Shall I give up running?!

Try using a food scale to be sure of your calorie intact .I suspect if you are a little sore after your new running exercise you may be retaining water , sore muscles for me can be = to up to 2kg of water weight. This can take up to a few months to settle down. When I started running at deficit my weight went up a little to start with from water ... But then dropped by 4kg in 2 weeks.

how on earth do you run with only 1200 calories!
If you are accurately tracking your cals then you have not gained 3lbs.
There is likely some water retention from either new or increased running/exercise..or other factors like hormones/ more sodium than usual, or more carbs etc.
New exercise can cause scale fluctuations for around 3 to 4 weeks.

Shall I give up running?!

In your circumatances of complaining about gaining weight surely you meant "should I run more?".

Suggest you have a good read of all the sticky threads at the top of the various forums.

Also ever time you change your routine give it at least a month to see the effect of th change on your weight trend.

I would assume you need more calories to fuel your runs...your body will hold onto weight if you don't. Otherwise, running melts the weight.

amgreenwell wrote: »

I would assume you need more calories to fuel your runs...your body will hold onto weight if you don't. Otherwise, running melts the weight.

The answer to 'help, I'm not losing' is never 'eat more' unless the person can't get a deficit going because they're burnt out. Then they could benefit mentally from a break. But they won't be losing weight on it.

OP, first, you're at a healthy weight, so weight loss will be slow. I recommend you start using TrendWeight to see what your weight's doing long term. It can help when it looks like the scale's not moving but it's actually slowly trending downward.

OP, if this running is new to you - longer distances or faster than you're used to running you can easily be holding on to water weight that masks actual weight loss. If you jumped into 3x 5k from nothing, you'll probably hold onto it for a long time. Your body has a lot of repair work and adaptation to do. But eventually the scale will start moving down if you are in a deficit.

Do tighten up your logging so you know you're eating what you think you are and can make adjustments if you're not.

You can run around the world and you won't lose weight if you're still in a caloric surplus.
Weigh and measure EVERYTHING you eat.

rsenor wrote: »

Don't give up!!! When you are running make sure you going at a reasonable pace. That's the biggest question for me: Am I pushing myself? Its easy to get into the groove of a pace with any repetitive cardio and not really get a lot out of it. I personally really don't enjoy running so when I do it I do short bursts of Fartleks- sprinting as hard as possible followed by walking. There's a lot out there about the benefits of very high-intensity cardio for short periods...

Also you are close to a healthy weight- I would highly suggest taking measurements and photos and not obsessing about the scale too much. You're probably gaining muscle- which weighs more than fat- and so its not uncommon to see a bump in weight as you swap them out. I am about your size and entered a fitness competition years ago, and when I did I lost a whopping 4 pounds!

Finally, not all calories are equal in terms of how your body responds. Grapes and satsumas are super high-sugar and if your body's glucose stores are full, it will convert any sugar to fat. On portions, if you don't have a scale you could also use measuring cups; I'm not entirely clear on why folks here are stressing a rather expensive scale when a set of measuring cups would do just fine.

Yes, there are - cardiovascular benefits (VO2 max). None that help particularly with weight loss over any other kind of running. Lower intensity cardio has a lot of cardiovascular benefits as well (endurance, stroke volume).

OP's at a healthy weight. If she's in a deficit, she's not gaining muscle - not running, not if she were lifting. She'd need to be in a surplus for that.

Which doesn't matter if OP is in a deficit - the fat is getting used from body stores to compensate for the deficit. Besides, excess carbs, fat, protein - all stored as fat. It's not a property exclusive to sugar.

We insist on a scale only if the person is having trouble losing because measuring cups are inaccurate and logging is nearly always the culprit. You'll notice professional bakers, who rely on accuracy don't use measuring cups except for liquids - they use a scale. People don't pack measuring cups the same way. Ever seen the debate on how to scoop flour into a measuring cup so you get the 'right' amount? Do you dip and sweep then level, do you fluff it then spoon it into the cup and then level, do you sift the whole thing first then spoon it into the cup and then level. It makes a lot of difference. With flour, you can change measurements by 20%+ with differences in packing. With something like cooked rice, you can change them by 200%+.

This clearly has to be a calorie measuring issue. Most probably underestimating serving size, a mistake I made in the early days and the reason I got a scale. I know not everything can be scanned (even then you must accurately represent your number of servings) so it has to be weighed. If I'm in the position of guestimating, I always do so against my interest (overestimating calories/servings) with the worst case scenario being a pleasant surprise on weigh in day. Don't feel bad we all make mistakes in the beginning. One mistake, I also think your making by the way you posed your question is and a couple of people referenced here but didn't say it overtly. Exercise does not cause weight loss, only a calorie deficit does that. Every study that isolates exercise as the only variable shows this to be true. basically what happens is the people eat back the calories they burned off. Notice, I did not say that exercise is not healthy for you every study confirms that it is. Its just from a weight loss only perspective there is really no cause and effect here. What does exist is more of a correlative behavior. People who have lost weight and keep it off, almost always are those who exercise . Exercise in this scenario IMO is sort of a measure of your level of commitment so if your exercising your also more likely to be watching your diet (while the last part is my opinion, I don't think its too much of a leap to get there). It is hard to convince people that exercise doesn't cause weight loss because its been drummed into our consciousness since as long as I can remember. Like I said I only brought it up because the way you phrased the question and I have seen too many people get discouraged when exercise alone didn't solve their weight issue.