New Exercise Water Retention?

AirieBerry wrote: »

I've recently taken up a physical conditioning class at my community college, and it's only 2 days a week, but the workouts include weights and intense cardio. I leave every class very sweaty, and wake up the next day with some kind of muscle soreness. I also try to do at least 30 minutes of walking or riding my exercise bike a day.

I've seen a few posts about people beginning a new exercise routine and not losing. Many replies have said that your body will retain water for the muscles to repair or something of the like.

My question is, is this true? And if so, how long does it last? (This will be my 3rd week being in the class.) Just trying to figure out if this is the cause or not.

Yes...

You will always retain additional fluids when exercising...it's not fat so why are you worried about it? Your body is doing what it's supposed to be doing...

There are a lot of variables that affect the scale. How often do you weigh? Are you near your TOM?

AirieBerry wrote: »

I weigh once a week on Friday morning, and I had my TOM 2 weeks ago, and it's 2 weeks away now. So I'm right in the middle

If you dont mind, I'd recommend weighing daily and averaging the week. What I have found is I naturally have high and low days. And since I am a data person, the more data points, the easier the trend analysis will be.

Side note, do you use a food scale and do you track daily?

As the others have already said, you will retain some water from the exercise. I've had it sometimes release a few days later, and other times take a couple weeks to release. Just depends on how your body is reacting.

I'd also recommend having an alternate way to measure your success. I personally use a tape measure to keep track of my body measurements. Often you'll see a loss in inches/cm when you don't see a loss on the scale and vice versa. I found having something else to use to measure my losses, kept me sane when I wasn't seeing a loss on the scale (typically due to water retention).

And yes, many factors can affect water retention - exercise / muscle repair, TOM, high sodium meals, some other thing you ate that causes your body to retain the water, (for me) not enough water daily, etc.

AirieBerry wrote: »

I don't have food scale, and I tried weighing daily at my highest and it just didn't work for me. I track daily minus the weekends (Fri and Sat) I use those two days to not eat "diet" food, and that has worked for my 60lb weight loss previously. I'm thinking of revising that though.

The smaller you get, the harder it is to make up for inaccuracies. At some point, you might need to evaluate what your priority is.