Help Me Interpret Recent Weight Gain?

flaminica
flaminica Posts: 304 Member
edited November 13 in Fitness and Exercise
I joined MFP in January of 2015 at 211 lbs and reached my goal weight of 118 in June of 2016. I maintained that weight successfully and in October joined a gym for fun and to improve my overall fitness. I currently am doing weight training for an hour twice a week at the gym and half an hour once or twice a week at home. I also do a cardio day when I feel like it. My job is active.

Since October, my stable weight has increased from 118 +/- 1 lb, to 125 +/- 1. What is it? I see three possibilities:

1. It's muscle. Surely it's not muscle. At 53 years old, seven pounds of solid muscle in ten weeks seems extremely optimistic. I've gained some obvious new muscle definition, but seven pounds?
2. It's fat. It's not fat. At 5'0" seven pounds of fat would be very noticeable. I would have to be over-estimating calories by ~2200 per week to manage that feat. My clothes don't feel more tight but neither are they more loose.
3. It's water. Seven pounds of permanent water? Really?
4. All of the above in some combination. In which case should I expect it to go up, down, sideways?

Seven pounds might seem a minor thing to stress over, but it puts my BMI a bit closer to the "overweight" threshold than I like. I can find articles on optimal weight gain for body builders, but not on normal newbie weight variations, especially for non-competitive casual training.

Replies

  • thunder1982
    thunder1982 Posts: 280 Member
    How often do you weigh yourself? Daily or weekly? If its weekly how close to your last 1hr weightlifting session is it?

    Are you sore the day following your weightlifting sessions? Soreness for me indicates that I am most likely still retaining water for muscle repair.

    If your super concerned about the number creep even though there doesn't appear to be a size creep, skip the weightlifting for a week, try keep everything else as much the same as possible and see if your weight goes back down.
  • canadianlbs
    canadianlbs Posts: 5,199 Member
    you don't mention how heavy your lifting is or what kind of programme you're doing. but for reference: i'm 51 and recently had a junk week where i did very little lifting. my weight by the end of that week was 132ish, which was down about 4 pounds from where i'd been before i parked myself on my bum.

    get serious again and go back to my lifting programme. a week later the scale at the gym says i'm at 138. ther'es a little leeway in there for such things as different clothes and whether/not i had recently eaten in both cases, but you probably see my point.

    i always seem to carry an extra 3-5 pounds of water when i'm lifting and on a roll. used to be it would hang on for a few weeks or months and then shed itself all over the course of a couple of days, so that might happen to you. for me that's been less and less likely to happen after the first year, unless i actually quit lifting completely for about a week.
  • trigden1991
    trigden1991 Posts: 4,658 Member
    flaminica wrote: »
    I joined MFP in January of 2015 at 211 lbs and reached my goal weight of 118 in June of 2016. I maintained that weight successfully and in October joined a gym for fun and to improve my overall fitness. I currently am doing weight training for an hour twice a week at the gym and half an hour once or twice a week at home. I also do a cardio day when I feel like it. My job is active.

    Since October, my stable weight has increased from 118 +/- 1 lb, to 125 +/- 1. What is it? I see three possibilities:

    1. It's muscle. Surely it's not muscle. At 53 years old, seven pounds of solid muscle in ten weeks seems extremely optimistic. I've gained some obvious new muscle definition, but seven pounds?
    2. It's fat. It's not fat. At 5'0" seven pounds of fat would be very noticeable. I would have to be over-estimating calories by ~2200 per week to manage that feat. My clothes don't feel more tight but neither are they more loose.
    3. It's water. Seven pounds of permanent water? Really?
    4. All of the above in some combination. In which case should I expect it to go up, down, sideways?

    Seven pounds might seem a minor thing to stress over, but it puts my BMI a bit closer to the "overweight" threshold than I like. I can find articles on optimal weight gain for body builders, but not on normal newbie weight variations, especially for non-competitive casual training.

    It's probably a combination of 2 & 3. People, women especially, don't gain muscle without a concerted effort to do so.
  • RebeccaMott1
    RebeccaMott1 Posts: 4 Member
    Congratulations on your weight loss. Throw your scale away. How do you look? How do you feel? What is your energy level? How do your clothes fit? Weight is just one of many indicators. Try to look at something else to measure your progress. You have done an awesome job so far. Don't get side-tracked by small (<10 lbs) weight fluctuations.
  • trigden1991
    trigden1991 Posts: 4,658 Member
    RebeccaMott1 wrote: »
    Congratulations on your weight loss. Throw your scale away. How do you look? How do you feel? What is your energy level? How do your clothes fit? Weight is just one of many indicators. Try to look at something else to measure your progress. You have done an awesome job so far. Don't get side-tracked by small (<10 lbs) weight fluctuations.

    Throwing away the scale is not recommended. Weight is not the be all and end all but it is a very consistent way to track progress over a long period of time.
  • ShammersPink
    ShammersPink Posts: 215 Member
    People always recommend throwing the scale away when you don't like what it tells you, never when you do.

    You could check the batteries in your scale, just to rule that out. Have you changed anything in your weighing routine Timing, placing of scale etc?

    If not - probably what everyone above says.
  • Cylphin60
    Cylphin60 Posts: 863 Member
    I'm not sure 7lbs of fat spread somewhat evenly would be that noticeable. I lost 7-10lbs from places I would have sworn had very little fat, shoulders, arms, chest and legs, with the belly being the last to go.

    Obvious questions: Are you still weighing and logging accurately? Has your diet changed substantially? As in more bread etc?
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