Weight Gain on 1200cal and 5 Miles a day?

Hi there, You may want to have your thyroid checked just in case- that seems like enough gain to warrant a visit to ensure that there is nothing else going on.

Aside from that, here are some comments and notes I've found helpful
I posted these elsewhere recently but there are a variety of factors that matter…bottomline is that it’s not all about calories and cardio…

The other thing to remember is that you may be swapping out muscle weight for fat weight... take your measurements, those are important too. This is particularly true if you aren't significantly overweight. While a lb is a lb... muscle takes up less space...

Also If you utilize a strength training regimen, you can expect to gain 3 to 5 lbs. of muscle mass in three to four months, bringing your net caloric effect to 15 to 30 calories per day. The best way to benefit from the calorie-burning potential of your muscles is to actually use them. Your basal metabolic rate, or the number of calories your body uses when you are at rest, typically accounts for 60 to 75 percent of the calories you burn in a day.

https://www.livestrong.com/article/53261-lose-pounds-two-weeks/This is an excerpt from the following article... its LONG but I thought very informative... don't just count calories. https://www.precisionnutrition.com/metabolic-damage

The physiology of weight loss is complicated, but the best strategies for losing fat and keeping it off don’t have to be.
1. Eat plenty of protein.
Protein is essential when trying to losing weight / fat for a few reasons.
Protein significantly increases satiety, which means you feel fuller despite eating less.
Just by eating more protein you burn more calories, because of the increased thermic effect of eating.
For example, if you’re eating 2,500 calories daily, 15 percent from protein, 50 percent from carbs, and 35 percent from fats (roughly average for US adults), you’re burning approximately 185 calories per day through digestion.
Maintain your total calorie intake but increase protein to 30 percent, drop carbs to 40 percent, and whittle fat to 30 percent, and your TEE goes up to roughly 265 calories per day.

2. Eat a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, quality carbs, and healthy fats.
Vegetables are loaded with vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, water, and fiber to help you fill up during meals, stay full between meals, keep you healthy, and recover from your workouts.
We recommend 4-6 fist-sized servings per day for most active women.
The carbs will fuel training, boost leptin (a super important hormone), keep up sex hormones, and prevent feelings of deprivation.
And the fats also keep up sex hormones, boost the immune system, suppress excess inflammation, and make food taste really good.
For most active women, 4-6 handfuls of quality carbs and 4-6 thumbs of healthy fats per day.

3. Adjust your intake as you plateau, or to prevent plateaus.
As your weight loss progresses, you will need to lower your calorie intake further to continue to progress, as your smaller body will burn fewer calories, and your body is adapting to your diet.
Be ready, willing, and able to adjust portion amounts by removing 1-2 handfuls of carbs and/or 1-2 thumbs of fats from your daily intake. Then reassess and continue to adjust as needed.
However, one study found that weight loss plateaus have less to do with metabolic adaptations and more to do with “an intermittent lack of diet adherence”. In other words, not actually sticking to a nutrition plan consistently.
Research shows that we usually think we’re eating less and exercising more than we truly are. So do an objective review of your actual energy in and out before assuming your body is blocking your efforts.

4. Understand that this is complex.
So many things influence what, why, and when we choose to eat.
Too often, eating and body size / fatness are blamed on lack of knowledge, lack of willpower/discipline, or laziness. In reality, food intake and body composition are governed by a mix of physiological, biological, psychological, social, economical, and lifestyle influences, along with individual knowledge or beliefs.
One of the simplest ways to make your decision processes easier is to create an environment that encourages good food choices and discourages poor ones. This can mean making changes to your daily routine, who you spend time with, where you spend time, and what food is readily available to you.

But remember that weight loss can and should be relatively slow, so aim to lose about 0.5-1 percent of your body weight per week.
This helps to maintain muscle mass and minimize the adaptive metabolic responses to a lower calorie intake and resulting weight loss. Faster weight loss tends to result in more muscle loss without extra fat loss, as well as a larger adaptive response.

5. Cycle calories and carbs.*
For folks who are trying to get quite lean, at some point you can’t just rely on linear dieting to get you there. By strategically cycling calories and carbs, you can help to limit how much the metabolism-regulating hormone leptin drops (or temporarily boost it back up) – attenuating the adaptive and hunger response.
*Note: This is a higher-level strategy for fitness competitors and elite athletes who need to get very lean (i.e. ~6-9 percent body fat for men, and ~16-19 percent for women). It’s not something for the average person.

6. Refeed periodically.**
When getting to extreme levels of leanness, even strategic calorie and carb cycling might not be enough. So take out the big guns, and employ some periodic re-feeds to temporarily boost leptin and insulin and keep fat loss going.
**Note: This is a higher-level strategy for fitness competitors and elite athletes who need to get very lean (i.e. <6 percent body fat for men, and <16 percent for women).

