Reasons for weight gain after exercise
Stagnation of water
Water retention is a common cause of temporary weight gain. Premenopausal women are especially susceptible to weight fluctuations due to hormonal changes.
In addition, the menstrual cycle has a significant impact. Research from the International Association of Obstetrics and Gynecology has shown that fluid retention peaks on the first day of the menstrual cycle. Then it decreases in the middle phase and gradually increases during the 11 days preceding ovulation.
Another common cause of water weight gain is increased sodium intake.
. Among its main sources are salt, canned food, chips, salted and smoked foods. In this case, a simple pattern is observed: the more salty food we consume, the more liquid we drink. Excess water is retained in the body and causes discomfort.
Athletes also often drink drinks containing carbohydrates after training. Carbohydrates help restore muscle glycogen. But for every gram of glycogen stored in the body, 3 grams of water remain.
Building muscle mass
It's only natural that when you exercise a lot, you not only burn fat, but also develop muscle. They strengthen, grow and thereby affect weight.
This is especially noticeable in people who previously led a predominantly sedentary lifestyle.
A diet with plenty of protein also contributes to rapid muscle growth.
.
Wrong diet
Due to post-workout hunger, overeating may occur. To lose weight, you must be in a calorie deficit
.
You may find it difficult to keep track of everything you eat, but try writing down your meals at least once a week to check how much food you're actually consuming and what quality it is. Also follow our post-workout nutrition recommendations.
The other side of the coin is malnutrition
. This may sound counterintuitive, but it also contributes to weight gain.
How it works? Insufficient calorie intake causes the body to begin to break down muscle and store fat as it enters a period of starvation due to lack of energy.
The same principle applies to water. If you don't drink enough fluids, but at the same time, for example, you sweat for hours at the gym, this leads to dehydration. The body will begin to retain all available water, believing that the body is in danger.
Hormonal disbalance
The thyroid gland produces hormones that control metabolism, which is how your body uses energy. Its lack of activity can lead to weight gain.
The appearance of extra pounds is largely influenced by disruption of the production of hormones such as:
- Cortisol
- Thyroxine
- Insulin
- Testosterone
- Estrogen
In addition, polycystic ovary syndrome can provoke the appearance of excess weight. This disease also occurs as a result of hormonal imbalance. Common symptoms: irregular menstruation, acne, unwanted facial hair growth, etc.
It is also worth knowing that some drugs slow down, or even stop, the process of losing weight. Drug- related weight gain
, can have many reasons. Some medications stimulate appetite, others affect metabolism, accumulation and absorption of various substances, cause water retention, etc.
In any case, you cannot do without consulting a doctor, his recommendations and competent treatment.
Stress
While exercise is a great way to prevent stress, sometimes things don't go as planned. If you work full time, pick up the kids from daycare or school, do homework, cook dinner, and then try to fit exercise into your routine, this may only contribute to increased anxiety levels.
Listen to yourself and do everything possible to ensure that training fits harmoniously into your routine. Choose the sport that adapts to you, and not the other way around.
For example, training in the women's network of fitness clubs FitCurves
last only 30 minutes. At the same time, you can join a group lesson at any convenient time in almost all cities of Ukraine (Kyiv, Dnepr, Uzhgorod, Ternopil, etc.). There is no need to rearrange your schedule and shift all your activities for the sake of classes. In half an hour, on specialized hydraulic simulators, all major muscle groups are worked out and up to 500 calories are burned.
But let's get back to stress. When we feel it, the brain releases many chemicals, including adrenaline and cortisol. The latter is also known as the stress hormone. It signals the body to replenish food reserves and leads to increased appetite.
Recovery
For most people, recovery, or more precisely, sleep, is a big problem. When you don't get enough sleep, the hormones responsible for regulating your hunger levels (leptin and ghrelin) don't work properly and cause you to overeat.
Lack of sleep
cause the body to store more fat. And according to research published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, its quality also affects the likelihood of whether you'll have enough energy to exercise the next day.
Overtraining
This point is directly related to the previous one. While moderate physical activity has health benefits, overtraining syndrome is an imbalance between exercise and recovery. That is, a person performs too much exercise at too high an intensity without sufficient recovery time.
Overtraining can manifest itself in different ways: muscle pain, decreased immunity, irritability, injuries, irregular and unbalanced nutrition, etc.
Excessively frequent exercise also leads to stress-related hormonal fluctuations.
Develop a workout program that balances different types of exercise to suit your fitness level and goals. We have already talked about how often to train in one of our previous articles.
Weight and health
The ratio of a person’s weight and height affects not only external parameters, but also health. Deviation from the norm is fraught with disruption of metabolic processes, additional stress on the heart, blood vessels, bone skeleton, and a reduction in life expectancy. BMI (body mass index) is used to determine normal, overweight or underweight.
