Cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Does incline on treasmill mqke you bulky?

ANSWERED

Ok. Trying to lose weight. Everytime I use my treadmill I cant figure out why I gain weight no matter what I do so i have been avoiding it.

 

Does anyone know if upping the incline makes you bulky ?

 

I've even reduced how much incline i do and i still end up gaining weight.

 

All I ever read is you have to up the Incline or it's not worth it so I try to not stay at 0. It is just strange to me because I will do outdoor runs Monday to Friday losing weight just fine.. but I always have my daughter home and cant get out a lot so I try the treadmill but I always end up gaining weight. 

Best Answer
0 Votes
1 BEST ANSWER

Accepted Solutions

Total agreement with all comments already mentioned. Upping your incline will not make you gain weight and it does not bulk you up. It does help with effort expended so you end up burning more calories in a lesser amount of time- provided you don't hold on. holding on negates the effort and you have to work even harder. It does work your leg muscles more than if you had no incline and it helps with core and glutes. Your weight issue is more than likely stemming from eating, water retention or enjoying life on the weekend which you absolutely should do. I gain two pounds every weekend and it goes back to normal by wednesday. this is why most people use the 5 pound spread when talking about weight. 

Elena | Pennsylvania

View best answer in original post

Best Answer
0 Votes
7 REPLIES 7

How was your "scientific" experiment conducted? Did you do X (running outdoor, running on treadmill with no incline, running on treadmill with incline) on day N, weighed yourself on day N+1 and found out X = running with incline almost always resulted in an increase in weight on day N+1?

 

Changes in body weight should be considered over longer periods of time (several weeks to several months), looking at the general trend, for instance using weekly averages. If you are doing a mix of activities over such periods, it’s very hard to attribute any change in body weight to any given activity singled out from the mix. Same with your diet: if you’re eating a varied diet, you can’t attribute any change in weight to any given food singled out from the mix. Your weight will change according to the net balance between your total calories in and total calories out.

 

So to answer your question: no, incline on treadmill doesn’t inherently make you "bulky". You need to look at the whole picture: everything else that happens during the day, eating, activity, stress, sleep etc.

Dominique | Finland

Ionic, Aria, Flyer, TrendWeight | Windows 7, OS X 10.13.5 | Motorola Moto G6 (Android 9), iPad Air (iOS 12.4.4)

Take a look at the Fitbit help site for further assistance and information.

Best Answer
0 Votes

@Kris111 wrote:

Ok. Trying to lose weight. Everytime I use my treadmill I cant figure out why I gain weight no matter what I do so i have been avoiding it.

 

Does anyone know if upping the incline makes you bulky ?

 

I've even reduced how much incline i do and i still end up gaining weight.

 

All I ever read is you have to up the Incline or it's not worth it so I try to not stay at 0. It is just strange to me because I will do outdoor runs Monday to Friday losing weight just fine.. but I always have my daughter home and cant get out a lot so I try the treadmill but I always end up gaining weight. 


In order to gain weight as muscle (which I assume by the bulky comment), you need to be at a caloric surplus. You can't get bulky without the surplus. I think it's common when someone ups their exercise, to actually start overeating, which causes the surplus and the weight gain. HIIT does that to me--that kind of workout really stimulates the appetite.

 

Ultimately, you have to decide what you want. If you are doing exercises that build muscle, then you should expect to gain weight. If losing weight is your goal, you may need to stop the incline. You can't really have it both ways at once.

Work out...eat... sleep...repeat!
Dave | California

Best Answer
0 Votes
No obviously my diet hadn't changed because I ate the same Monday to Friday for 2 weeks all I've been eating is salad and coffee intermittent fasting as always and try to wait 4 hours between meals. But everytime I step foot on that thing both weekends I gain weight.



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
Best Answer
0 Votes
Well I was getting bulky because it uped my cortisol level which I dont know if you have ever experienced that..which makes you fat and gain actually no matter how many calories you are under believe me I'd go well under. Then I took ashtwaga or whatever to reduce the stress hormone. My diet didnt change.



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
Best Answer
0 Votes

If you're losing weight that quickly; then it is not fat you're accumulating but I think it is water weight.  The bulking up is probably indicative that your effort on the treadmill, despite you trying to simulate it as being as equivalent to the effort of running outdoors is not equal and usually isn't.  Running on a treadmill especially on the incline I think impose more effort for you, so then you expand your glycogen stores to cope with that effort.  And that in turn will increase the water weight of your body.  Whether you're running on pavement or on a treadmill, your cortisol level will still be high unless you're a super elite athlete that has low RHR and WHR that running at breakneck speed is effortless and less stressful to them.  Unfortunately, not all of us run like Usain Bolt and neither do we run like Hailee Grebrselassie.  I don't think your gaining muscles so quickly either.  For an ideal woman with proper training and nutrition and due to a lower level of testosterone, you will gain about 0.12 to 0.25 lbs per week in muscle growth from strength and resistance training and that is assuming you are in a caloric surplus diet which you are not.  And it takes about 1 week at 500 calories surplus/day to gain 1 pound of fat, which I think is quite highly unlikely.  You see, in order to gain fat, you need to exceed your glycogen stores and any excess glucose will then turn into fat and you won't easily lose that weight when you go out for a run on pavement that fast as well. 

 

I think you are fixated on the wrong outcome for your run training.  Exercise has never meant to be for pure weight loss.  It is a companion to weight loss.  It is diet; proper nutritional diet with full nutrients, minerals and the right macros that help with good proper weight loss.  As soon as you run and your run very hard, you trigger the mechanism in your body to adapt and strengthen so the next time around you will run better and stronger with fewer injuries.  That weight increase is temporary and is off-set by losing body fat.  Weight loss is not linear; it goes up and down.  What's really important is not the scale, but rather your waist line and other areas where fat would accumulate and are they shrinking?  If they are; be happy and keep working out.  Eventually, you will be at a healthy weight where you won't get such a wild swing.

 

The wild swing you are getting is that, you are attempting to control your body's growth by caloric restriction and hard exercises; both of which will need a caloric surplus to help your build your muscles mass and bone mass so you can do a greater work load.  By increasing work load, you can then burn more fat.  But since you are controlling your caloric input and starving the body, you are putting the body out of homeostasis, which then is giving you some feedback that your current approach in diet and exercise need re-evaluating. 

Best Answer
0 Votes

Upping the incline on the treadmill itself does not cause you to gain fat. You can potentially gain some muscle mass from it.

I have been using the treadmill to do HIIT walking workouts for months at a 10+% incline and still have managed to overall lose weight by feeding my body enough food for my activity levels but not too much to be in a caloric surplus. In one of your other comments, you mentioned eating the same things Monday-Friday but gaining on the weekends. What are you eating on the weekends? There is more going on here than just upping your incline on the treadmill, and it is likely the other things that are causing the fluctuations you are seeing on the scale.

Best Answer

Total agreement with all comments already mentioned. Upping your incline will not make you gain weight and it does not bulk you up. It does help with effort expended so you end up burning more calories in a lesser amount of time- provided you don't hold on. holding on negates the effort and you have to work even harder. It does work your leg muscles more than if you had no incline and it helps with core and glutes. Your weight issue is more than likely stemming from eating, water retention or enjoying life on the weekend which you absolutely should do. I gain two pounds every weekend and it goes back to normal by wednesday. this is why most people use the 5 pound spread when talking about weight. 

Elena | Pennsylvania

Best Answer
0 Votes