Why Am I Gaining Weight? The Guide to Putting on Muscle and How it Helps Burn Fat

Maybe you’ve just started your fitness journey. And you’ve been good about it–you’ve maintained a routine, you’re eating well, and you’re doing what your trainer tells you to do.

And yet, you’re gaining weight. And you step on the scale thinking, “Why am I gaining weight? I’m doing everything I’m supposed to!”

Here’s the truth: you might be doing everything right and still gain weight. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though, if you’re gaining muscle.

Here, we’re breaking down why you’re gaining weight, how your metabolism makes that happen, and why you should take muscle gains as a big win.

Why Am I Gaining Weight?

First, let’s answer the basic question: why are you gaining weight?

This can result from one of three things:

1. You haven’t sufficiently changed your diet and it’s counteracting your workout
2. You added too many calories to compensate for muscle growth
3. You’re gaining muscle

Ideally, you would be dealing with the third option.

Why the Initial Weight Gain?

When you first begin a workout program, your body goes through a lot of changes. You’re basically recalibrating your body to work differently, sort of like programming a computer to approach a problem differently.

Here’s how it works.

When you start an exercise regimen, especially strength training, it puts stress on your muscle fibers. In weightlifting, specifically, you’re creating microscopic tears in your muscle tissue. This is why you’re sore or achy after a workout.

Don’t worry–this is actually a good thing! By creating these microscopic tears, you’re actually forcing your muscle to grow back stronger.

However, this micro-tearing (and some inflammation) does create two responses in the body:

1. A healing response
2. Delayed-onset muscle soreness

The healing response, in particular, will cause water retention, since your body will keep fluid around the inflammation to heal it.

While you might be tempted to cut back food to compensate for weight gain, don’t. This is when it’s most important to feed your muscles properly–otherwise, they won’t be able to heal and get stronger.

How Your Metabolism Works

With this in mind, let’s talk about how your metabolism works.

Basically, your metabolism is the engine that keeps you going. It’s what converts the food you eat into energy your body can use to run, think, and keep your heart beating.

Converting Food to Energy

Metabolism is a complex biochemical process, and it’s not as simple as energy in, energy out. It’s also not limited to when you’re working out.

You see, even when you’re at rest, your body needs calories to maintain hidden, unconscious functions. Like, say, breathing.

The amount of calories you need to maintain these basic functions at rest is known as your basal metabolic rate (BMR). It’s influenced by a variety of factors, including age and body composition.

There’s not much you can do to change your BMR. You can, however, have some effect on how your body burns calories at rest through physical activity.

Physical Activity

Outside of food processing and automatic body functions, physical activity accounts for the rest of the calories you burn in the course of a day. Here, the math is pretty basic.

If you do a lower amount of physical activity or do a less intensive activity, you’re going to burn less than someone who does calorie-torchers like running, HIIT, or strength training.

However, to be abundantly clear: the goal of strength training is not simply to burn calories and tweak your metabolic rate.

As we said, your body is in flux when you start a new workout regimen. The point of this regimen is to get your body to settle into a pattern that’s better equipped to handle frequent physical activity, and thus healthier for you in the long run.

Why Gaining Muscle is a Must

Part of this process is gaining muscle.

Many women are wary of gaining muscle and bulking up, which is why they often avoid weightlifting like the plague. But women should be lifting weights.

More to the point, there are different types of strength training and weightlifting depending on what your goals are.

There are a variety of reasons why it’s important to gain muscle on your fitness journey. Here, we’re breaking down two big ones.

Skeletal Muscle is Metabolically Active

For starters, muscle is actually metabolically active.

You see, both muscle and fat burn calories in the course of a day. A pound of fat burns about two or three calories a day, while a pound of muscle burns between seven and ten.

So it’s not that many extra calories in the course of a day, but a slightly elevated metabolism (and a healthier body composition) works in favor of your overall wellbeing.

Muscle Helps Prevent Injury

Now, there’s more to strength training than just muscle building, and muscle does more for you than just burn calories.

Building your muscle mass (even when you’re building lean muscle) helps strengthen your connective tissues, which in turns helps boost your bone density. In plain English, it means that you’re less prone to injury because your body is stronger.

Pretty awesome, right?

Strengthening from the Inside Out

Now that you’ve answered the question, “Why am I gaining weight?” are you ready to use your new knowledge to your advantage?

We offer a variety of personal training packages designed to fit your needs. If you would like to schedule a consultation, click here. Or, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch.