Hello everyone,

So, this past week and a half, I have been eating between 1200 - 1500 calories a day. On days I do my intense cardio like swimming and HILT, I don't gain and sometimes even lose, but on days of strength training and moderate cardio I always gain weight. It's slightly horrifying. I knew this would happen, going from 500 calories to 1200, but I thought it would start tapering off by now. It hasn't. I literally gain an average of 1 to 1 1/2 pounds on days I don't do hardcore cardio and then lose it on my high cardio days and do it all over again. There is just no way I can do that type of cardio every day. It would kill me. How long should I expect it to take for my metabolism to bounce back? Or will it be slow like this forever? Also, someone said I should eat above maintenance for a week to jumpstart my metabolism, but I can't imagine how much weight I would gain doing that. Is that really necessary?

Thanks in advance. I'm trying not to stress about this too much, but it's hard. I'm glad that I'm back on track to healthy eating though, as long as I don't gain back everything I lost.

I'd wait for the calorie 'experts' on here but at first sight I'd say you're eating way too little calories.
Things works this way, if you don't eat enough (and you seem to burn a lot), your body tries to save up on whatever you eat and basically stores it as fat, when there's more calorie availability and you still burn it, your body starts burning because it's sure there's food. It's a survival thing, actually our primitive systems only work about 'keeping alive' and don't care about 'fattening'.

When you do strength training, what causes your muscles to grow is the fact that your muscles develop tiny tiny little tears, and then heal over. When your muscles are developing after strength training, to help with the healing process, they tend to swell a little with water. What you are seeing on the scale after your weight training is completed is probably water weight.

I do want to congratulate you on eating above 1200 calories. I know that has been a struggle for you thus far. You are on the right track. Just keep at it.

Definitely true.

Also, looking at weight on a day-to-day basis seldom gives you the right information, because weight can fluctuate so much based on so many things. It isn't a "On day 1, I do X and Y and eat A and B, so on the morning of day 2, I lose 1 lb" sort of proposition. There are just too many variables. What I do today will have some effect on the scale tomorrow, but so will what I did yesterday, what I did the day before, and a host of hormonal/sodium/exercise and other factors.

You really want to look at the trend, not the day-to-day numbers. Is it overall holding steady, going up, or going down?

I want to echo what was said above. I keep a spreadsheet that tracks daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and bi-monthly trends. The daily graph is always bouncing all over the place. Looking at the others always helped me see the bigger picture and not panic when the scale jumped 3 lbs. overnight.

And - high intensity exercise always causes an increase for me - particularly if I am working some muscle groups that I haven't used for a while!

Stick with the higher calories, mix up the exercise - including enough REST so that your muscles can repair themselves and you will be fine! REALLY!

I don't think you can permanently wreck your metabolism. And, given your history, your body is probably still wary of the future. You haven't given it adequate nutrition for long enough for your metabolism to inch back up. It will, just keep doing what you know is right!

I am also going to agree with the other posters.

When you weight train, your muscles retain water as part of the repair process.

On your cardio days, your muscles are probably also retaining some water, but (1 1/2 pounds on average) less than on weight training days.

There is *no way* that you are alternately gaining and losing 1 1/2 pounds of real weight (fat/muscle) daily. That would be over 5000 calories up and down each day!

Water retention in muscles due to exercise is just one of the reasons weight naturally fluctuates, sometimes by several pounds.

Even tracking your wight weekly can be very misleading. You need to look at the trend over a period of several weeks.

as i undersrtand metabolism also depends on how often you eat... if your food intakes are spread way too far then body stores it as fat and if you eat little but often then body knows it doesnt need to store that food and metabolism works wonders then.... its not only about excercising - its also about how often you eat.

Maybe on the days you do intense exercise you just lose a lot of water through sweat and you gain it back on other days because you are more hydrated. I don't think you can see true effects of anything you do with regard to your diet by daily weigh-ins. You'll have to see over several weeks wheher here is a downward trend. There are weeks for me where I don't think I lost that much weight but if look at the overall trend over a month I see that in fact what I am doing to lose weight is effective.