Exercise and weight gain – why you might need to slow it down
You exercise. You put in the effort and time. Yet, your body seems to be gaining unintentional weight.
What is going on??
I want to start by saying I hear you and I see you. Gaining unintentional weight with exercise is beyond frustrating. You are giving it your all + doing it all, yet your body either isn’t letting go of weight or is packing more on. It’s mind-boggling and exhausting, but gaining weight with exercise is very common for women.
I also want to say that weight loss isn’t something I specialize in nor promote because of the sole fact we are bioindividual. Just like there isn’t a “one size fits all” diet, there isn’t a “one size fits all” size. There is only one YOU. You are beautiful and your body loves you.
Instead of weight loss, I am about learning to tune into your body to find out what it needs, on an intuitive and scientific level, and loving it for all it does for you. This means feeding it nutrient-dense + whole foods, keeping your body moving, reducing stress, prioritizing sleep, and practicing self-love. When you do these things, your body begins to come back into balance. It’s important to meet your body where it is at and nourish it. In time, if weight loss is a goal of yours, the weight will come off when your body is properly supported and feels safe. Holding onto what you may see as “excess weight” might actually be your body’s ideal weight...something to keep in mind!
So hang in there, know you aren’t alone, and kindly remind yourself that your body is strong + beautiful. Now, let’s dive in.
There are typically a handful of factors contributing to why your body is clinging to the weight. At one point in time in my life, I was experiencing almost all of these factors. I was unknowingly breaking down my body while simultaneously setting myself up for a long healing journey. If only I had known what I was doing! Now, you may be experiencing one of these factors, or 2 or 3, or you might be experiencing one now and another later. The point is, you know what factors to look out for so you can start making a change and prevent further breaking down your body.
Weight Gain Factors
poor nutrition
not enough sleep
stress
working out too much
I am going to break down each of these in just a moment, but first I want to touch on stress. We all experience stress in our lives. It’s a given. The difference is how we approach + manage the stress + understand where the stress stems from. Each time you exercise, your body undergoes stress. But, this is good stress called eustress. When the body is overworked or overtrained, it goes into distress – aka survival mode – and switches to storing fat to protect itself. Let’s move the spotlight on that for a moment.
Over-extending or over-training your body will have negative implications. Think adrenal exhaustion, hormone imbalances, blood sugar dysregulation, excessive soreness, achy joints, etc. Over-extending/ training could be simply exercising longer than 30 minutes. Based on Alisa Vitti’s research, she discovered that once the body uses up the circulating glucose in the body (after about 30 minutes), the adrenals pump out cortisol, signaling your fat cells to switch to sugar to provide energy for a longer workout.
However, exercises that your body can do + feels good to you can lead to muscle building, an improved mood, and joint + cardiovascular health. Eustress is good for your body if your body can handle it. This means if you are under a lot of stress to begin with (due to a demanding job, motherhood, an autoimmune disease, major life change, etc.), exercising too much or too hard can throw your body into survival mode. Losing weight is not at the top of your body’s list because it sees storing fat as a way to store + conserve energy.
Now that you understand how stress plays a role in exercise, let’s briefly discuss the factors that can cause unintentional weight gain with exercise.
Nutrition
Eating processed foods, drinking sugary beverages, and consuming lots of caffeine are just a few things that can add to the toxic load on your body and deplete it of the vital nutrients it craves. On the other hand, consuming nutrient-dense, whole foods will nourish your body and provide it what it needs, especially in times of stress.
Sleep
Lack of sleep can lead to weight gain as you tend to eat more when you’re tired. Perhaps you’ve experienced what it’s like to exercise after a night of poor sleep or minimal sleep. It was rough, wasn’t it? It’s moments like that where sleep should especially be prioritized. Sleep gives the body time to restore and recharge. It is also the time to focus on the microbiome (gut) management and repair of ligaments and muscle.
Stress
This one is pretty self-explanatory, but still important to note! Stress can contribute to weight gain because of the route it takes when it’s in “fight or flight” mode. Your adrenals will pull nutrients that were meant to nourish other areas of your body to keep pumping out cortisol and epinephrine so you can keep “fighting or fleeing” from the situation. When you’re dealing with stress, the last thing you want to do is take on more stress like intensive exercise or too much exercise.
Speaking of too much exercise…
Working out too much
Exercising too much or even too hard can wear down your body, especially if your body is already at a point where it can’t handle intense movement. Your body needs energy and rest to recover from training. If you aren’t doing that, your body continues to stay stressed out. Ladies, hitting it hard + not eating enough absolutely wrecks your body. You need, need, need to make sure you’re eating enough + balancing your macronutrients (protein, carbs, and fat). Again, when your body is under stress it goes into survival mode. And when your body feels unsafe, it will do all it can to protect itself, like storing fat.
