the harder I work out the more I weigh

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stargazgal
stargazgal Posts: 93 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I am sooooo frustrated...I have been working out pretty steady since January (2 months after I quit smoking) but have always been a pretty yo yo exerciser and tend to work out all winter and then stop in summer :) This summer I kept at it...I have remained steady at 179, but then mid October my weight started to creep up so I honed my diet and started to work out again with my trainer. I now work out 3x week at lunch (metabolic fusion circuits very hard and intense for 40 min)...plus on Tue and thur i do a hard aeroci type of workout. This scchedule started 3 weeks ago and I was weighing in at 185. Now after 2 weeks of eating right and exercising I have gained 4 and weighed in yesterday at 189...what the heck gives!!!??? All this while on weight watchers (I didnt even use all my weekly flex points). Anyhow...I joined here 2 days ago so I am going to measure and count calories...but I am so frustrated. Ever since I have quit smoking I have not lost any weight....Prior to quitting I was only 172...now after hard efforts to work out and eat right...I am 189...grouwllllll!!!!!!!!
:(
feeling a bit down about this...because it is not through lack of trying hard

Replies

  • mocosa74
    mocosa74 Posts: 42
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    I was a member of WW a few years ago and I remember my trainer telling me to eat all your flex points, plus all your activity points...especially if you are working out as hard as you are. I mean, it does make some sense..your body needs fuel to do what we just do normally..so it would need extra for any workouts we do...make sense??
  • suchaprettiface
    suchaprettiface Posts: 10 Member
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    Hang in there. I have a lot more weight to lose than do you, and I have been working out steadily since July 2010 and have lost very little weight, but gained muscle and lost inches. Is your trainer measuring your body? Are they using a device that calculates BMI electronically, which will also calculate how much lean muscle you have gained through exercise. If your clothes are fitting differently, yet you are not losing weight, it could be that you are gaining muscle.

    Hang in there. Just keep working toward a healthier you. No matter what, monitoring your food and exercise is going to have a positive impact on your overall health and well-being. Keep up the great work and stick to it! Best of luck!
  • hpsnickers1
    hpsnickers1 Posts: 2,783 Member
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    It could be that you are working out too hard. To burn fat you want target heart rate to be about 60%-70% your normal heart rate. (Multiply your heart rate by .60 or .70 to find out where you want it at. That is 'moderate- intensity'. You should be able to hold a conversation.)

    Muscle is heavier than fat. If you're doing a lot of strength training and using heavy weights you are building muscle but losing fat at the same time. Like another post says - go by how your clothes fit, not the numbers on the scale.

    Check out exercise.about.com. (The address below is actually for walking for fat burning but I'm sure it can apply to any aerobic exercise)

    Here is the address to something I found today: http://walking.about.com/od/weightloss/a/Walking-In-The-Fat-Burning-Zone.htm
  • esorcel
    esorcel Posts: 459 Member
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    I struggled with the same problem for a long time. One summer I exercised on most days faithfully and never lost any weight, but when I stopped because I was going to school full-time, and working full-time, I quickly lost 10 pounds. This time around, I stopped exercising to see if the weight will come off, but it wouldn't. I think it is a matter of calorie counting. I have been losing weight at a faster pace since I have joined this website (5 pounds in one month, as apposed to 11 in 8 months before).

    Look at it this way, exercising improves your health, stamina, and endurance, while making it look like you have lost more weight than you did. It's the eating part that will help you lose weight faster, so carefully observe your dietary pattern. Good luck!
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
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    when you workout hard your muscles retain water, so it is just water weight, be assured you are burning calories and probably losing fat, the scale does not tell you everything.
  • soze
    soze Posts: 604 Member
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    Eventually all that new muscle will consume the extra weight and you will drop the weight like an anvil.
  • MisdemeanorM
    MisdemeanorM Posts: 3,493 Member
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    you also might not be eating enough depending on what your WW goal is. You mentioned you are not eating all your flex points. If you are under eating plus working out hard, don't expect to see any long term weight loss. Try upping your calories. You might see a small short gain but stick with it like a month and see what happens. The more you work out the more you have to eat if you are already on a "diet".
  • batty5
    batty5 Posts: 193
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    Other posts are probably more qualified than mine but nevertheless I want to offer my support because the same thing happened to me, then eventually I kept losing & gaining the same few pounds. At last after months I took the advice seen here to EAT MORE &, more importantly I think to eat often. Now my loss is slow, usually 1lb per week but the inches are fading away with a total of 15" gone, 4 from top & bottom & 7 from my waist. I eat 3 meals & 2 snacks although rarely eat ll my exercise calories but I do if I feel I need them. I too gave up smoking nearly 2 years ago & coupled with unsuccessful back surgery weigh loss is not easy but I am determined to be FAB at 60, just 4 months away. IF I CAN DO IT YOU CERTAINLY CAN. Good luck & hang in there.
  • stargazgal
    stargazgal Posts: 93 Member
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    Thanks all for you advice!! I must admit...the only time in the past 11 months that I lost 4 lbs in a week was when i was on vacation and eating a bit more (healthy but more) and not working out so hard...but walking etc etc. So I will try to follow this program which tells me to eat approx 1600 cals for weight loss (on days i exercise it says to eat 2100ish which is wwwaaaay to much). I will also stick to my 3 days of very hard work outs and try to mix in some walking on my off days and yoga 3x weekly. In fact today I did a 45 min walk and 1 hr of yoga instead of an hour of intense aerobics (although I must admit...I really didnt feel challenged or that I had burned any calories)..hehe I will get used to it!
    Thanks again for all your opinions.
  • MisdemeanorM
    MisdemeanorM Posts: 3,493 Member
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    I will try to follow this program which tells me to eat approx 1600 cals for weight loss (on days i exercise it says to eat 2100ish which is wwwaaaay to much). I will also stick to my 3 days of very hard work outs and try to mix in some walking on my off days and yoga 3x weekly. In fact today I did a 45 min walk and 1 hr of yoga instead of an hour of intense aerobics (although I must admit...I really didnt feel challenged or that I had burned any calories)..hehe I will get used to it!

