Gain weight from exercise?

Start counting your weekends. They're likely killing your deficit.

Between eating/drinking more on weekends and lowered non-exercise activity due to being tired from a lot of exercising (this is a guess), your deficit is non-existent.

When you are not very overweight, you can't just "feel" like your calories are on point. You have to actually know whether they are or not and, for many people, that means tracking every day. The most common cause of weight loss stalls/gains is inaccurate tracking, whether it's due to not weighing/measuring foods/beverages, skipping logging days here and there, or something else. There's not really a way around that.

a0akley wrote: »

thanks everyone for the support. I do own a food scale. I use it mostly for meat portions and I measure with measuring cups/spoons everything else. I get what you are saying about the weekends. I guess I just feel like mentally it's good to take a break from counting everything, as I tend towards being overly obsessive if I let myself. Has anyone had any success with just one cheat night, like say friday night dinner and a few drinks ( i drink vodka with diet mixer) .
Any thoughts on water retention from exercise and not giving recovery days hindering success? I think I will try to track all weekend, even my drinks and see what happens. On the week days if I have a drink I keep it within my calorie deficit. I eat about 1100-1200 cal of food and (100-200 in alcohol one or two days per week.) Maybe I should just ditch the booze all together?

Only you can know if mentally weighing all your solid food is going to be bad for you (psychologically). What I can speak to is that I find it virtually impossible to truly understand what I'm consuming without weighing it. I find that my foods can vary quite widely from what I would expect them to be (if I was judging based on measuring cups).

Some people find a lot of success with one cheat meal per week, but it's only going to work if you manage to stay within a deficit for the week. When I was losing weight, I preferred to stay on plan each day and, if I had a special event, would "bank" some calories during the week for it. I managed to drink almost every night when I was losing weight, although not as much as I always wanted. And I kept my lunches pretty austere. That was my choice -- I don't think someone has to quit drinking to lose weight, but it can certainly help if the Friday night dinner is more important.

Water retention from exercise is real, but it will go away as your body gets used to more activity. That you keep gaining weight indicates that something else is going on here.

Try tracking your cheat meals! I ate at Applebee's last night with my parents and had their American Standard Burger. The burger (not including the fries) had 1038 calories; I only had 1/2 of the burger but I would never have known if I didn't log it.

a0akley wrote: »

thanks everyone for the support. I do own a food scale. I use it mostly for meat portions and I measure with measuring cups/spoons everything else. I get what you are saying about the weekends. I guess I just feel like mentally it's good to take a break from counting everything, as I tend towards being overly obsessive if I let myself. Has anyone had any success with just one cheat night, like say friday night dinner and a few drinks ( i drink vodka with diet mixer) .
Any thoughts on water retention from exercise and not giving recovery days hindering success? I think I will try to track all weekend, even my drinks and see what happens. On the week days if I have a drink I keep it within my calorie deficit. I eat about 1100-1200 cal of food and (100-200 in alcohol one or two days per week.) Maybe I should just ditch the booze all together?

I guess it depends on what you mean by a cheat meal. If you're talking a couple slices of pizza with a beer then by all means have that cheat meal but yes log it. If you're strict during the week, you may not be throwing yourself out of the deficit. If you're scarfing down a whole pizza with a side of tacos and french fries with those 3 whiskey and diets than that cheat meal is ruining your weekly progress. If you think of it as something you can't have ever again, that's usually when I overindulge in my cheat meals. If I think of it like I will have a couple slices tonight and stop because I am allowed to have another couple slices of that pizza next week, than that usually helps.
As for water retention, I believe I retain water like crazy after a workout. I drink a 32oz of water with each workout so that could possible be why. I always feel fat and icky too after a workout and it's probably because of that reason. As for recovery days, I don't usually take them. If I'm weight training every day, then I weight train a different body part every day so technically my recovery day is happening for that body part I worked out the day before.
As for drinking, I don't think you have to give it up. Just do it with moderation. I have slowed down on it mainly because I don't want to add it to my calories. I've already pre-logged my bloody mary for Saturday though so I know I have to plan my food around those calories. I don't consider it obsessive because I truly enjoy logging.

RadarRicky wrote: »

A suggestion around your cheat meals is to make them yourself. You have more control over the total calories that are going into your actual meals. For example, you can still have a burger, but you get to form the patty size and control the amount of cheese, bacon, mayo etc that goes on the burger itself. Restaurants are in it for wow factor, never really a consideration about calories in what they are preparing. Preparing your own meals, helps you control what is going into your body as well as letting you enjoy those foods that really satiate us, especially when trying to lose weight and having outside emotional stress factors. If you do choose to make some of your cheat meals, make more portions and freeze them to save time for later.

^^Very nice suggestion. I make my own low carb pizza for this reason. I don't make it often but when I get a pizza craving, I go for that one for sure. I know all the ingredients going into my meal and I certainly don't feel as guilty about eating it as I would having half a Dominoes pizza. It's more or less that I don't want all my hard work from the week to go to waste. Been there-done that and it was a total waste of time.

A lot of people ask "Can I do this and still lose weight?" Well, that depends on you. Some people never track a single calorie their whole life and stay in a good range. Others need to count forever. Some can have a cheat meal and not track it every weekend, but for others it derails their deficit. So, the real question to ask, is "is this working for me?" And the answer right now for you, is no. So I'd suggest switching it up. My first suggestion would be to track your cheat meals. Eat like you normally would, but track the calories. That will let you get an idea of how much you're actually eating. The biggest reason people don't track cheat days is because they KNOW they'll be over, but no mater if you track or not, you are still going to have to deal with those extra calories. So, I'd suggest tracking, unless you can't for some reason (and usually you can still guess). That will let you know if your cheats are throwing off your balance, or if it is an issue with logging or over estimating exercise calories or something else