In a nutshell – your body knows how much it can handle and this will change from season to season. If you find yourself in a high-stress season, hitting it hard at the gym or running your body in the ground to “burn off that cookie”, isn’t supportive of your body. In reality, it is adding to the load your body is already carrying and it will lead to negative implications. Pushing yourself to lose or sustain a certain weight creates a cascade of negative effects on your endocrine system, impacting your HPA axis (hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis) and thyroid. It can get pretty ugly if left unchecked.
I should mention the flipside to this – exercising too little. If you live a sedentary lifestyle, that alone can lead to weight gain. It’s important to move your body every day, but it doesn’t need to be intense movement. Lean into functional movement – movement that feels good to your body – and start small. Little steps build over time!
If you can relate to any of these factors, backing off intense exercise might just be the ticket for you this season.
Evaluate Your Body
Identify how you feel before, during, and after exercising. Focus on energy levels, your joints, mental clarity, and how your body feels overall (ex. exhausted, immediately sore, slow-moving). You might feel great before, during, and after your workout – you’ve hit your groove with movement that feels good. For many of you, that’s not the case. And that's ok! I have been there. It isn’t about taking a step back from exercise altogether (although there is a time and place for that), but about scaling back the kind of exercise you’re doing.
Transition to Gentler Movement
If you’re experiencing –
fatigue
low energy
joint pain
Consistent soreness
slow recoveries
muscle wasting
low motivation
high stress
I am going to go out on a limb here and say you’re probably over-exercising and under-eating to lose weight or engaging in exercises that are too much for your body. Have I struck a chord? Whether I have or not, please give yourself grace. It’s ok to move away from intense exercising to gentler forms of movement for a season. Doing so will allow your body to recover + heal and give you the space you need to find what feels best to you.
“You do not get fitter when you train, you get fitter when you recover and fuel properly.”
Listen to your body and see how it responds to the exercises you’re doing. The best thing about gentle movement is that it helps your body to move out of sympathetic and into a parasympathetic state (think calm, cool, and collected). It is in the parasympathetic state that your body can focus on healing – not the sympathetic “fight or flight” state. This is why warming up and cooling down are so important. Warming up preps your body for movement + reduces the chance of injury, while cooling down eases your body into a calm state so it can recover fully.
Please don’t skip the cooldown! Slowing down your body at the end of exercising transitions it into the parasympathetic “healing” state.
Gentle movement varies from person to person. Some examples are dancing to music, yoga, cleaning dishes, cooking, pilates, walking, gardening, gentle hiking, kayaking or canoeing, getting up and down off the floor, and bodyweight exercises.
*For all my type-A + hit it hard ladies + new moms, know it is ok to do more gentler movement! Honestly, intense exercising with no rest days and no supplementing in with gentler movement isn’t sustainable for your body. Know that you will have done enough even when you slow it down– breaking a sweat doesn’t measure your success. This was a hard pill for me to swallow for a long, long time. Let your body recover + heal so you can get back to more intense movement if that feels good.
Bottom line – pushing your body past its limits when it is begging you to slow down will only cause your body more harm. There is a time and a place for more intense movement. If you’re experiencing weight gain or inflammation, gentler movement might just be the ticket to embrace more kindness to your body + healing.
Be gentle with yourself.
Engage in movement that feels good + supports your body.
Give yourself ample grace.
Other posts you might be interested in –
Functional Movement + How to Find Movement That Feels Good to You
The Effects of Stress on the body and 5 Ways to Manage your Stress (Part 1)
The Effects of Stress on the Body and How to Manage it with Real Food (Part 2)
Sources
Nutritional Therapy Association. (2019). Sleep, Stress, and Movement. Nutritional Therapy Association. Student Guide, 63-85.
Rosenbaum, M., & Leibel, R. L. (2010). Adaptive thermogenesis in humans. International journal of obesity (2005), 34 Suppl 1(0 1), S47–S55. https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2010.184
Woods, A. L., Rice, A. J., Garvican-Lewis, L. A., Wallett, A. M., Lundy, B., Rogers, M. A., Welvaert, M., Halson, S., McKune, A., & Thompson, K. G. (2018). The effects of intensified training on resting metabolic rate (RMR), body composition and performance in trained cyclists. PloS one, 13(2), e0191644. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0191644