Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
Options
weight gain...why?!?!
![[Deleted User]](https://w3.vanillicon.com/391095c1069f34663f6af035ce548d19_100.png)
i have fallen out with my wieghing scales.
i have been eating, what i thought was really healthily recently. i have run sensibly!! and i've just put on 3 pounds..and i don't understand!!
any explanations? and muscle density wouldn't make a difference of that much, would it?
i have been eating, what i thought was really healthily recently. i have run sensibly!! and i've just put on 3 pounds..and i don't understand!!
any explanations? and muscle density wouldn't make a difference of that much, would it?
The materials in this website are in no way intended to replace the professional medical care, advice, diagnosis or treatment of a doctor, qualified personal trainer, therapist, dietitian or nutritionist Runners's World, Part of the Hearst UK well-being network © Copyright 2017
Comments
If I am embarking on a complete get fit and thinner regime I do a complete measure and weigh and the out and back. But tend to rely on the how the clothes feel on trick most.
But if you have been doing quite high intensity runs rather than long slow runs then the glycogen usage will probably have stimulated your appetite so that you will have eaten a bit more than you think. It will also have stimualted increased storage in your muscles and of course each gramm of carb stored brings with it 3 times that in water. So hopefully this is not a fat gain at all. But of course without a food diary or calorie measure it is difficult to say. However be reassured that there are other reasons for weight gain than simply extra muscle or fat.
To combat this, she weighs herself every day at a consistent time of day. We then use the average of last week and the average of this week to give a more reliable measure of weight change.
Even when the average has reduced by about 1lbs, the lightest day of last week has often been lighter than the heaviest day of this week. So if we'd only been weighing once per week, and had just happened to do it on these days, we would have thought she'd gained weight when really she'd lost 1lbs!
- weigh each day at same time
- discard the highest and lowest readings for that week
- average the remaining 5 readings
- then compare with previous weeks
this has the advantage of discounting readings which are artificially high or low due to fluid retention, dehydration etc.
Very Simply:
It shows whether the difference in weight between weeks is statistically significant by looking at the average values and the spread of values.
Not Quite so Simply for Those who are Interested:
It calculates the chances of the weight measurements coming out as they have purely due to the random ups and downs (i.e. if there was no 'real' change in weight). If the chances of this are very low (<5%) then we consider the change in weight to be statistically significant.
I'll add that my daily weight can vary by as much as 3 pounds depending on how hard I'm training. I don't believe I'm dehydrated, but rather I think my muscles retain a bit of fluid if worked hard (not swollen as such, but they can look a bit puffy - like they've lost definition - if that makes sense)
Having switched to daily light runs, rather than my old run hard/rest/hard/rest regime, my weight is now remarkably consistent!
i think debbs you might have been right though!! oh the joys of being a woman. but at least it goes!
I wouldn't worry about it. Its just a mathematical tool. I stick the numbers in and an answer pops out. This answer just says how confident you can be that the weight really has changed.
I'll try to give an example:
The average value on a regular dice = 3.5
If you roll a dice twenty times and average all the numbers you get, you might get an answer of 3.58.
Do the same again and you might get 3.47.
But is this difference meaningful? (i.e. has the dice changed?)
If you were to enter all the numbers into the stats test, it would return a very low %confidence that there was any difference between the two dice (in this case the same dice!)
If you did the same with a dice that had been renumbered 2 to 7 instead of 1 to 6, you'd get an average of near 4.5
Compare the values from the new dice with the values from the regular dice using the stats test and it would give a much higher confidence that the dice were different (even though there would be plenty of overlap in individual values).
My partners weight readings from week 1 are like the numbers from one dice. Her weight readings from week 2 are like the numbers from another dice.
The question "did these weight readings come from people of different weights?" (i.e. has my partner's weight changed?), is just like the question "did these numbers come from di with different values?)
Has this helped at all?
I just binned the scales. Easy-peasy!