The BMI value is not universal. Most often it is used as an average, which must be adjusted based on the individual characteristics of the patient.
According to statistics, being overweight increases the risk of cancer by 14-20%, heart disease by 32%, and depression by 55%. Weight gain may be a symptom of hormonal disorders, malfunction of internal organs, infectious or inflammatory diseases. If you cannot explain the increase in the number on the scale, feel discomfort in your own body or uncharacteristic symptoms (shortness of breath, pain in the joints/heart, decreased activity, regular hunger), consult a doctor. But an increase in BMI is not always associated with disease. What are the possible causes of weight gain and how to get rid of those hated pounds?
Content:
- Weight and health
- Possible causes of weight gain
- How to get rid of excess weight?
What to do to avoid gaining weight after training?
- Make sure you are consuming enough calories. Undereating and overeating have equally bad effects on the body and interfere with the process of losing weight.
- Drink your daily amount of water. This prevents the body from storing it and helps reduce food cravings.
- Include proteins in your diet. They help muscles grow and develop properly, and at the same time, metabolism works better.
- Get enough sleep and give yourself time to recover. Lack of sleep can increase cortisol levels and cause increased appetite. And lack of rest leads to overtraining.
- Choose workouts that suit your abilities and goals.
How to properly train with free weights
Rules for performing strength exercises using free iron:
- Before the first training session, the athlete must learn the technique of performing the exercises - and it is better to do this with a trainer. When performing them, you should take into account the position of the body and the angle of inclination of its individual parts. It is important to know the correct amplitude and optimal frequency of movements. Any technical error could result in serious injury. This is especially true for an excessively arched back, a relaxed abdomen, and cases when the projectiles move by inertia.
- Thoughts need to be concentrated on doing the exercises. You should independently monitor each repetition to ensure that the technique is followed and the desired amplitude and frequency of movements are achieved. This is necessary to increase the effectiveness of training and minimize injuries.
- For each type of exercise you need to select the optimal weight. This is done experimentally. You need to select such a weight of the projectile that you can perform 7-12 repetitions with it to failure. You can calculate the optimal weight using special calculators, starting from one repetition with the maximum weight.
Free weights are a great alternative to exercise machines. They are good at developing athleticism, joint mobility, balance and pure strength. But athletes note that the best results can only be achieved with a competent combination of both types of training: with simulators and with hardware. Their alternation allows the stabilizing muscles to develop well and quickly gain weight.
How to increase working weights in exercises
We figured out how to choose the working weight for the exercise and what you need to rely on (remember about 7-30 seconds and different speeds of the exercise?).
Now it’s time to talk about how to increase these same weights in order to cause hypertrophy (growth) of muscle cells.
So, let's say you've chosen a working weight that allows you to experience muscle failure in the range of 7-30 seconds.
How to start increasing the load on the apparatus?
Very simple. We will only use increasing working weights and increasing the number of repetitions, because... These are the safest methods and are suitable for the vast majority of people.
Let’s say you came on Monday and began to perform your working weight on the incline bench press: 60 kg for 6 reps.
This means that in your next chest workout you will need to do 7 reps, then 8, then 9 (in subsequent workouts).
A training diary will help you be so meticulous in tracking weights and repetitions. Only this way and no other way. There will be no progress any other way, friends.
We write everything down in a training diary.
Conclusion: we increase the number of repetitions with our working weight, recording everything in the training diary.
But to what point should you increase repetitions?
Based on the above, it takes up to 30 seconds for muscle failure to occur.
If muscle failure occurs at 35-40 or 50 seconds, then it’s time to increase the working weight.
Typically, in the classical sense, the repetition range is kept in the region of 6-12. This will make it much easier for you to navigate.
When the number of repetitions reaches 12, increases the working weight! For 2.5-5 kg.
Now you are already doing 62.5 or 65 kg. But you won’t be able to do it 12 times, and your number of repetitions has dropped again to 6-8. In the following workouts, you do not add weight, you continue to increase the number of repetitions until it reaches 12.
This is called linear progression of load!
It works great, especially in the first year or two of your training and gives excellent growth to your muscles.
Also, there are nonlinear, microperiodized schemes, which I talked about in the article on microperiodization.
But for most, in the beginning this system will be enough.
Conclusion: After the number of repetitions in the approach has reached 12, we increase the working weight by 2.5-5 kg, after which we again gradually increase the number of repetitions to 12.
Free weights[edit | edit code]
Under free weights
In bodybuilding and fitness we understand barbells, kettlebells and dumbbells. Some individuals also train with weights. Strength sports also use weighted ropes, sleds, sandbags, weighted balls, kegs, lifting stones, and fat barbells. In health fitness, there are various weighted vests and ankle and wrist weights.
Anything that is not fixed and whose trajectory is determined by the biomechanics of the body, and not by the “mobility” of the simulator, is free weight
. The point of working with free weights is to develop athletic qualities, not only pure strength, but also balance, joint mobility, as well as specific skills - “assembling” the center of the body under load, maintaining a neutral back.
