Lifting weights and cardio making me gain weight?
Feb.24, 2010 in
weight lifting abs
I’ve been lifting weights every other day, do abs every day and running a lot more and I have been gaining weight. I’ve been eating healtheir and notice that I look thinner but still I don’t want to gain weight so do i need to lay off the weights and up the cardio? I was 140 5’7 and after about a month or two of this I have gained 3 lbs. I’m a 16 yr old female who plays soccer.
February 25th, 2010 at 12:13 am
muscle.
February 25th, 2010 at 12:18 am
yes i would say its muscle gain which is a good thing
February 25th, 2010 at 12:19 am
Why is the number so important? If you look thinner, feel good and are at a normal weight for your height, what’s the problem? Don’t put so much emphasis on the number of pounds…3 pounds is not a lot of weight. As a woman, it’s normal to fluctuate, don’t worry about it. Just be healthy and don’t stop lifting weights. When you get older you’ll be glad you did! It is one of the most important things a woman can do for her body.
February 25th, 2010 at 12:32 am
For the people who say musle you’re not going to gain 3lbs of muscle in a month or two. Try 5lbs in a year for a female, 10lbs tops for a male using supplements and working out 2hrs a day every day.
Your weight can flucuate daily up to 10lbs either upward or downward depending on how much water and food you have in your stomach/body, as well as other things that put extra mass into your body without it being fat. If you look thinner keep going, eventually you’ll start to see a downward trend on your scale. Also don’t do abs every day, just like any other muscle they need time to rest and grow, just doing abs hard every other day will give them time to grow and repair themselves over 2 nights and a day. The weight is probably just from water/food, maybe 0.5lbs are from muscle, but I doubt it’s that high. If you really want to lose fat, the key is to run when you first wake up before you eat anything, that way you burn 100% pure fat.
February 25th, 2010 at 12:52 am
You have to remember that muscle ways more than fat does. Your body is replacing that fat with lean muscle it might seem like you are gaining but it will even out. I had the same problem except I am older and it is harder for me to lose the weight and when I first seen that I was gaining pounds on the scale I started to get discouraged but still stuck with my plan and in within a few weeks I noticed my waistline going down and then the pounds started coming off again. Dont give up it is gonna be worth it in the end and 3 pounds is not alot at all sounds like you are doing it all right
February 25th, 2010 at 1:46 am
As a nutritionist and trainer, I always ask this question as a necessary first step to analyzing a weight problem:
Is your diet really clean and healthy?
I’m not doubting your claim that you’re eating healthier. But in my experience, 95% of people who say they’re eating healthier aren’t actually doing that. Let me give you an example. I had a client who used to consume half a gallon (yes, 2 litres) of soda a day, EVERYDAY. She cut it down to 3 cans per day. And to her, that was being “healthier”. It’s all relative. I know people who consider eating 2 scoops of ice cream per day healthy. Of course, they used to eat a pint a day.
See my point?
Bottom line: Make sure your diet is tip top. If you goal is to get a head turning physique, you know, the kind that gets guys all hot and bothered, then you’d be wise to make sure that you’re eating almost perfectly clean. Very few people can stick to a diet 100%, but if you can achieve 90% compliance, that’s already very good.
Now, assuming you’re fine in the diet department, my advise, like someone else said above, is not to worry so much about your weight. Weight is dependent on so many things, including but not limited to: bone density, food in your stomach, crap in your colon, hydration levels, hormonal fluctuations (esp women), exercise levels in the last 24 hours, type of exercise, etc.
What i usually advise my clients to do is to use the mirror instead of the scale. The mirror doesn’t lie. Scale weight can be inaccurate, especially if you’re doing weight training. I’ll tell you why.
As you build muscle, you’re also storing more glycogen in your muscles. Glycogen in the muscles exerts an osmotic pressure and this has the effect of “drawing” water into the muscle belly. I’m not 100% certain about this but I think for every gram of glycogen you store, 4 grams of water are pulled into the muscle. This will have the obvious effect of increasing your weight. However, rest assured that it’s not true weight. It’s just water weight due to increased protein synthesis.
You’ve already stated that you’re looking thinner. That should be your motivation and indicator of progress. Another thing you may notice is that your weight may stay the same over the next 6 months, but your clothes actually feel looser. This is due to body composition changes, i.e. as you lose fat, you replace it with muscle. (By the way, fat doesn’t BECOME muscle. that’s a physiological impossibility) It’s just that as you lose weight, the weight you lose is replaced by muscle.
Take home message: Ditch the scale. Use the mirror.