Ok, ok...I know I need to work out...it's good for my heart, and I know that as my calorie defecit becomes less and less powerful I am going to need the workout more and more...
I've been losing steadly about 3lbs a week. I've been perfect on my diet and I've been working out about 4x a week for about 45 minutes.
These last 2 weeks, I've been incredibly busy...with people in from out of town, etc...and so I cut back on the working out. But I lost 4 lbs both weeks! What's up with that? Why is this happening? Should I wait until I drop more weight to start working out again? What do you think? I'm not complaining about the 2 good weeks...but I'm confused??
If you've been really busy, and busy SO MUCH that you can't make time to work out you're probably running around juustt enough to get that bit of workout time in, I wouldn't suggest skimping on the gym if you have the time because it'll gain up on you and you don't want that to happen. Congrats on the good weeks though!
Oh, who knows why 3 lbs one week, 4 lbs the next. I have had weeks where I've lost 6 lbs and weeks where I've stayed the same. That "extra" you lost was likely water as your muscles released it.
This may sound radical but I firmly believe the scale should not tell you what to do. The scale measures a trend, that is all.
Yes, you should continue to work out--and yes you can lose weight if you don't. But what sort of weight do you lose without excercise? You lose your muscles! (That's that "lean muscle tissue) and you lose fat. What happens when you lose your muscles? Your metabolism doesn't work as hard (not so much muscle to feed and keep active) and so....you wind up skinny and squishy.
BUT if you continue to excercise, your body puts energy into restoring and building up your muscles. (It also requires water to do this so you may experience a bit of "gain" on the scale or at least less of a loss--make sense?). If you have more muscles to feed, your body burns more energy standing still than someone of the same weight with less muscle. Because of this, you will be able to eat a reasonable amount of calories all the way to goal. And once you get there--STAY THERE. I plan on adding probably no more than one or two servings of bread to my total daily allotment. That's it. At my current work out schedule, the difference between Maintenance and Losing is about 150 calories. But if I excercised more....
You will also be smaller, since muscle is more dense that fat--which means that when you reach goal--you will actually be smaller if you had exercised than if you hadn't.
So, that's why I won't let the scale tell me what to do: especially if it's telling me odd and starnge things. Get back to your exercise as soon as you can--and do what you can. Something is always better than nothing.
You should still work out. I've noticed the same thing - I've missed excercising for maybe a week or so and ntoiced an unexplained whoosh on the scales. My theory is it's because when you exercise your muscles take water to repair themselves so if you're doing a regular exercise programem that's building some muscle you may have more water retention. A week off exercise gives your muscles a long break and chance to repair and you get the woosh and can see how much weight you really lost over the previous few weeks. Of course being very busy if you're sticking to plan will also born plenty of calories too. You do need ot keep up with the exercise to see good results though as building muscles helps increase your BMR which helps you burn more fat even when not exercising
We lose blood plasma within 48 hours of stopping cardio exercise and that may be what you're seeing on the scale. Our cardiovascular systems don't need as much plasma to circulate oxygen without aerobic exercise. Gaining and losing blood plasma is the same reason, along with sore muscles, that some people see a "weight" gain when they start an exercise program.
I don't think any of us care much about how much plasma we have or how much it weighs. All that matters is fat loss, and exercise helps with fat loss rather than hurting it. Alana nailed the reasons very well.
Training has a pronounced effect on the heart, says Matthew Hickey, the director of a human performance laboratory at Colorado State University. Athletes develop a lower resting heart rate, their hearts beat slower during exercise, and their hearts are larger than they were before training began.
They also have a greater blood plasma volume, which allows the heart to pump more blood with each beat. One of the first and most noticeable effects of detraining is that that plasma volume is lost.
“It’s water in your plasma,” said Joseph Houmard, the director of the Human Performance Laboratory at East Carolina University. “You just lose it. There’s no reason to keep it.”
Plasma water is lost amazingly fast, said Dr. Paul Thompson, a marathon runner and cardiologist at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut.
“We once paid distance runners $10 a day not to run,” Dr. Thompson recalled. “They spent a lot of time in the men’s room urinating.” Two days into their running fast, he said, the men lost a little more than two pounds from water weight as their plasma volume fell 8 percent.
I agree with everyone here, don't stop. But, for a different reason I say it. DOnt stop because you are developing a new healthy habit and if you stop now, what are you going to replace that new healthy habit with? Probably something more seditary and way less healthy. Keep going to the gym, or doing what you were doing, even if its not for the weight loss benefit, it still benefits your body.
maybe I shouldn't work out???
