You faithfully go to the club and exercise each day and walk the treadmill for an hour. You follow up with strength training until your muscles burn but still the scale won't budge. In fact, you've gained two pounds since you started your fitness program. What gives? Is it possible to gain weight from exercise?
While it's true that resistance training builds lean body mass which may increase your weight as you build up muscle, in many cases, this isn't the problem. When you find you're gaining weight from exercise, the more likely reason is that you're overcompensating for the calories you're burning.
A study published in the International Journal of Obesity in September 2007 showed that weight gain from exercise may be due to compensatory calorie intake. In other words, people who exercise on a daily basis eat more because they believe they'll burn it off through exercise. Despite the fact that exercise does burn calories, it doesn't always compensate for the triple scoop of ice cream you eat on the way home from the health club. Unfortunately, some people believe that they can eat whatever they like as long as they're sweating it out each day at the gym.
One way to distinguish weight gain due to muscle development from that related to increased fat storage is to use percent body fat as an indicator rather than total body weight. While the most accurate measurement of percent body fat is by the water displacement test, you can get a special scale for home use that measures body fat percentage by use of the bioimpedance method. This should give you a rough idea of your percent body fat. More importantly, you can use it to monitor changes in your fat percentage that may indicate you're gaining body fat. This can be an overall better indicator of your fat content than is a standard number on the scale which can fluctuate based on fluid status as well as other factors.
Another step to take if you find you're gaining weight from exercise is to keep an accurate food and exercise diary. Write down everything you eat as well as how much exercise you do for a period of several weeks. Estimate the calorie content you're taking in and the amount you're expending through exercise. Make sure you're burning off more than you're eating if you're trying to lose weight.
There are a variety of online sites that can help you determine the number of calories in the foods you're eating as well as how much you're burning off per hour through performing different types of exercises. Use these to record accurate values in your journal each day. You can also calculate how many calories you need each day to lose weight through various online calculators. If you find you're going over your calorie requirements, you can make adjustments by either cutting back on your food intake or working out longer. A food and exercise diary gives you an objective way to assess all of the factors that can contribute to weight gain from exercise.
If you find you're gaining weight from exercise, don't get discouraged. By following your body fat percentage through a bioimpedance scale and keeping an accurate food diary, you can get back on the path to success weight loss.
