Why have I gained weight if I am dieting and exercising: these are the possible causes
Many people who want to start practicing physical exercise to lose fat , weight and ultimately improve their health and body composition find that after one or two weeks of training and diet, against all odds, instead of losing weight they have gained it. What could be happening to make this happen that a priori seems so counterintuitive?
In this article we explain the two main reasons that can explain why you are gaining weight when you have already started practicing physical exercise and following a healthy diet .
Physiological adaptations that you should take into account when you start training
There are many, but the one that concerns us today and that may explain why we have gained a little weight is glycogen storage and the increase in the expression of specific glucose transporters or GLUT4.
When we are beginners and we start training for the first time or even after a long time, the expression of glucose transporter proteins , GLUT4 ( glucose transporter type 4 ) , increases . This occurs as an adaptation to the stimulus produced by the muscle contraction that occurs during training.
These transport proteins are responsible for promoting the transport of glucose to specific tissues such as muscle. This greater reception of glucose by the muscle tissue increases the storage of glycogen in it. Glycogen is nothing other than glucose stored in the muscle or liver, which is why we can talk about muscle or liver glycogen.
In this way, weight training will cause an increase in glycogen storage above usual levels. This increase can already mean a small increase in body weight since a person weighing about 70kg can store about 400 or 500 grams of glycogen between muscle and liver. In addition, the glycogen to be stored carries with it 2 to 3 grams of water for each gram of glycogen, which could give increases in body weight of between half a kilo and a kilo and a half.
Of course, this is not bad news since we are talking about glycogen and intramuscular water, not fat. This can contribute to showing higher numbers on the scale but without the fat percentage having increased.
You can’t improve what you don’t measure
What we want to say at this point is that many people who begin to practice physical exercise on the one hand and take care of their diet on the other do not take into account the calories they are ingesting . Taking small steps in terms of better nutritional choices is a great achievement, and that is how the process should be, progressive, but it is very possible that if you stay at this point without having a minimum estimate of how much you eat you will not be able to lose weight.
And to lose fat and weight, a caloric deficit in the diet is necessary, that is, eating less than what is spent, or seen another way, spending more than what is eaten. We don’t mean that you have to be glued to an app counting calories, but at least have an estimate of the volume of food you consume. If you already have that notion and you don’t lose weight, you have two options: increase your caloric expenditure or decrease your intake (or both).
All of this that we are discussing is to try to respond to the fact that even by doing physical exercise and “diet” not only have you not lost weight but you have gained it. This can happen if you have no idea how much you eat since eating what we understand as healthy, which could give rise to debate in many cases, is not synonymous or at least a guarantee of eating with a calorie deficit.
