{"id":3081,"date":"2025-02-19T15:08:13","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T04:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/gaining-weight-despite-working-out-here-are-4-reasons-why.html"},"modified":"2025-02-19T15:08:14","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T04:08:14","slug":"gaining-weight-despite-working-out-here-are-4-reasons-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/gaining-weight-despite-working-out-here-are-4-reasons-why.html","title":{"rendered":"Gaining Weight Despite Working Out? Here Are 4 Reasons Why"},"content":{"rendered":"

Right off the bat, it\u2019s important to note that this doesn\u2019t happen to everyone, so this isn\u2019t a preemptive excuse not to exercise!<\/p>\n

However, if you do happen to gain weight when starting a new program, don\u2019t worry \u2014\u00a0 it\u2019s completely normal and temporary.<\/p>\n

Odds are that weight gain is not fat, but rather temporary water weight due to inflammation.<\/p>\n

Give it some time and it will pass.<\/p>\n

That said, it might be a few other things, all of them fixable, so let\u2019s run through the list and see if we can find a match.<\/p>\n

1. Temporary Inflammation<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

The most likely reason your scale crept up is inflammation.<\/p>\n

When you work out, it causes little tears in your muscle fibers. This is called microtrauma and it\u2019s why you feel sore after a workout.<\/p>\n

On the upside, your body heals these little tears, making the fibers tougher than they were originally.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how you become stronger and fitter \u2014 it\u2019s part of a process called adaptation.<\/p>\n

To make these repairs, your body uses its standard healing process, including the inflammation phase \u2014 something that\u2019s become a dirty word in our modern world.<\/p>\n

When you incur injury, including microtrauma, your body releases various substances generally known as inflammatory mediators that swarm the area and perform triage, bringing in healing white blood cells and opening up blood vessels to flush out debris and toxins.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s so much going on in that area that it swells up, or inflames.<\/p>\n

The fluid required for inflammatory response obviously weighs something \u2014 and that might show up on the scale.<\/p>\n

When inflammation is allowed to occur in a healthy way, it\u2019s temporary.<\/p>\n

Of course, keeping your diet healthy and allowing for adequate rest and recovery will help speed the body to less inflammatory phases of healing, but the main key is to keep calm and carry on.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re new to fitness \u2014 or perhaps just new to a particular kind of fitness \u2014 there\u2019s going to be a lot of adaptation going on and therefore a noticeable level of inflammation. It should subside in a couple of weeks.<\/p>\n

2. Muscle Gain<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Another reason you could be gaining weight working out is that you\u2019re building muscle faster than you\u2019re shedding fat.<\/p>\n

The general consensus in the fitness community is that the most weight someone new to fitness will gain in muscle is about two pounds a month, but that\u2019s not a hard-and-fast number.<\/p>\n

On more than one occasion, I\u2019ve assisted women who are frustrated because they felt their new exercise regime was making their thighs \u201cfat.\u201d<\/p>\n

And their legs were getting bigger, but only because increased muscle was pushing out the fat, making the legs increase in diameter.<\/p>\n

The trick here is patience.<\/p>\n

Once that fat burns off\u00a0\u2014 which it does if you keep at it \u2014 \u201cthick\u201d legs will give way to a toned pair of gams.<\/p>\n

3. Your Diet Is Off<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

If\u00a0you\u2019re not following a proper diet you could actually put on fat while starting a new exercise regimen.<\/p>\n

Yes, exercise burns calories, but it also increases the release of ghrelin, a hormone that promotes hunger.<\/p>\n

So if you\u2019re not paying attention and not watching your portion sizes, you could easily eat more than you should \u2014 and you could be adding fat.<\/p>\n

Even if you are consuming a low quantity of calories, poor food choices can cause all kinds of issues, usually centered on hormonal imbalances that cause your body to hold onto fat.<\/p>\n

Every Beachbody fitness program comes with a nutrition guide that should help alleviate this issue.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0Too much stress!<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Exercise is a good thing, but it also puts your body under stress.<\/p>\n

If done right \u2014 with the proper nutritional support, rest, and recovery \u2014 the stress caused by exercise toughens you up, fortifying your body against further stress.<\/p>\n

However, if\u00a0you pile exercise on top of a bunch of other lifestyle stress \u2014 or if you work out beyond your limits \u2014 balance will be lost.<\/p>\n

Exercise will contribute to your total stress load, becoming part of the problem as opposed to part of the solution.<\/p>\n

So, if you work 12 hours a day, drink more than two alcoholic drinks a night on a regular basis, smoke, sleep less than seven hours a night, have a chronic injury, eat a junk-filled Standard American Diet, and are overweight, exercise will tax your body just like all the bad habits on this\u00a0list and actually cause weight gain in a couple of different ways.<\/p>\n

First, the inflammation process does not progress\u00a0to the\u00a0later phases of healing, and you can end up with chronic inflammation throughout the body.<\/p>\n

Second, you\u2019ll increase\u00a0the release of the stress hormone cortisol that, in turn, can promote fat accumulation \u2014 particularly fat around the stomach.<\/p>\n

Should I Stop Exercising if I\u2019m Gaining Weight?<\/h2>\n

No matter the reason you might be gaining weight from working out, don\u2019t stop working out!<\/p>\n

Give your unexpected added pounds a couple of weeks to work themselves out. If they don\u2019t, step back and see if there\u2019s any other aspect of your life that needs fine-tuning.<\/p>\n

Fitness is a holistic issue. Whether your goal is to lose weight, build muscle, or simply get healthier, you want to look at\u00a0your sleep\u00a0and other lifestyle habits, not just your diet and exercise regimen.<\/p>\n

Sparta wasn\u2019t built in a day.<\/p>\n

\"4<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Right off the bat, it\u2019s important to note that this doesn\u2019t happen to everyone, so this isn\u2019t a preemptive excuse not to exercise! However, if you do happen to gain weight when starting a new program, don\u2019t worry \u2014\u00a0 it\u2019s completely normal and temporary. Odds are that weight gain is not fat, but rather temporary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3082,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fitness"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3083,"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3081\/revisions\/3083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}