Why am I overweight after doing MORE exercise?

chuckley

Female
5'10
80kg
25.something BMI (basically overweight)
Ruler body type
More mesomorph than the other two

I've upped my exercise regime this year to 4x a week including 1 high intensity class and pilates, but for some reason I'm actually gaining more weight?! I look a size 8-10 but my carcass is actually a 14, but my waist is more of an 8.

I try to avoid cardio in the gym due to my body type and the cardio class so I mainly do strength and resistance.

I'm pretty good on the food side, I don't eat processed carp and make all my stuff fresh, so it's not food... But could it be the protein powder I've started doing? I have it twice a week max, at present.

Or do I need to eat less? Exercise more? Or just accept this overweight life?!

colin79666

Training can actually cause you to put weight on as you replace fat with muscle, which isn't necessary a bad thing if you are getting fitter. If you want to lose weight then you need to stop the protein powder (not needed unless you are doing serious weight training) and up the cardio. You don't have to do fancy gym classes to lose weight, try walking more or cycle if you have a bike.

tberry6686

Ignore your BMI number, it is not accurate and is a just to allow the medical profession to shoehorn people into convenient boxes. Remember muscle weighs more than fat so building more muscle will not reduce weight.

UKTigerlily

colin79666 wrote: »

Training can actually cause you to put weight on as you replace fat with muscle, which isn't necessary a bad thing if you are getting fitter. If you want to lose weight then you need to stop the protein powder (not needed unless you are doing serious weight training) and up the cardio. You don't have to do fancy gym classes to lose weight, try walking more or cycle if you have a bike.

Cardio is NOT the best thing for weight loss, weight lifting is. For a billion reasons. And having lost around 6st this year with pretty much zero cardio, that backs it all up enough for me.

OP do you track what you eat? It doesn't matter if it's good/healthy, too much of it will still cause a weight problem. Also, writing it all down means you don't forget small things people have almost without thinking. Remember, BMI is no good indicator, my trainer is overweight yet has low body fat and more muscle, maybe as you exercise you have some muscle and it doesn't account for that? What body fat % are you?

UKTigerlily

tberry6686 wrote: »

Ignore your BMI number, it is not accurate and is a just to allow the medical profession to shoehorn people into convenient boxes. Remember muscle weighs more than fat so building more muscle will not reduce weight.

Muscle and fat weigh the same, a pound of muscle is the exact same as a pound of fat. Muscle is denser is all so takes up less room and you look smaller x

PasturesNew

Muscle weighs more than fat, so as you replace the fat with muscle the weight won't fall off you.

It's no good saying stuff like "I don't eat processed carp and make all my stuff fresh" because that's meaningless without knowing WHAT you're eating. You could make yourself 4 fat pies and a cake fresh daily, hand-grinding your own flour and milking your own cows to make the butter .... but you'd still be over-eating.

You should at least be calorie aware, as one measure/indicator of what's going in.

tberry6686

UKTigerlily wrote: »

Muscle and fat weigh the same, a pound of muscle is the exact same as a pound of fat. Muscle is denser is all so takes up less room and you look smaller x

You know exactly what I meant. No need to be a pedant

jenniewb

Fact is, you can only exercise away around 25-30% of what you eat. Your body gets wise to what your doing and adjusts, it learns to run on slow-mode, it learns to conserve things and it learns to increase your appetite.


I also found when I exercised I gained weight. I found the more I did, the more weight I gained because I was racking up the resistance, increasing the incline on the treadmill and taking up more and more spinning classes. The more my weight went up, the more I increased the exercise. To someone who cannot stand hard-core sweat-inducing exercise it was hell to live like that. I will add though it was part of an eating disorder. I was keeping my food at a precise level and trying to deal (control) my weight through exercise alone. For me at least, it can't be done and the funny thing was, when I cut back on the exercise and my weight went down significantly.


If you are eating a balanced diet, don't resort to cutting back too far- you need to stay healthy. If you exercise and hate what you do, switch to things you like or don't mind doing; everyone needs to exercise at a basic level to stay healthy but once it starts feeling like a nightmare, things need to change.


Keep a diary of what you eat every day, monitor anything and if possible the reasons that you eat. This should help with working out when you are really hungry and when you are not. Don't let food rule your life but bare in mind that it's not there to rule or control your feelings. If you are struggling, try to get some moral support from others in the same situation or who have been there. Remember that you have a goal to be healthy, and part of being healthy is to enjoy who you are and not fixate on weight or food, life only happens once.

Carl31

You need to decide what your goal is, weight loss and fat loss are 2 different things

Weight is only and indicator, along with BMI and assume certain factors. Does it really matter what you weigh as long as you look and feel good?

rfclee1988

you need to know how much your eating each day, it essentially comes down to calories in V calories out, use myfitnesspal and track it so see how much your getting each day and if its to much adjust accordingly, It takes time.

FBaby

I put on quite a bit of weight (fat) when I started to exercise intensely. It was quite disheartening! Looking back, I think I didn't appreciate that I was actually eating more because that level of exercise made me feel hungrier.

It's been 2 years since I started intense training and I now know that this will not control my weight. The only time I lost weight during that period is when I controlled my diet by reducing quantity over a 6 weeks period. I've put the weight back on now, despite increasing the intensity of the exercise, but I'm ok with it as I'm not overweight, just a bit more padding around my bum and tummy that I'd like!