Weight gain after workouts

Alright.  I seem to have a problem that many people face.  "The Plateau".  I'll have a string of losses, leading me to be more motivated to workout harder, knowing I can push myself.  I keep eating healthy, drinking lots of water but when I get on the scale, I have an average of a 2lb gain.  I have done some research and found that I am not the only one who has this problem.

I'll start with something that happens to everyone that should be addressed: Water Retention in Muscles after Exercise

What this article says is basically this: water retention happens during and after exercise and is not always a good thing.  When you exercise, your body tries to cool itself down, causing you to sweat, which creates an imbalance of fluids in your body, causing you to become mildly dehydrated and very thirsty.  So you drink water.  If you drink enough water, after your workout, your body will retain it to soothe your muscles and balance your fluid levels.  If you don't drink enough, you could suffer from heat stroke and dehydration.  Dehydration causes more fluid retention.

See next article: Retaining Water After Workouts

This one addresses problems that could be causing excess water retention.  Dehydration and sodium intake being the biggest culprits.  So you need to find out the amount of water your body needs to stay hydrated.  This means we need to find out how much water we are losing during our workouts.

Sweat Rate

Calculating sweat rate is pretty simple.  There's a video in the above link along with a calculator (although its all metric because I love Embarrassing Bodies... you should check out their bodies guides to checking your moles, breasts and genitals... just to stay healthy).  All you have to do is weigh yourself with the water you intend to drink during your workout before your workout, time your workout, and then weigh yourself again with the remainder of the water you didn't drink during your workout.  Then you can calculate what your sweat rate is.  For every pound you lose during exercise, you need to replace it with at least 16 oz of water.  This will keep you properly hydrated.

The next topic that I needed to do some research about was whether or not the weight gain could be from muscle gain.  This brought up a big debate:  Can you gain muscle and lose fat at the same time?

The counteraction here is that to gain muscle, you have to eat more calories than you burn and to lose fat, you have to eat less calories than you burn.  But can it be done?  The short answer is maybe.

Can you lose Fat and build Muscle at the same time?

No, you can't lose fat and build muscle at the exact same time, but over the course of a week, you can strengthen muscle.  It's all about taking advantage of the anabolic window.  When your body is losing fat, you body is taking in less calories than it is burning, causing it to take energy from stored fat cells.  When your body is building muscle, your body needs a calorie surplus to build new tissue.  Your body cannot use your fat tissues to build new muscle tissue because they are different tissues.  So if you are eating under your caloric budget to lose weight, you aren't actually building new muscle, you are strengthening the tissues you already had.   So, if I wanted am training to lose fat, I will notice a difference in muscle tone because my muscles are stronger and my body fat is lesser, not because my muscles are bigger.   If you want bigger muscles, you need a calorie surplus with your strength training.

Sounds a little tricky, and it is.  Honestly, I still get confused about it, so here's my rule of thumb: eat evenly throughout the day, eat balanced all day, making sure to have the bulk of your carbohydrates before the time you plan to work out and the bulk of your proteins after your workout.  This way, your body had carbohydrates to burn with fat during your workout, giving you plenty of workout energy and then has plenty of protein to rebuild torn muscles.

We will all have fluctuations in weight and as I have found, weight gain after an intense workout is a common and normal occurrence and should not be something to fret about.