Need some positive motivation and your thoughts

leojsivad · July 2015

Good afternoon,

First off some stats for reference. I'm 6'5" and 232 pounds. Workout schedule is weight training 3 days per week, HIIT training 3 days per week. Light Yoga twice per week.

I have been exercising off and on for over 4 years, however I really started hitting the gym hard at the beginning of June. I work out(if I include mild Yoga) 8 times per week. 6 days per week and Sunday being my rest day.

For the most part, I would say 90% of the time, I eat clean, you can look at my diary. However, I lost weight down to 226, and then I started gaining weight back to 232!

Here are my questions, could this be muscle mass weight I'm gaining? I feel a bit discouraged, because my goal weight is 210, and if I'm exercising 8 times per week AND eating clean, shouldn't I be losing weight faster? I know logically that the scale shouldn't matter, but it bugs me. Other people just EAT BETTER and lose weight, and here I am busting my butt at the gym and the kitchen with few results.

Thank you for any thoughts/kind words.

ThatBassoonChick · July 2015

From my experience, you often gain a little weight before you start losing anything substantial. Since you're doing a combination of eating right and exercising, you are probably (and should be) taking in more calories than you would if you weren't exercising. Bear that in mind. Also it could be muscle mass you're gaining. Muscles take up less space because they are more dense than fat so you'll appear smaller (and more muscular) even though you may weigh more.

That's one of the reasons I don't always go by the scale. I'm 5'1" and currently weight 150, my goal being 140. However, I know that i have very muscular legs from years of distance running as well as larger boobs which adds probably a good 10 pounds to my weight (in boobs alone). I pay more attention to how my clothes fit and my physical appearance than my weight.

jnoegrah · July 2015

It could be muscle weight. or water weight. how quickly did the weight gain happen?

leojsivad · July 2015

I gained it in about a week.

jnoegrah · July 2015

Someone your size, im guessing the 6lbs could be water weight? Plus are u weighing yourself the same time frame because again weight fluctuates morning and night. 6lbs to you may not really be that much in the big picture.

I havent looked at your diary,
But thats my thought...

cassiz91 · July 2015

First off don't be discouraged, how much weight are you lifting while you train? For weight and HIIT training you can gain mass or lean mass just by the amount of weight and sets you do.

The heavier the weight with more sets and less reps the more mucle mass youll be building ans decelopibg muscle growth. A few ways to tell if your are gaining muscle mass is by how your clothes fit, you can see if a specific body part has gotten bigger than usual, i reccommend for you to use a tape measure and do a before and after measurement. But remember muscle weights more than fat. You can look leaner have a body fat percentage of 12% and be 232lbs, with tight muscle. Please don't be discourage.

Second Fluctuations within the body is normal, if you feel bloated then you have water retention, to lose that drink more water.

leojsivad · July 2015

cassiz91 wrote: »

First off don't be discouraged, how much weight are you lifting while you train? For weight and HIIT training you can gain mass or lean mass just by the amount of weight and sets you do.

The heavier the weight with more sets and less reps the more mucle mass youll be building ans decelopibg muscle growth. A few ways to tell if your are gaining muscle mass is by how your clothes fit, you can see if a specific body part has gotten bigger than usual, i reccommend for you to use a tape measure and do a before and after measurement. But remember muscle weights more than fat. You can look leaner have a body fat percentage of 12% and be 232lbs, with tight muscle. Please don't be discourage.

Second Fluctuations within the body is normal, if you feel bloated then you have water retention, to lose that drink more water.

Thank y'all for the replies. I think one of the main things causing some weight gain is that I am a teacher, so during the summer break, I move up to 80% less that I do while teaching. While teaching, I am constantly walking around the room, more than 10,000 steps per day.

I have worked through my frustration, and decided that during the summer, I am going to focus on building lean muscle mass and saying screw the scale.

quintoespada · July 2015

if you're going over 2,000 mg of sodium per day and you don't have a health issue that would otherwise mean it needs to be lower, it's water weight. like someone else said, we can't see your diary - the only explanation i have for you is water retention. there's no way (unless you've got BED and you're eating back thousands of calories in one or two sittings) you'd gain that much in a week.

livijane07 · July 2015

Hi there, do you weigh your food accurately and log everything you eat in MFP? When I started weighing my food I discovered I was eating approx 300 calories more everyday than I thought.

I wouldn't worry about gaining 6lbs in a week, there is no way that can be fat, unless you were overeating hugely every day. Remember it takes an excess of 3500 calories per week just to gain 1lb of fat. The weight you gained is most likely water weight, or muscle mass, although from my experience muscle gains take quite a while to be noticeable on the scale.

Keep up the weight training and HIIT exercises! If you still don't see some weight loss, I would try eating back only 50% of your exercise calories. Sometimes burned calorie estimates on machines or MFP are inaccurate.

Good luck!

nannersp61 · July 2015

The inflammation that you get after lifting or doing hiit could cause fluid retention. Then with muscle gain, that could account for the weight fluctuation. A restaurant meal high in sodium or even a day where you are drinking a lot of water could cause this. Now that you are out of school you have an opportunity to increase, not decrease your steps. Get outside, go for a hike, get involved in a group sport or some other recreation. Sit less, turn off the boob tube, and move more.

Need some positive motivation and your thoughts

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