Overweight BECAUSE of fitness program?!

I'm sure my body fat percentage has decreased from where I started in January; but in October, I was fit and 130-135 lbs. Now, I'm fit... but 10 lbs heavier. I'm not a body-builder and have no desire to be. I'm not using the scale as my *only* measure of success, I just want my "old" fit body back, not the new version.

But... but... Your old body had 7 more inches on it!

But... but... it didn't! In October, each thigh was a 1/2" smaller, and my waist was 1/2" smaller. So I'm 1 1/2" bigger but 10 lbs. heavier now than I was less than 5 months ago.

Am I really the ONLY one on here that finds that frustrating?

Again, from your OP:

I've lost 7" all over,

I'm not sure how to ask this nicely, but are you just trolling us?

OP, when you get older, you're going to feel like a giant derp for worrying about building a little muscle when you were 29, and even more so if you gain a bit of weight as I have. Any idea what a formerly skinny a** with no muscle looks like when you're 42? Since I don't have any pics of mine, imagine if you filled two plastic grocery bags with jello and hung them out the back of your waistband side by side. The jello just sags and flops around. Sexy cheeks, eh?

Here's the thing... sounds like you are doing good work on the fitness front but I'll tell you what... you haven't put on 4 pounds of muscle in 6 weeks. Newbies to the lifting/exercise gain may be able to put on - at most, and this is with serious effort - 1 lb of muscle a month. People who have been working out or fit before that are probably lucky to put on a 1/2 lb of muscle a month. And again... these stats are for people who train daily, constantly adjust for adaption, and scarf down a huge amount of protein and a caloric excess of 4-500 calories a day.

Now I am not saying you have gained 4 lbs of fat in 6 weeks either... probably a considerable amount of it is water weight or just natural fluctuation in your body weight (i.e. being female... I feel your pain). I worry though when people say things like "muscle weighs more than fat" and "I know it's just muscle" because it is much harder to put on muscle than this sort of folk wisdom would imply. Truth is... if you exercise more you are also - unless you completely ignore your body's needs and wants - going to be eating more and unless you are training an enormous amount or really pushing yourself, you are likely to gain weight during an exercise program! So your original title is not totally off point.

This all goes to say that your expectations and goals when you exercise might need to be re-evaluated. You acknowledged that your HR & blood pressure are vastly improved and that you feel tighter and more toned... this is all awesome news and these are the sorts of things that training will do for you. I say keep it up! These gains vastly outweigh (no pun intended) any moderate fluctuation in your weight.

One final point... everyone is correct in saying that BMI is crap. Two reasons for this - (1) it does not account for fitness or health in any way... just raw body weight. According to BMI charts, I am 'overweight'... I spend 14+ hours a week training (for a goal... not just because I'm crazy) and have less than 17% body fat. (2) the BMI charts were not designed to diagnose people as being overweight... as you can read on the Wiki page (and is discussed in numerous documentaries on the weight loss industry) - "'BMI' provides a simple numeric measure of a person's thickness or thinness, allowing health professionals to discuss overweight and underweight problems more objectively with their patients. However, BMI has become controversial because many people, including physicians, have come to rely on its apparent numerical authority for medical diagnosis, but that was never the BMI's purpose; it is meant to be used as a simple means of classifying sedentary (physically inactive) individuals, or rather, populations, with an average body composition." So basically BMI may be useful if you are sedentary... but not so much if you are active.

^^^This.

I'm also going to interject that BMI is probably a reasonable indicator for the average person. Not the person who's at a very low BF% with a ton of muscle, the body builder, or the professional athlete - but it's likely to be a decent indicator of health for the "average joe/josephina" who is either sedentary or works out on a regular basis (without the expressed purpose of competition/powerlifting/etc).

In your case though, you exercise quite a bit. If you are actually eating in a caloric deficit, you are likely carrying a lot of water weight and glycogen. It's really unlikely to be added muscle. Eventually those things will even out and the scale weight will drop. If you aren't carefully monitoring your food intake (weighing your food for accuracy, logging every bite), you may just be eating more and actually gaining. Doesn't sound like it since you're shrinking.

But for goodness sake, start using bodyfat% as an indicator of progress!! http://www.fat2fittools.com/tools/