Situation: Having gathered your will into a fist, you have been following a training regimen for two weeks, are on a diet and really want to see the long-awaited weight loss...! You didn’t suffer so much in vain, did you? But, horror of horrors, the scales show plus a few kilos, and the jeans fit even worse
Calm down, don't panic! This happens to a good half of those who train, and everything can be fixed.
Let's understand the reasons: some of them are the body's natural reaction to physical activity, and some are the result of your erroneous actions.
Don't think that you've already pumped up! A beginner who is actively and properly involved in fitness can gain up to 500 grams of muscle mass in a month with the right high-protein diet.
Where did the extra 3-5 kg come from?!
The body has accumulated water
When you give your muscles a load that is unusual for them, and at first the entire load is unusual, they begin to require more nutrients, which causes the amount of circulating blood and fluid to increase. This fluid accumulates in the muscles.
Increased muscle tone after training is also the reason for the slight increase in volume. But! Already 2-4 weeks after the start of training, the body will somewhat adapt to physical activity, the metabolism will speed up and excess fluid will “go away”.
Excessive water consumption to compensate for high ambient temperatures. For example, if you start exercising during the heating season, then you not only drink the natural amount of water during training, but also compensate for the stuffiness in the gym with liquid; After an intense workout, you also want to drink, and the house is hot, and you can consistently drink more liquid than at normal temperatures. The same applies to training in warm weather, or simply when it is very stuffy and hot in the summer.
Why does weight increase when doing fitness?
In fact, no matter what sport you do, the reasons for weight gain after training will be the same for everyone: whether for strength training, whether for fitness, or for functional training.
The main thing in any activity is consistency. Stick to a well-structured diet and exercise regularly, so that after 1-2 months the reflection in the mirror begins to please you.
Well, and, besides, stop constantly obsessing over the scales - weigh yourself once a week at the same time. For example, in the morning on an empty stomach. This way you can better track the dynamics. And make it a rule to also take basic measurements - this way you will be able to more accurately understand what changes are occurring in the body.
Don't panic if the arrows on the scales are treacherously creeping up. The accumulation of fluid quite often causes the weight to move by 1-2 kg in any direction. Especially for girls and especially before critical days.
Cycle days
Women should also take a closer look at their body in the week before their cycle, because many tend to retain fluid again.
Now let's look at the reasons for weight gain, which is a consequence of your wrong actions.
You starve or eat too little and rarely, but you exercise. The body considers this situation to be terrible stress and literally a threat to life, so it suddenly begins to store useful substances from every cucumber and celery.
Gaining muscle mass: an inevitable period
Users on sports forums have different opinions on this matter:
- some believe that the muscles have already begun to grow (this is after a month of training... what will happen in a year?);
- others believe that extra pounds are internal swelling of organs from excessive stress.
Of course, muscles do not grow or swell so quickly, they simply adapt to new circumstances, like our entire “smart” human body. You give the body a hitherto unknown load, and in order to cope with it, the muscles begin to increase their energy reserves, presented in the form of glycogen (a form of broken down glucose storage in the body).
In non-athletic people, the level of glycogen remains unchanged, its amount is consumed evenly, and therefore, with the right lifestyle and the absence of pathologies, they are not in danger of spontaneously gaining muscle mass.
Glycogen, in turn, has the ability to retain moisture in cells. And since you also drink a lot during training - both according to the recommendations of trainers and due to increased sweating, you accumulate more fluid in your body.
You forgot about the diet
There is an opinion among beginners that “since I now go to the gym, I can eat everything.” No you can not!!! Overeating 1500 calories per day (and this, in addition to all other food, 200-300 g of homemade Olivier for lunch, carbonara pasta for dinner, a latte with syrup at Starbucks and cookies) is compensated by almost 3 hours of fairly intense running. Will you run that long?). Even for a woman it is very easy to overeat 1500 calories, and this means +150 g of selected fat in your folds.
Keep your mouth shut. With the start of training, many people begin to want to eat more - and this is natural, because the metabolism accelerates and your body’s energy expenditure increases. If you want to lose weight, then this is the same situation when you have to do your best to keep yourself within the limits of your diet and eat as much as you need, and not how much and what you want.
