HELP!

[TRYINGMYHARDEST]

I have been actively trying to lose weight since April.  I have seen a consistent weight loss of about 1 pound per week.  I've been watching what I eat and running/walking. I have about 20 pounds to lose to reach my short term goal and 30 for my long term. I am a 36 year old female.  I have really tried to step things up the past three weeks.  I've been putting in 50 miles per week.  Today when I weighed, at the usual time, and on the same scale, I have GAINED two pounds.  I am so discouraged.  How have I gained weight when I've been working so hard?  Please offer kind of explanation. 

[JohnRi]

The short answer is you probably gained muscle!  After I was injured, and unable to exercise via walking for 3 weeks.  I have a 5 week period where I really stepped up my game.  I was burning close to 4000 calories nearly every day.  I was power walking 5-6 miles after the first week from my injury.  And then I was power walking 5-6 miles every day.  I saw a very odd period of my weight loss.  I lost 9.6 lbs of fat, but I gained 8.5 lbs of muscle.  I was having faster and faster walks.  My pace times hit 15 minute miles, I even had one more in the 13 minute mark.

But that dang scale never budged.  I was completely frustrated as I was desperate to get until 219, and out of the obese weight range for me.  But 220, it sat there.

There is a great website to help you better see your weight trend.  http://trendweight.com . Visit the site and connect to your Fitbit account.  It will pull you weight readings from Fitbit, and give you a moving average weight based on your weight readings.  Each reading pulls the moving trend up or down.  Giving you a better understanding of how you are doing.  Plus it ignores the day to day gain or loss from water weight. If you look at my 3m chart, my trend is pulling down, showing me that I'm losing weight.  So the day to day numbers are meaningless.  As long as my trend is down, I'm happy.

Keep in mind that my Trend is that my weight is falling like a stone...  But if look at the readings closer, there are three 6-7 day periods where my weight was similar, yet the trend was my weight was going down.  And the numbers are very different from day to day, the Moving average weight is only concerned with if the readings are lower or higher than the trend.  Lower readings than the trend pull the trend down, higher readings than the trend pull the trend up.  The Trend reading is a little behind the reading number.  Everyone says why is the Black dots so much lower than the trend on my chart.  Eventually once I stablize on my goal weight, the trend should match my weight.  Until then it will be a little behind the weight on the scale. 

If you a Aria, or you use calipers to calculate your fat %, Trendweight will give a trend on those too.

Great free site to use with your Fitbit account!

Good luck, keep active, and keep at it!  And ignore the dang scale!  It lies!

[TRYINGMYHARDEST]

Thanks so much!!!  It just gets so frustrating when you don't lose, but especially when you gain.

[A_Lurker]

When I was younger, my period used to throw my weight off during the month.  I was doing daily weighing and I could predict the specific date of my period as I would trend down, suddenly go up 3 or 4 pounds, then lose it afterwards.

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[TRYINGMYHARDEST]

Can running cause you to gain muscle in the legs?

[emili · Accepted solution]

you could gain muscle in your legs from running but it would take a very long time. Muscle also does not weigh more than fat. So you wouldn't gain weight from muscle. At best your number would stay the same but your composition would be smaller since muscle has smaller mass. There are so many reasons why you may be two pounds up. Water, salt, hormones. It is likely that with warmer weather you are retaining more water- just one of the many joys of being a girl. Or you could be underestimating what you are eating. The good news is, that your two pound gain is probably not permanently stuck to you and with a little care will fall off. Drink more, make sure your bio needs are regular, make sure you are weighing, measuring and logging everything that goes in and keep moving. It will go back down and then some.

[GershonSurge · Accepted solution]

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@TRYINGMYHARDEST wrote:
Can running cause you to gain muscle in the legs?

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The body doesn't like to build muscle because then it has to be fed. The first adaptation that will likely happen is improvement in neuromuscular function. This means your brain will become more efficient at using the muscles you have. This is the reason early progress in running often happens quickly. The second adaptation is getting rid of the fat that is in the muscles. Excess fat causes friction and makes the muscles less efficient. 

Other improvements occur such as developing new blood vessels and the cells becoming more efficient at eliminating waste. The whole cardiovascular system improves to eliminate carbon dioxide and deliver more oxygen. There are many other adaptations that will occur to eliminate the need to build muscle mass.

You may find your legs get thinner from running, but the muscles will be more clearly defined as the muscle fibers align in the direction of the forces. 