7. Do a mixture of resistance, cardiovascular, and recovery activity.
Resistance training helps you maintain vital muscle mass, burn calories, and improve glucose tolerance. Cardiovascular exercise improves the health of your cardiovascular system, helps you expend energy, and can improve recovery.
But don’t overdo either one.
Recovery work (e.g. foam rolling, walking, yoga) helps you maintain consistency and intensity with resistance and cardio training, making them more effective. And it helps to decrease stress (lowering cortisol), which also helps you lose body fat and keep it off.
Aim for 3-5 hours per week of purposeful activity.

8. Find ways to increase NEAT.
Even small increases in activity can account for hundreds of daily calories, and therefore make a big difference in fat loss efforts.
Some ideas: Get a stand-up desk or a treadmill desk; fidget; pace while on the phone; take the stairs; park your car farther away from where you’re going.

9. Develop a solid nightly sleep routine and manage your stress.
Sleep is just as important to your success as nutrition and activity levels. Don’t pretend that you can get by with less. It simply isn’t true.
Often, when people lower their stress, they lose a lot of body water. Then they also notice that they may have lost fat too. (Plus, they may discover that chronic inflammation goes down — another win.)
This includes mental and emotional stress. Research on cognitive dietary restraint (i.e. worrying and stressing out about food) shows that constantly and negatively fixating on what you eat (or don’t) can have the same unhealthy effect as actually dieting stringently.
Yet we need some stress to actually help with progress and growth, so find your stress sweet spot.

newmanc0299 wrote: »

mitch16 wrote: »

You've gained 32 pounds in 6 months? The weight gain in the last couple of weeks could be water weight related to the addition of running; however, 32 pounds is not water weight (without some major medical issues) if you've been at a deficit. Were you on 1200 calories/day from August until now? Have you been checked out by a doctor during this time?

let me explain a bit...I was running more in the past and before August, I was eating even less because I never felt hungry. and yes I have been on 1200 because I wanted to make sure I was eating enough, but I also have something called gastroparesis and I have it so badly that I couldn't eat vegetables until about 2 weeks ago, so a lot of my calories came from fruits and whole grains...I would eat broccoli with lunch and dinner because that is all I could eat. but yes, 1200. I am also borderline for hypothyroidism but not quite fully diagnosed.

I'd strongly recommend more engagement with your medical team. Show them your food/exercise logs and be very assertive in saying that you need help. Also, ask them specifically for a referral to a registered dietician (RD), a credentialed professional who can help with reviewing & adjusting your eating plans.

The circumstances, as you report them, are not medically normal.

Hoping you can find a solution - I'm worried about you!

gorditalindaz wrote: »

I would suggest a fancy scale that measures BMI, Fat percentage, water percentage and muscle percentage. That way you can see if it is muscle gain or water

Not only are these scales inaccurate, but no one is gaining muscle mass fast enough to outpace any reasonable rate of fat loss.

Good muscle mass gain results for a woman would be on the order of a pound a month for women, a couple of pounds for men. And those gains would only happen under ideal conditions, which include a calorie surplus (i.e. while gaining weight); an aggressive and well-designed progressive weight training program; good nutrition; and relative youth.

On the other hand, most people would consider 1-2 pounds fat loss per month to be in the slowest zone of noticeable weight loss, suitable for the very patient or those very close to a healthy goal weight.

OP has not gained enough muscle by running for 5 miles daily to show up on the scale as weight gain, especially not in 2.5 weeks of running, on 1200 gross calories. Not even remotely possible.

Footnote: People who start exercising, especially weight training, can become much stronger quite quickly. This is neuromuscular adaptation - more efficient and effective recruitment and utilization of pre-existing muscle fibers. They can also look better and firmer, and even appear more muscular, because of how muscles respond to training.

But actually adding muscle weight by growing new muscle cells or fibers is a very different and gradual thing. It's possible for some to slowly grow a little muscle mass in a calorie deficit, especially if new to weight lifting or very obese. But it's not going to happen fast enough to mask fat loss.

janejellyroll wrote: »

newmanc0299 wrote: »

TavistockToad wrote: »

Why are you eating so little?

I didn't realize it wasn't enough! Even my nutritionist told me to stay around 1200 because we don't really realize how little we burn.

If my nutritionist knew that I was running five miles a day and recommended a 1,200 calorie diet to me, I'd be looking for a new one pronto. That isn't enough and they ought to know that.

It's things like that which make the difference between a nutritionist and an actual Registered Dietitian. Haha.