 2011, every week i lose a little at a time or stay the same, this week i went to the gym 4 times, i didn't really eat my workout calories and then yesterday i did a 5k and walked around the park for about 5 or 6 hours. Today i got on the scale and i gained 4 pounds. im not going to give up but its still frustrated to gain 4 pounds in 1 week and yet burning the most i have ever burn in one week (3800 calories). My friends list say it may be water or muscle gain but i haven't done anything different over the past 4 weeks then maybe go to the gym 1 time more a week and did a 5k yesterday so im a little confused.

TrinaTW

Sounds like maybe you aren't eating enough. You burned a ton of calories with your workouts and your body needs more healthy foods to keep up. I've also struggled with that. Sometimes its hard finding a good balance with your workouts and proper calories to consume. Keep at it!!!

cordianet

Let's think about this logically. In order to gain 4 pounds in one week, you would have had to eat 14,000 calories more this week than your TDEE. (It takes 3500 excess calories to gain one pound.) Since you probably only consumed about 14,000 calories TOTAL all week, I think we can rule out this being fat weight. I'm guessing that it's primarily water, with some possible muscle due to the increased training. Working out does cause your body to retain more water, so the fact that you ran a 5k the day before is pretty telling. I'd lay money that this will stabilize soon and you'll see that it was not fat.

For future reference, I'd recommend checking your body fat percentage. This will be a better indicator of how you're really doing.

cordianet

I should add that you hit the sodium pretty hard yesterday and that will also cause you to retain water. Give it a few days and check again. You'll probably be back to normal.