Working out made me gain weight?

[boulderbug]

Pretty much my whole life I've (26f 5'1") been underweight. In high school I was about 80-95 lbs, but I also didn't eat very much and was tired all the time.

For a little over a year now, I've been bouldering. I joined a gym and go climbing with friends approx. 3 times a week. When I started, I was 115, and as I got stronger, I got to 120, and then 130. At first, the weight gain felt good and right- I was visibly gaining muscle. But the weight gain has continued, and I'm now up to 140. The thing I'm most sensitive about right now is my waistline and stomach. I no longer fit into pants and shorts that I was wearing just a year ago. My stomach sticks out more (my hypothesis is that I've built up my core muscles but done nothing about the fat encasing them, thus the size increase?).

I'm more fit than I've ever been in my life. But I'm also feeling insecure about my stomach. It used to be that I could eat whatever I felt like and not have to worry about my body, but now it seems like that might be changing.

I'm afraid to start strictly dieting as I've seen that lead to eating disorders in many of my friends. But I'm not sure what to do! Or if I should just buy new pants!

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

Hi @boulderbug ! Welcome to the Hive!

Working out does not directly cause weight gain. But it can indirectly lead to it.

Weight gain is caused by consuming more calories than you expend. The math is simple.
The reasons behind the math are not.

Working out increases the caloric demands on our body. We need to eat more, just to maintain our current body size. Our bodies like to maintain equilibrium. So typically, when we're burning more calories, we feel hungrier. So we want to eat enough to replace the calories we've consumed. This is generally a good thing.

In your case, you've increased your eating by more than was necessary for maintenance. You've been eating enough to gain weight, and your body put those extra calories to good use, building muscle mass and enabling you to get stronger and the fittest you've ever been. Which is awesome! If, however, you are continuing to gain weight beyond the desirable muscle gains, then you need to make a change, to alter the balance of calories in/calories out. There are a number of ways to do this beyond (and better than) calorie counting and restrictive diets.

1. Pay attention to the types of food you eat. Part of the calories out side of the equation is the work our bodies need to do to process the foods we eat. Simple sugars take little work to process. So almost all of the calories you consume as simple sugars need to be expended by other bodily processes, or they will end up on your waistline. Protein, and complex carbohydrates, on the other hand, take a lot more work for our bodies to process. We need to burn calories in order to access the calories in these more complex food sources. It also takes our bodies longer to process proteins and complex carbs. So we feel satisfied for longer, and end up eating less overall.

2. Pay attention to when you eat. If you are able to do your workouts on an empty stomach, this can help you to lose body fat. On the other hand, in order to better recover from a training session, it is important to eat at least a light, protein-rich snack, within half an hour of completing your workout. But you want to avoid eating a heavy meal close to bedtime.

3. Pay attention to your daily non-workout physical activity. Often times we think we're burning more calories as athletes and therefore need to eat more, but what actually happens is we become more sedentary during the non-workout portions of our day. So we don't consume any additional calories overall. (The situation with your muscle gain is also complex in this regard. Your body requires more calories now to maintain its increased muscle mass. But your improved muscles make you more efficient at moving, so you actually require less energy to complete the same physical tasks now as before.) Additionally: at your age, it is likely you've experienced changes in your lifestyle in recent years (transitioning from being a student/teenager to an adult) that have affected your overall activity level. Seemingly small things, like getting up every hour to walk from one classroom to another in high school, versus sitting in the same desk for eight hours a day at a desk job as an adult, make a difference. Especially when a number of these factors start to add up. Anything you can do to reverse this trend (take the stairs instead of the elevator, walk a few extra blocks to a further away bus stop instead of boarding at the closest one, park at the outside edge of the parking lot instead of hunting for the closest spot to the door, etc.) will help you to burn more calories overall.

DAREBEE has a number of Guides which discuss these ideas in more detail. You might want to check out:

Pre and Post Workout Nutrition
Training on Empty
How to Control Your Appetite
Hunger and Overeating
The Guide to Metabolism

I also recommend DAREBEETS, which is DAREBEE's sister site, focused on healthy recipes.

I too was skinny throughout high school, in spite of eating whatever I wanted. And I ate a lot of junk back then. A lot of potato chips. A lot of chocolate bars. I cannot get away with eating like that anymore. I still get cravings for chocolate, however. But now, instead of reaching for a candy bar, I'll grab a chocolate sweet potato brownie - a much healthier treat that's higher in fibre and protein, but much lower in sugar. My chocolate craving is satisfied, and I just ate something that is helping to support my strong muscles and active lifestyle as opposed to junk that will give me a sugar rush and leave me wanting more half an hour later. Making choices like this, consistently, over time, makes a big difference.