How you won't gain weight after you quit training
Weight gain may also begin after you stop exercising. The essence is the same - the body receives more energy than it spends. If you burned 500 kcal every day in the gym, then when you quit, with the same diet, they will remain with you. There are again two options: reduce your diet or maintain physical activity, for example, by walking instead of traveling on public transport (when possible) or morning (evening) jogging. Of course, staying active is much better and healthier.
What to do?
- Be patient for a month, in a month everything should return to normal.
- Keep training.
- Double-check your diet and your method for calculating BPJ
- Consult with the coach for errors, in case you didn’t notice something.
Author: Denis Zhidkov
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Part 2: Why does weight increase after exercise?
In the second part we will look at the following situation:
The girl decided to lose weight, started eating right for this, and calculated her daily calorie intake once with a slight deficit. Deficiency, that is, lack, will contribute to the fact that our body will take a small lack of energy from subcutaneous fat.
To increase her energy expenditure, the girl decided to go to the gym for training. Of course, she, like many people, thinks that the process of losing body weight happens quickly and in a downward direction, like a white hare rolling head over heels down a hill...
After reading the first part of the article, she realized that it takes time to change her figure, ok, but she still decided to weigh herself after the workout... It would be better if she didn’t do this, because the real reaction of the body to changing the nutrition program and starting training can only be done no earlier than 4-8 weeks
And panic and horror gripped the poor girl - the scales, of course, showed weight gain! Why? After all, a week ago, while she was NOT training, her body weight was lower than it is now! What happened? Let's figure it out.
VERSION No. 1:
This is due to the activation of muscle mass - it wakes up, it begins to work, and therefore it requires more adaptation and restructuring. For the body, training is stress, and muscles help it in this.
Activation of the muscular system at the beginning of your training, their slight increase, especially at the beginning of the training process - this is what the scales record.
So don't weigh yourself every day - it's not necessary. I wouldn't recommend getting on the scale more than once every 3-4 weeks. This is the optimal period of time after which you can start talking about nutrition and training and their effect on your body.
ANOTHER REASONABLE VERSION ABOUT INCREASING WEIGHT DURING TRAINING
Some of the information below is taken from a biochemistry textbook. At some points I provide my comments and additions.
Almost all work uses muscle glycogen to produce ATP. Therefore, its concentration in the muscles decreases regardless of the nature of the work.
When performing intense exercise (for a beginner, any exercise will be intense for some time), a decrease in glycogen stores is observed in the muscles and the simultaneous formation and accumulation of lactic acid.
Due to the accumulation of lactic acid (this is a rather strong acid - it is also called lactate!), the acidity inside the muscle cells increases (the pH decreases).
An increase in the content of lactic acid in muscle cells also causes an increase in osmotic pressure in them, as a result of which water enters the myocytes (muscle cells) from the capillaries and intercellular spaces and muscle swelling develops (in sports practice, this phenomenon is often called “clogged” muscles).
Water from the capillaries and intercellular spaces has gone into the myocytes (muscle cells), the muscles have swollen, but the body will restore the water balance at the moment of your first thirst, which is already present during training.
By the way, don’t even think about not drinking during training - don’t be an amateur.
The ability to remove lactic acid from the muscles and from the blood varies from person to person. For athletes it is higher, but for ordinary people it takes much longer, even days, to recover. Muscles can hurt for quite a long time.
But as your level of physical activity increases, as your body improves at the cellular level, muscle growth during training will be reduced to the usual pumping (filling with blood), of which after half an hour or an hour there will be no trace left.
Lactic acid will, of course, be formed in the muscles, but your body’s attitude towards it will be different. Your body will begin to learn to work in this mode. In principle, he already knows how to do this, it’s just that you rarely find yourself in such conditions - that’s why the increased level of lactic acid is unusual for your body.
And muscle pain will spice up a kind of high, which, by the way, is a kind of drug for a regularly exercising person.
So be patient - after all, you didn’t decide to become a new person and change radically for a month, but forever - so enjoy proper nutrition and training.
And everything else will come on its own, as a pleasant side effect of your regular activities - proper nutrition and exercise.
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