why am i gaining weight?

What happened before 2 weeks ago - you ate more ? exercised less ? gained / lost ? How tall are you.

Are you eating a lot of sodium? Processed foods? Do you measure and weigh your foods and drink to ensure you track the proper amount? Do you double check the nutrional information from the database to what you are eating (a lot of entries are wrong). Do you have a heart rate monitor that you use to get your calories burned? If you don't and are eating your exercise calories this website estimates too high.

make sure you are logging everything accurately as 1200 is not alot of food and you shouldn't be gaining 7lb in a fortnight.

do you eat processed foods and meals because that can cause you to retain water (alot of sodium). If you do I recommend drinking more than 8 glasses a day.

I wouldn't recommend stopping the weights, because all that'll do is cause you to lose muscle mass than before. When on a calorie deficient diet you can't really build muscle.

You didn't mention your starting weight, and please don't since you can use this info to think over what you are doing.

If you eat processed food, you get a lot of salt. Read the labels and limit your total salt intake. Salt makes you retain water.

MFP lets you track different nutrients and see your goal, what you have used, and have you have left or gone over. Plan your meals so that at the end of the day, you have fats, carbs, sugar, and salt left over. One week I expected to lose almost 3 lbs based on my calorie deficit, but I gained 1.6 lbs. After talking to the head personal trainer at the gym, I started monitoring my sugars and started losing weight again. I was sick last week, missed working out 4 days but still had a calorie deficit to lose 1.25 lbs. I gained 2.2 lbs. Where did I go wrong, when I don't exercise, I actually eat more and had too many fats and sugars.
Today I had a good workout of 30 minutes of stretching, 60 minutes of heavy weight lifting, 20 minutes of light weight lifting, 70 minutes on a treadmill, and 21 minutes of total walking for cool downs.

If you don't do strength training, you can expect to lose muscle mass. Muscle is what burns your calories!!!! Since you have bought a heart rate monitor, consider buying a body fat monitor; mine was about $30 on amazon.com with free shipping. Body fat percentage is a better indicator of a healthy weight instead of just looking at the total pounds. Consider focusing on losing fat not muscle. One pound of muscle burns approx 50 calories a day. Add 10 pounds of muscle to torch 500 calories a day times 7 days = 3,500 calories which is equal to a pound of fat. My body fat % is down 2 points from March and 10 points from last summer.

Another good indicator of success is the lose of inches. I only measure my waist, and have lost almost 5 inches since I started MFP in March 2012 and almost 9 inches since last summer.

Sadly, there is much more to this than calories eaten minus calories burned. If it were that simple, I would probably have another 10 lbs lost. I now try to eat close to my Basic Metabolic Need which is just under 10 calories per pound of body weight. I have tossed out the idea of cheat days. I try to eat what my body needs and create my calorie deficit from exercise.

I have been much more successful in my efforts using MFP to do portion control, monitor salt, sugar, carbs, fats, and ensure that I also have enough protein to replenish/repair muscles when strength training. The other benefits are getting off all my meds but one and intend to get off that last one.

A few days ago, I read a post where a person thought that people saying what worked for them was bullying. I disagree!! If you don't like what you are reading, move onto to the next post/reply. I believe that the vast majority of us are simply sharing what is working for us. You can try the things we do or ignore. If someone posts to only eat vegetables, I will just move on because I love my meat, but have cut my intake of meat by more than half and eat lean meat.

Getting frustrated is easy. Just hang in there and keep working on it because you can succeed!! We are all similar and different. What works for one person may need to be tweaked to work for another person. A temperature of 98.6 and the nurse and doctor tell me its right where it needs to be NORMAL. I tell them I'm sick because that is 1.2 to 1.4 above my NORMAL. Take everything you read with the proverbial grain of salt because very little written by all of us is absolute.

Have a great day.

You should lift 2 to 3 times a week. And decently sized weights. Should FEEL it.

Keep in mind that as you use your muscle, they will need more energy supplies, so the body will store more in them, which will also cause more water retention.

As well, fluctuations in sodium greatly change my scale weight. If I get 2500mg of sodium on Wednesday, I weight 2 pounds more on Thursday than if I had gotten 500mg of sodium.

Make sure you are getting plenty of protein though. about 25% +/- 5%. It is vital.

You may be gaining muscle from the weights, which is good. Muscle weighs more than fat so it can look like a plateau sometimes when you are managing to "convert" fat to muscle. This happened to me last week (I'd been doing some strength stuff) and I was so discouraged until I did my measurements and realized I had dropped a size and a half on my "plateau".

No just No.... Not 7 pounds in such a short of time... SHHHHHH!!!! You people telling people they are gaining 5-7lbs of muscle in such a short time is not helping at all!



OP.. You aren't drinking enough water if you are only drinking 4 cups of water daily. Especially on days you are working out.

Working out, especially weights will cause you to take on water to repair the muscles. Also remember your body holds onto water when you eat carbs as well. It's not a large amount but 1 gallon of water is 8lbs so think of that!

People, such as myself, are suggestion a good portion, if not all, her weight gain is in water. Not pure muscle mass (as it is incredibly difficult, near impossible to gain significant muscle mass in a catabolic state).

Additionally, 2 to 3 times weight lifting a week is quite sufficient and usually recommended for weight loss. She should never work out any sore muscle groups. She could spread her weight lifting time out by doing upper body and then lower body, thus being able to do even 4 days at the gym if she felt the need, but it'd be insignificant for her goals.

A female in a catabolic state should not expect to gain any significant size differences in her muscle. Her weight lifting goals should be to maximize the efficiency of existing muscle and to encourage the body to not degrade the muscle in search for protein and calories.

And remember, significant weight resistance. Not the little 5lb ones. You should really push yourself.

Try measuring yourself too. I started to put weight on when I increased my exercise/weights but I was still losing inches round my waist. If you've upped your weights etc then this could lead to a temporary increase in weight as you build muscle.

Dan to the rescue!