    I'm 5'8.5 and 154 and set to maintenance. So my daily goal is 1990 plus I eat most of my exercise calories. So I usually eat between 1800 and 2500 a day and it's not too hard, even w/out big empty cals filling in the gaps. I eat whole eggs and PB (but not together!) The funny thing is that I LOST 3 or so lbs within weeks of bumping up to maintenance from a 400 cal deficit + exec cals.

    Also re Yoga etc. You aren't burning a lot of cals, but you are toning and making your body work better for those hard cardio exercises. Note though, when doing low cardio workouts like these, when you log your burnt calories, be sure to subtract what you would have burned anyway. For me, if I had not gone to Yoga I would have burned about 100, if I go to yoga between 250 and 300. So I subtract 100 before I log it. (I do NOT subtract for hard cardio workouts because I know for those it jumpstarts my metabolism for at least another hour which I consider makes up for the duplicate count)
  • stargazgal
    stargazgal Posts: 93 Member
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    I will try to follow this program which tells me to eat approx 1600 cals for weight loss (on days i exercise it says to eat 2100ish which is wwwaaaay to much). I will also stick to my 3 days of very hard work outs and try to mix in some walking on my off days and yoga 3x weekly. In fact today I did a 45 min walk and 1 hr of yoga instead of an hour of intense aerobics (although I must admit...I really didnt feel challenged or that I had burned any calories)..hehe I will get used to it!

    I'm 5'8.5 and 154 and set to maintenance. So my daily goal is 1990 plus I eat most of my exercise calories. So I usually eat between 1800 and 2500 a day and it's not too hard, even w/out big empty cals filling in the gaps. I eat whole eggs and PB (but not together!) The funny thing is that I LOST 3 or so lbs within weeks of bumping up to maintenance from a 400 cal deficit + exec cals.

    Also re Yoga etc. You aren't burning a lot of cals, but you are toning and making your body work better for those hard cardio exercises. Note though, when doing low cardio workouts like these, when you log your burnt calories, be sure to subtract what you would have burned anyway. For me, if I had not gone to Yoga I would have burned about 100, if I go to yoga between 250 and 300. So I subtract 100 before I log it. (I do NOT subtract for hard cardio workouts because I know for those it jumpstarts my metabolism for at least another hour which I consider makes up for the duplicate count)
  • stargazgal
    stargazgal Posts: 93 Member
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    sorry I dont get what you mean about the subtract the 100 etc etc...so you think I shouldn't log my exercise at all and just eeat what I am supposed
  • MisdemeanorM
    MisdemeanorM Posts: 3,493 Member
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    sorry I dont get what you mean about the subtract the 100 etc etc...so you think I shouldn't log my exercise at all and just eeat what I am supposed

    Just meaning. If I sat on the couch for 1 hour I (personally) burn 100 calories. If I do Yoga for an hour my heart rate monitor says I burned 250. BUT, i would have burned 100 already - so I only burned 150 EXTRA. If I log 250 and eat all 250, then I am eating 100 of them twice.

    (But for high cardio workouts though you burn say 500 cals in 1 hour, the following hour as your body gets back to normal, you burn say 200 (I learned this # for myself by resetting my HRM for the following hour after hard cardio). Total that is 500 EXTRA so I just log the full original work out amount and ignore anything extra I burn by bumping up my metabolism for a period following. I only do the "subtract duplicate calories" thing for low cardio workouts which do not create additional calorie burn after I stop working out.)

    Hope that makes sense!

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