adminWell, the last 10 days have been slightly weird with weight loss, to say the least. Even though I’ve stuck to 1500 calories every day my weight went up by 4lbs. Now I didn’t want to panic but did sit and think if I had eaten something and not put it on my net diary app. I am pretty vigilant about it now therefore it’s second nature for me to grab my phone and add the product and calories so I can be pretty sure I hadn’t eaten something extra. I was baffled. Had a little look on the net as to why you could put weight on when dieting. I came across an article where someone said that they had put weight on whilst still dieting and exercising.
Maintaining a two-pounds-a-week loss is tough. What you are likely experiencing is just your body readjusting, and some water weight fluctuations. When I exercise intensely, my muscles hold onto water. Just continue what you are doing, and you should see the scale start to go in the right direction again before long. – Cocochickdele
Mini-Tears In Your Muscles
Here’s another culprit. If you go from not working out to working out very hard, your muscles will most likely be sore for the next 2 or 3 days. This is because when you work out, you essentially create mini-tears in your muscles. Working out too intensely can cause these tears to become overly inflamed to the point where the mini-tears start to swell with fluid. This excess fluid in the muscles can cause an initial, excess weight gain.
It’s interesting to note that for about 3 days my back was inflamed (due to an old injury where I fell down a complete flight of concrete stairs on my back at the Royal Albert Hall when I was 14). When I do too much, the base of my spine swells and moving is very difficult. My hips then become painful, as does my left knee. This ultimately results in no exercise until it subsides.
A lightbulb went off in my head at this point. Being inflamed means the muscles hold on to fluid to repair them and therefore it’s just water retention for good reasons. Phew. At least it’s not fat. I’d also noticed that I hadn’t been drinking as much water over those days. When I’m sitting in the garden I am constantly refilling my glass with water whereas when I’m resting I don’t. I can go for hours without having a drink. I’ll probably grab a can of caffeine-free coke but I won’t drink enough water. So that has to stop. I have to make sure I drink 8 pints of water each and every day. I made the mistake of not drinking enough a month ago which resulted in constipation so I have to change that habit and drink more on a regular basis.
After doing this for the last couple of days I’m pleased to say that I’ve not only lost the 4lb water gain but lost another 5lb on top of that. Today I’m 28 stone 7lb. Next target, to say goodbye to the 28 – I’ve not weighed that for about 10 years so quite excited to think I’ll hit that in a few weeks.