I am a 29 year old female, 5'2" and about 5 months ago I weighed approximately 123. The past 2-3 months I have been working out far more regularly than ever before; I do a combination of DVDs (Jillian Michaels, yoga, etc.) that include both cardio and strength training. I also do cardio at the gym. My diet could probably include more vegetables, but otherwise isn't terrible (i.e. steel cut oatmeal for breakfast, whole wheat bread and boar's head tky for lunch, etc - I stick to whole grains, low sugar foods, etc - rarely ever fried or enriched foods!) But now I am at almost 140 pounds!!! I have NO idea how to explain that significant of an increase. I understand that muscle weighs more, but I cannot justify that much weight gain to it; nor does the fact that my pants are tight justify it (no, not pregnant lol). I am going to begin a food log. I will begin drinking more water. But I just wondered if anybody had any thoughts as to what else may be causing this!! It's frustrating and embarrassing.

You say you eat healthy food, but it is easy to still eat too much of it. How many calories have you eaten every day for the last week? Is that number normal for you?

If you don't know how many calories you have eaten, start finding that out now and figure out how many calories you are eating.

That is the most likely culprit. More exercise means an increase in hunger, and if you are eating calorie-dense food (even healthy ones) when you are hungry, you could have EASILY started consuming a few hundred more calories a day, which could quickly add up to a weight gain.

I'm going to second tracking your food intake for a few days. There's lots of things you can tweak. Calorie amounts, adding good fats, removing carbs, adding protein .... I'm a big fan of trying small changes.

It likely is food consumption caused by an increased appetite. I've been lifting weights and doing cardio for 20 years and cannot imagine anything else being responsible for that kind of weight gain. Granted, depending on what you are doing, you may have gained a little muscle, especially as a newbie to exercise. You may also be retaining water due to muscle tear and repair. You may be at a certain point in your cycle, too. There are lots of reasons for water retention. But it does sound like you have also gained real weight that isn't attributable to muscle, and that would be due to taking in too many calories.

Eating too little can wreak havoc as well, but that significant a gain is really far more likely to be the result of eating too much. It is remarkably, frustratingly easy to undo all one's efforts with exercise by overindulging in food.

i just cant understand why people seem to think they can eat limitless amounts of healthy food, as long as its "clean" food! You CAN get fat off of broccolli people!! A calorie is a calorie. Your body doent care if you are eating a calorie from white flour or transfat, or an apple or whey protein. If you eat more calories than your body burns, you gain weight. mystery solved!

BTW, i wasnt necessarily direction that at you LEC A lot of people dont seem to realize that calories DO count.

FWIW, especially on days i do hard lifting i experience a very NOTICABLE increase in my hunger all day..... perhaps since you started lifting, you starting eating more, without realizing it...slightly bigger portions, or more frequent little "nibbles" out of the fridge or the candy jar..... those cals count too!

I second the portion control of healthy foods.

For breakfast, I eat old fashioned oats, raisins, diced apple (or banana or strawberries) with unsweetened soy milk and cinnamon and nutmeg to taste.

Really healthy, right?

So, while I'm here hanging around at 3Fc, posters keep nagging about calories, calories, measure, measure, calories. And I'm having problems breaking down the last twenty pounds, so finally I'm all like: "I hate counting calories, I don't want to count calories, I'm not counting calories. You can't make me count calories---I mean, lookit how healthy I eat. Darn you, 3FC, darn you to heck!"

But then, just for grins, one day I make a bowl of stuff and measure my breakfast portion.

And then I count calories.

Um. Right. Did you know that 1/2 cup of oats has 150 calories in it? And that if you eat two cups of oats, that's um, er 600 FREAKING CALORIES??????

And raisins. Don't get me started. Okay, fine. one measly 1/4 cup--225 calories.



Anyhoo, I was regularly consuming around 900 calories for my really healthy breakfast. (The only thing that wasn't healthy was the calories).

So now (darn you, 3FC! Darn you to heck!) I *measure* 3/4 cup of oatmeal and 2 TEASPOONS of raisins and a nice apple with 1cup of unsweetened soy milk.

350 calories.

Needless to say, I've started measuring (darn! heck!) and counting calories of all the healthy stuff that I suspected I was eating huge portions of.
Cottage cheese. Yogurt. Really yummy and chewy and full of nutty goodness bakery bread. 120 per slice (groan!)

So, the long and short of it is that since March I've been practicing portion control....and I've lost seven pounds.

Which makes want to kiss you all....

Thank you everybody! I have been logging EVERYTHING I put in my mouth and am measuring what I eat, as well. This will surely be helpful lol Dang it, I DO get hungry when I workout but I gotta be smart about it. Thanks again!

Lec,

You will probably find that once you start tracking what you eat and being accountible for tracking it - you will actually eat less than you were and the weight will start to come off. You may say to yourself that you havent' changed anything, but just being accountible will make you change.