I am losing fat, but gaining weight. Why?!


Question: I am losing fat, but gaining weight. Why?
I am a fifteen year old male. I am six feet, three inches tall and I weigh 240 pounds.

In July, I weighed 280 pounds. I knew it was time for a change, so I started playing Dance Dance Revolution. A few months later, I was down to 220.

Just today, I looked at the scale, and it said 240 pounds. How could this have happened?

I moved from XXL in shirts to Large. I am on a strict 2,500 calorie-a-day diet. I only drink water. I exercise for an hour a night. I do not see how this happened.

I know someone will suggest muscle mass, and you may be partially correct, but do you honestly believe I gained 20 pounds of muscle in 2 months?

Does anyone have any recommendations as to what I could do differently? Do you have any new exercises I could try to lose weight?

Answers:

Hi, I agree it is probably muscle mass. It weighs much more than fat. If you're concerned try taking a look at wieght watchers diet. Load of info on there
http://www.weightwatchers.co.uk/Util/lnd/index_39v_nd.aspx



Try watching your salt intake and if you switch eating habits for example you were on a low carb diet then strting eating carbs again or if you eating more sweets or eating late at night. other then tht walking and eventually running so tht way your body isn't use to doing the same exercise or switch it up week by week. good luck



lol... muscle doesnt weigh more than fat... 1lb of muscle is the same as 1lb of fat... and adding 20lbs of muscle is EXTREMELY hard.. professional bodybuilders only gain like 5-8lbs of muscle in one bulking season of lifting, and i doubt ur bodybuilding so yeh its mostly fat.



muscle weighs more than fat but dont worry the fat will burn off after the muscle starts to build. 20 pounds is quite excessive though....for only 2 months....you are pretty tall ...dang thats some muscle can you tell its muscle??? maybe you should drink water maybe your retaining water too.



no your a big guy to begin with so your body was build that way. Obviously being fit or fat would be up to you to decide but it seems your adding muscle if your eating healthy and working out. nice job



You're gaining muscle.



solid muscle weighs MORE than flabby fat

keep up the good work



I agree with the mucle thing



i think it is the muscle mass....
how else could this have hapened?



Whenever a person decides to make a change in their level of fitness and start exercising a lot, they lose weight dramatically because the body is losing all the fat. However, if you continue to exercise, the body will reach a point where it will no longer burn fat, but develop muscle. After your body has burned off all the fat, it has not choice but to build muscle. The fact is that muscle weighs more than fat. Don't worry so much about your weight, as it is irrelevant. 220 is your weight without muscle and without fat. If you want to reach 220 again, lose the muscles, but 240 is most likely going to be your ideal weight if you want to be fit and healthy. And gaining 20 pounds in 2 months is not difficult to do, especially is you've been working out a lot. My advice: worry more about the way you feel, your fitness level, and your body fat ratio than your weight. Low weight does not mean fit and healthy.



Well cut back on your calories a little could help. It's hard to determine your exercise level from DDR You may be eating maintenance for your weight you are still in the fat burn zone but there are a couple of issues that might be impacting your weight loss/gain. Or because of the high level of intensity you may be eating too little and your body has hit starvation mode. Try this, eat smaller meals more often and make sure you are getting the proper balance of fat protein and carb in your diet for your age and exercise intensity. Also make sure the scale is zeroed properly.

If you are playing DDR only you may be hitting a plateau or worse you may be getting too accustomed to the game. For weight loss focus on changing up routines and building muscle. From experience I know DDR gets easier with practice, same experience showed that unless I progressed into harder difficulty levels I was sweating less, which means burning fewer calories. You want to keep intensity at the same level it was when you were doing ddr at 280 pounds and pushing yourself too hard. Now at 220 it's probably a lot easier to do a ddr set. Change it up a bit by adding a little weight with a weight belt, only 1 or two pounds makes a big difference, or make the game harder

Now muscle mass could be adding weight to you but I doubt it. You were fat at 280 and you are probably still fat at 240, actually at 240 I think you are just in the obese range. Your body has this protein running through it, called leptin, this protein uses energy as well as creates equilibrium in the body. When you gain weight the equilibrium level rises but once you lsoe weight it doesn't drop back down immediately. So your body's natural equilibrium state runs high. This state impacts the way you metabolize foods, produce muscle all sorts of fun stuff. if you were at a high weight it may keep you at a high balance meaning it is calling for more fat cells right now. It may be telling your body that dropping to 220 was a bad thing and a sign of starvation and your body reacted by storing material. It's hard to fix a protein. It takes time to change and doesn't always return to a lower equilibrium which means you have to push harder the lower your weight to stay at that weight. Meaning you have to kick that workout routine into higher gear the lower the weight. And it's time to add in muscle workouts to the mix. Also don't foget you were very sedentary during winter so you could have easily added weight from not moving around enough. Along with variation of workout, try moving the time around. Wake up early one day and do the ddr right before breakfast or add a weight routine to ddr on Wednesdays. Variation may be the key to get out of the doldrums of plateauing.

Experience




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