cutting calories, exercising daily~~gaining weight!! YIKES! why????

I began working out seriously 6 weeks ago.  I do cardio or weight training everyday!  I have also cut my calories big time.  The first couple weeks I lost about 5 pounds.  I got on the scale this morning and I gained 4 of them back.  What the hell???  Any idea why?

Could it be that time of month is approaching?

I know what your saying, I've been exercising and dieting everyday.  I have gained back 1.2 pounds. I know mines the time of the month approaching.  But I guess we gain and lose back and forth. It gets frustrating.

I understand completely. I've been using the elliptical 4 days a week and training 2 days a week since January 15 and lost 9 pounds only to gain 3 of them back. However, this morning I'd lost 2 of those 3 again. I think a lot of it has to do with muscle gain; water weight; etc. Hopefully you measured before you started and you see the results there. If not, surely you're feeling it in your clothes. Try not to weigh every day and keep on doing what you're doing. It'll come off ...maybe not as quickly as you'd like but it's like "they" say...you didn't gain it over night so you can't expect it to fall off over night.

could it be that your gaining muscle? i noticed that when i started really weight training that i started gaining weight but i had lost a half an inch in my waist. try measuring yourself that might give you a more accurate range.

Thanks!  I will keep doing what I'm doing.  Unfortunately I didn't measure but I will today.

PMS?

i hate to say it, but it takes the average person a year to build one pound of muscle...

It doesn't take a year to build a pound of muscle, but it is awfully hard to gain muscle on a calorie defecit.

Is it possible you cut your calories too much? 

 

Original Post by peacelovehominy:

i hate to say it, but it takes the average person a year to build one pound of muscle...

Where the heck did you get that information?

 

OP: Try weighing again tonight and/or tomorrow. My scale does the same thing. It feels like a slap in the face, but it's probably a fluke.

 On that note, after a night of drinking my scale goes down 4lbs. If only I could keep myself dehydrated all the time

Original Post by danielle860:

It doesn't take a year to build a pound of muscle, but it is awfully hard to gain muscle on a calorie defecit.

Is it possible you cut your calories too much? 

 

Weight training makes it possible to gain muscle on a calorie defecit.

I didn't say it was impossible... I said it was hard. 
Especially in this case when the OP is talking about cutting calories down by quite a bit.

Check out this thread (especially the last post)... it's worded better than I would do:

http://www.calorie-count.com/forums/post/8011 2.html

yoiur fat is turing into muscle

when weight training, do lighter weights more reps,
and do lots of cardio before and after weight training

regardless you may gain more weight but muscle isnt a bad thing
its better to have a toned body than a flabby one

:)

when you say you're cutting back big time on calories, how much is that? You might be cutting back too much! It sounds crazy but it happens a lot! How much are you eating? Otherwise, it could be water retention. Have you eaten a lot of sodium lately?

4 lbs is no biggie.  You'll go up and down 5 lbs a day at different times of the day.  Do you weigh yourself consistently? (Same clothes, same time of day, same evacuation/elimination)  Weigh yourself again this week and see if it "went back down".

You may be eating too few calories.  6 weeks is about the amount of time I've heard it takes for starvation mode to kick in.  I did this for about 10 months without realizing it.  I added exercise (increasing my deficit) without increasing my calories and my weight loss stalled.  I didn't gain weight over time, but I did plateau. There's a journal entry about it if you click my name.

Look at your deficit (considering your exercise and intake).  If it's over 1000 calories, you should probably eat more.  If it's been well over 1000 for 6 weeks, you may have to kick start your metabolism again by eating a LOT more.  Like, eat your maintenance-level calories (your daily burn) for a couple of weeks.  Then go for a small deficit of 200-500 calories.  If that works for a week or two (1lb loss per week) gradually step it up to 1000.  But try not to go past that.

Original Post by mspano:

yoiur fat is turing into muscle No it isn't, fat and muscle are two seperate tissues, one doesn't turn into the other.

when weight training, do lighter weights more reps, Ligher weight and more reps is only good for increasing muscle endurance, to get "toned" muscles you need to do higher weight.
and do lots of cardio before and after weight training

regardless you may gain more weight but muscle isnt a bad thing
its better to have a toned body than a flabby one

:)

 

I started working out and reducing my caloric intake around New Year's. I am 5'1, and I was 121 pounds. I have gained a pound every week for the past 4 weeks. However, my waist shrunk by about an inch (which as others have mentioned, this is a better indicator of progress than pure scale numbers.)

I was an athlete in high school. Here is why this is relevant:

If you were an athlete or in good shape a number of years ago, you probably had a lot of muscle cells to begin with. As you exercise more, those muscle cells can regain strength, which also means they get heavier as they take up nutrients and water. It can happen really quickly because you're not actually growing new muscle cells - you're just re-strengthening the old ones.

That's why it is so important for kids to exercise. We build a lot of our muscle when we are young, and if we don't start adulthood with a good muscle mass, it becomes very difficult to build it as we get older! 

It's more than likely lean muscle that you are gaining: it's a good thing.  Even though the numbers may deceive, you will LOOK thinner with gaining this muscle--keep doin' what you're doin!

Water-weight may also play a factor in day-to-day fluctuations...gaining one...or even a few shouldn't be anything to get stressed over--the best thing is to feel good with what you are doing, and you will see it in your appearance (who doesn't get happy seeing themselves look AND feel great?!) Numbers...are just numbers... 

Agree completely that it is most likely muscle that is being built -- especially if you are being careful about your diet. One thing to add:  you haven't mentioned what your daily calorie intake is. This is important because, as somone already mentioned, if you cut your calories too low your body will start going into conservation mode which means your metabolism slows down despite the exercise. So what happens then is that same amount of calories that last week caused you to lose 5 pounds, will no longer help you to lose weight because your body is deliberately burning fewer caories to protect itself.

You probably already know this and I don't want to sound like a professor, but each of us has a resting metabolic rate based on our age, size, etc., and a daily caloric needs based on our resting metabolic rate and activity level. A moderately active person burns roughly 1.55 times their resting metabolic rate per day. The site can help you figure out these numbers. If you drop too far below your calorie intake goals -- and especially if you near your resting metabolic rate -- your body will begin to slow down. Exercise helps increase your metabolism but not if you aren't giving your body enough fuel. 

A good, healthy goal to lose weight is to drop 300-500 calories per day from your daily calorie needs. This can be done with food alone, with exercise (e.s. burn 300 more calories than you normally would) or a combination. If you exercise a lot, you may actually need to eat MORE than you did before to keep losing weight. Just be very careful that all your food choices are nutrious, since your body is working hard.

 good luck!