GAINING weight, please help.

Weight loss is 80% eating less and 20% exercise.

Set a calorie target and try to stay within it for couple of weeks. If you still gain weight, reduce your target. If you lose weight, you know you are doing something right and continue. Very important to log all your calories, with the right meal portions.

Eat more protein and fats and less carbs to get that feeling of eating right.

Building muscle too fast?
Starvation mode?
Not pooing enough?

I just died laughing at my desk! I LOVE Castle! Thanks for this!!! LOL :laugh:

Are you strength training? If so, increase your reps & lower the weight. You may be building muscle too fast. Make sure you're not starving yourself. Workouts take a lot of calories so make sure you replenish some of them, otherwise your body may be going into starvation mode and hanging onto the fat. The next point is a little awkward but very important. Make sure you are getting enough fiber & water in your diet. Not pooing enough or drinking enough water will make it harder to lose weight. If you are "backed up", try drinking hot green tea with peppermint. It's great for your digestion, just don't drink it every day.

^^^^^LOL Agree!!!!!!!!! :noway:

Your diary still isn't open.

I'm going to go with underestimating your calories as well. If you open your diary though we might be able to point out possible sources of inaccuracies. Make sure you use a scale, not just measuring cups. Include everything. Find the database entries with no asterisk whenever possible because those are the entries that are most accurate. If you're going to have an omelet, instead of finding "omelet" in the database, you log "2 whole egg raw, 100 grams cheddar cheese, 50 grams portabella mushrooms, 1 tsp oil" etc.

Let me make a couple of suggestions.

If it passes your lips it goes in your food diary. More importantly is that it be reasonably accurate in your estimate. That may mean you have to measure some stuff so that you incorporate in your mind what a "serving size" really is. As I discovered that "big bowl" of ice cream is not a serving size...it is 3-5 servings. That little dessert dish that can only hold half a cup of liquid, thats a serving of ice cream.

You can get all the way down to weighing food (I do now, more out of curiosity for maintenance than for weight loss. All of my weight loss was done without weighing portions, just estimating from serving sizes described on packages).

We tend to focus on food and food intake, so let me suggest another tactic...a minimum period of time (per day and per week) for exercise. And I mena working up a sweat and getting the heartrate going type of exercise. A heartrate monitor is good for both strength training where it is hard to estimate energy output from strength training and from some other exercises. For example, the rule of thumb of 100 calories per mile for walking at a relatively brisk pace is not going to be that far off unless you are climbing long steep grades or walking with a weighted pack.

Your heartrate, if you set the monitor up correctly, is a good surrogate for that.

My own experience is that for most walking my energy output per mile is about 20-30% less than the 100 calories/mile. That probably was not true when I first started a few years ago. But my cardiovascular efficiency has improved so much that my resting heartrate is now in the range of 54-58 bpm. And when I am walking with my heartrate monitor on a rate of less than 125 bpm is pretty common. Step up the pace to a little over 4.1 miles per hour and I can get it into the 135-140 range. It takes jogging/running to get into the 150's-160's.

I ran a road race a few weeks ago at an average 155 bpm with an approximate 10:50/mile pace (I say approximate because I stopped for a period of time as well as walked/ran on the Cooper River Bridge in Charleston, SC to take some incredible pictures. Once I cleared the towers and some of the more impressive shots on the bridge, I returned to running all the way to the end of the race).

But when I throw a pack on my back with 30-40 pounds and go trekking up and down hills I can get my heartrate up into th 140 range. And hiking in the steeper foothills and mountains I can get my heartrate back into the 150-160 range. Without that heartrate data, ac ouple of my programs would badly underestimate the output. A couple slightly over estimate the backpacking but not by very much (surprisingly).

You can weigh yourself daily for a couple of months to see what kind of weight pattern you are displaying (variability) but that migt alos drive you crazy. Sometimes it is just easy to weigh once per week (so time, same place, same scale, same clothing (or none at all as I do). Finally, measure yourself. Chest, waist, hips, upper thighs, calves, upper arms and neck no more frequently than once every two weeks and probably best to be about once per month. I pick the last Sunday morning of each month. A half-inch here, a half-inch there doesn't seem like much but it adds up and it may confirm clothes lossening up even if you are not loosing weight.

I did not drop any weight during 2011 (at 190) and yet my waist size dropped by 4 inches and my chest size dropped by at least 2 AND I wasn't logging my food intake (yet). But I was logging my activity level so that I maintained some target activity level throughout each week of the year.

It isn't a race but you will get there if you really choose it for yourself and don't let yourself "off the hook."

OP, when you are calorie counting for weight loss, you have to be consistent...you have to log every day and you absolutely should be weighing and measuring out your portions/servings, etc. To lose 1 Lb per week, you have to maintain a deficit of 500 calories per day...sound like a lot, but it's not...it's a couple handfuls of nuts.

What I'm trying to say is that if you aren't being consistent with your logging and if you don't practice proper portion control (i.e. weighing and measuring) then you're allowing calorie creep to run rampant in your diet. You most likely haven't gained any real fat...body weight fluctuates a good 3-5 Lbs on a daily basis naturally. Most likely you are just maintaining.

In...

...to learn how I, too, can build muscle too fast.

It takes dedication, and a massive amount of andro roids..

Did you breasfeed, and if so are you weaning now or has the production slowed?

I have been working with a personal trainer since January, I have a friend who also goes to the same personal trainer and in her first month she actually gained 6 lbs BUT lost inches... Make sure you take measurements because you may be losing fat and gaining muscle and it might take a while for the scale to reflect any loss but you will likely see it in measurements! Good luck!

I have a problem with people weighing themselves to track their "weight loss" what everyone is TRYING to do is lose BODY FAT. You need to keep your lean mass in order to continue to lose body fat.

If you are losing just WEIGHT this also could be lean muscle mass. The more lean muscle mass that you lose the harder it will be down the line to lose fat because you took away your bodies ability to burn the fat.

You should measure yourself.

.........my bad with the calorie mistake on this thread that I posted earlier and was called out on! Thanks!