Gaining weight struggles

What is your goal? Are you trying to gain, lose, or maintain your weight?

Regardless, you are almost certainly retaining some water weight from your vacation and should give yourself a week or so for it to come off.

Over what time period did you gain that 6lbs and have you observed that weight gain as stable over more than a day or two? You can't weigh yourself one day and say you've gained 6 pounds, that could just be water retention.

3 pounds a week is a lot of fat to gain for someone your size. That's like eating at twice your maintenance every day for two weeks. So, you may want to wait and see if that's actual weight gain or just some water retention before taking any drastic steps.

If it is fat, and it bothers you, then there's no issue going on a brief cut cycle to lose it. In order to minimize the amount of lean mass you might lose while cutting just be sure to keep your protein intake up (0.8-1 gram per pound of body weight per day) and not cut at less than about 15-20% below your maintenance calorie level. So if your maintenance is 1500 calories per day then don't cut below 1200 calories per day.

I will say though that if you want to bulk you do have to get comfortable with the idea that you're going to gain some fat. Hopefully not 3lbs/week, but some amount. That's just what's required to optimally gain muscle mass. If you can't deal with that you can do a recomp, assuming you have some body fat to work with, but it's a much slower process.

dimroses wrote: »

I really appreciate your insight. Being completely honest I have not weighed myself in 2 months. This usually gives me major anxiety so I do myself the favor of avoiding it unless I’m cutting.

I think your strategy of staying away from the scale while bulking is good, given your anxiety. Did you know that stress can kill gains too? So don't stress! (I realize it doesn't work that way).

But how do you know you're bulking if you're not consistently weighing yourself? Do you do some type of measurements? If I couldn't use the scale I'd be going nuts wondering if I were eating enough to feed my bulk. I know a lot of people with scale anxiety just weigh themselves once a week, being consistent about the day of the week and time of the day they weigh. Another strategy might be to try and make a mental shift, thinking of the scale increases as increasing muscle mass and fuel to support that muscle growth, instead of being more fat.

Anyway, good job taking the time and effort to increase your health by lifting! Think about that too. This is about your health (and aesthetics) for the long term.

Also maybe retaining water from working out, depending on how new you are to lifting or how intense your workout is. A big change in your routine may affect you, also.