Benefits of working with free weights[edit | edit code]
A significant advantage of working with free weights is versatility
. With dumbbells and a barbell, you can not only work out all the muscles of the body, but also train for endurance and increase the efficiency of the cardiovascular system. Such equipment can give us mass, strength, “relief”, and help in “burning” calories. A minimum set of weights is enough to build a home gym, and perform more than 30 different exercises for all muscle groups.
Proper technique for working with free weights is the key to preventing household injuries. It allows you to eliminate various “distortions” during lifting weights from the floor, gain the skill of squatting with a neutral back, improve the range of motion in the shoulder joints, and thereby avoid injury when lifting weights upward.
Working with free weights actively engages almost all the muscles of the body. With such weights we do basic exercises. They involve not only target groups, but also stabilizer muscles. The result is not only harmonious development, but a greater training effect. With simple equipment, we expend more energy during training and load more muscle groups per unit of time.
Training with free weights
- an important skill that allows you to train in almost any gym, while traveling, on trips, and even at home. This helps to avoid being tied to a specific gym and make training more regular.
How to choose a working weight for an exercise
Working weight is the weight of the equipment (weight) that the athlete uses in a given interval of repetitions with the correct technique for performing the exercise.
Bodybuilding, in the classical sense, involves high-volume training with a large number of sets in the middle rep range.
In general, it's not about the number of repetitions as such. It's about the time the muscle is under load!
Reproduction of energy in muscles
Our body and muscles are a constantly adapting mechanism. When there is increased energy consumption in the muscles, they urgently begin to synthesize new energy. But for any process there is a limit.
There are two main ways to synthesize energy:
- Glycolysis.
- Oxidation.
In order for glycolysis to begin, at least 30 seconds must pass, and for oxidation to begin, at least 2 minutes!
We will consider only the first method, because... oxidation is suitable for very long-term exercise, from which, in the classical sense, muscles do not grow.
By the way, I wrote about such training in an article about slow-twitch muscle fibers. With their help, you can grow muscles completely.
So, it is glycolysis that allows us a long approach lasting, say, a minute.
This is good if you want to develop strength endurance, but if you want to grow muscle mass, it is bad.
Because as soon as glycolysis comes into play, 30-35 seconds after the start of the approach, the myosin bridges begin to receive enough energy to complete the coupling and uncoupling and there will be no microtraumas.
The attentive reader is interested in the question: why, if the muscles begin to receive sufficient energy funding, we cannot continue the approach with the same working weight?
Friends, the fact is that the resynthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in muscles causes the accumulation of orthophosphoric acid (we are talking about glycolysis) and lactic acid (if we are talking about oxidation).
An increase in the acidity of the environment, in turn, leads to a decrease in the ability of myosin bridges to adhere, therefore the force of muscle contraction decreases.
This is why you will not be able to work with heavy weights for a long time.
Remember in the article about pumping I talked about what the pumping effect is? When you can't continue the approach because of the burning sensation.
Indeed, this very burning sensation during the approach is the work of acids, which force us to ultimately lower the weight and give up.
An effective working approach is when you have time to injure muscle fibers thanks to energy reserves (creatine phosphate), before the rate of energy production matches the rate of energy expenditure.
And it will begin to level out after about 30 seconds.
If the load allows you to work for more than 30 seconds, then most likely the rate of energy expenditure in your muscles will not be sufficient for microtrauma and subsequent growth.
Conversely, if the weight is too heavy, and you can perform a set within 7 seconds (for example, for 2-3 repetitions), then the energy consumption will be excessive, but you will still stop before this reserve is significantly depleted, due to slight oxidation , which will not allow you to overcome such a heavy weight again.
How many reps should you do in a working set?
I think you have already guessed that you need to do a number of repetitions that will allow you to reach failure within 7-30 seconds.
In other words, the number of repetitions is not important at all! The time the muscle is under load is important.
6, 10 or 12 repetitions, all this is very arbitrary and made for convenience in order to roughly understand how much weight to throw in a working approach, but the speed of repetitions is not taken into account here.
Let's say you can take your working weight and do 10 repetitions on the biceps until failure. The failure occurred, for example, at 25 seconds. Fine.
But you can lighten the weight and perform the exercise at a faster pace, doing 20 repetitions. Failure can also occur at 25-30 seconds, which is also good. Do you understand? The number of repetitions does not matter.
But if you had done the exercise in the original calm style with a lighter weight, then you would have fallen out of the required time period.
The conclusions are as follows:
- Heavy weight: do fewer reps (slow tempo).
- Light weight: do more reps (fast pace).
From here we get a simple formula: we select a weight that allows us to achieve muscle failure in the range of 7-30 seconds! Plus, we speed up the pace of the exercise.