With the amount you are running, your lean mass may gradually increase as measured on a scale like the Atria. Lean mass is everything that is not fat. About 45% of this is muscle. Although these scales are not accurate, the error seems to be consistent if weighing happens at the same time each day in the same conditions. Usually, first thing after waking up. Lean mass fluctuates almost as much as weight on a day to day basis, but after a couple weeks, trends will form.

Plateus happen to everyone. As long as you are maintaining a calorie deficit, you will eventually lose weight. The exception is if the deficit is smaller than the error in the Fitbit so in reality, there is a calorie surplus. This error varies from person to person depending on how much and what type exercise they do.

[Dominique · Accepted solution]

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@TRYINGMYHARDEST wrote:

I've been watching what I eat and running/walking. 

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When you say you’ve been "watching what you eat", do you actually count calories, or do you merely try to pay attention to what you eat, strive to eat healthy etc.? Even for people who actually count calories and make sure they have a constant deficit, weight loss often isn’t linear. You just have to accept your weight cannot go down each and every day, day-to-day fluctuations are normal.

Focus on the big picture: for you, it’s the 50 pounds you want to lose in the long term. With that goal in mind, what happens from one day to the next doesn’t matter much. The advice by @JohnRi to use Trendweight  is a good one: it will take your mind off individual values and let you focus on the trend. Only start worrying if the trend is pointing upwards. Look at mine:

I gained 1.2 kg (2.6 lbs) in just two days. Yet, one week later I was back on track: the curve is now pointing down again.

Daily fluctuations are usually caused by water weight. For women, your hormonal cycle also plays a role.

[Ukase · Accepted solution]

Muscle DOES weigh more than fat, by volume. 

Obviously a pound of fat weighs the same as a pound of muscle, but a pound of muscle takes up less room than a pound of fat. 

Muscle is also harder for your body to maintain than fat, which is why our diet is critical when losing weight; we want to minimize muscle loss and maximize fat loss. 

[Dominique · Accepted solution]

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@Ukase wrote:

Muscle DOES weigh more than fat, by volume. 

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Still, even if you consider muscle is denser than fat, it is very unlikely muscle gain could explain a short term weight gain (when someone expected to lose weight instead).

It’s very easy for everyone to gain 2 pounds of water weight. It’s relatively easy (but will take a bit longer) for everyone to gain 2 pounds of fat: all you need is some relentless binging for a few days with minimal activity. It’s very hard for most to gain 2 pounds of muscle mass. It’s even harder if you’re a woman, or an older man (same reason: low testosterone), if you are dieting (as is usually the case of people who are looking to lose weight) and if you do not specifically engage in some kind of well-structured resistance training (you won’t gain much muscle by merely walking, running or doing typical DVD workouts).

[TRYINGMYHARDEST]

Thanks!!  Muslce isn't really my goal. It's weight loss right now. 

[shipo · Accepted solution]

@TRYINGMYHARDEST, as others have said; odds are pretty good a sudden spike in weight is simply water, especially this time of year.  Heck, regardless of the time of the year I can see my weight swing eight to ten pounds in a day depending upon what kind of workout I've done and how much I've hydrated.  Just today I went for a long grinding run at lunch and I'm betting had I weighed in just before and just after I would have lost an easy eight pounds from the run.  I say that because since I got back I've consumed over a gallon of water and green tea, I still feel a bit thirsty, and I haven't had to pee yet.

Now a message from the loyal opposition...

• Chasing a particular goal weight can be an elusive dream depending upon how you are setting about to accomplish the weight loss; IMHO, it is far better to chase a specific set of measurements (dress size, waist or hip or thigh circumference...).
• Regarding weight by volume, one liter of muscle weighs (on average) 1.06 kg while a liter of fat (on average) weighs 0.96 kg.  Said another way, if you happened to lose a pound of fat and replaced it with a pound of muscle, there would be very little change in your size and no change at all in your weight.
• Regarding whether your legs will get thinner from running; it all depends upon the individual.  I have beginning runners I coach who start with plenty of fat in their legs (typically upper thighs and butts) who have lost a fairly significant number of inches in the thigh and hip measurements.  Then there are other folks, me for instance, who actually developed thicker thighs while I was losing a bunch of weight a few years back.  In my case, it appears to be genetic; other folks in my family have used running to lose weight and in virtually every case, their legs and butts got a bit bigger in the process.
• A question for you; would you rather hit your goal weight and not look good in a particular dress or bathing suit, or would you rather miss your goal weight by say ten pounds but look awesome in that dress or bathing suit?