I just started stage 2 last week. So I've done both A and B twice. Since staring NROL4W I've gained 3 lbs. This really hurts my psyche!
What I really want to know is if this is normal or am I gaining from somwhere else (fat?) in your opinion. My clothes fit great though.
Yesterday I finally measured myself for the first time so that I can track that way rather than a scale. Could I be holding water?
I'm really not sure what the average amount of muscle gain is at this point. I'd love to think it's 3 lbs of muscle but have serious doubts about that
If you're tighter and smaller but just weigh more... pfft, whatever. I know there's this idea women have about weight, but the really light tiny chicks can't open doors or hold bowling balls. Size may be important to you, but don't worry too much about weight. Since muscle is denser than fat, if you lost a couple pounds of fat and gained a couple muscle it would net you positive on the scale, but smaller in the clothes.
If it's bad gain, reevaluate your food. You need to be eating more than you expend to gain. So if it's more than fluctuation and you're unhappy about it, your answer lies somewhere between your hand and your mouth.
If you have only been doing this for 1 or 2 weeks there is very little chance that you have gained 3 lbs of fat. That would be a HUGE amount of calories. It is likely water.
If you have only been doing this for 1 or 2 weeks there is very little chance that you have gained 3 lbs of fat. That would be a HUGE amount of calories. It is likely water.
I started in April. I'm on stage 2.... I don't think it's fat. Just wondering if you all thought it was more water than muscle.
After reading the thread on alcohol I think I need to re-think my nightly glass of red wine!
If you're tighter and smaller but just weigh more... pfft, whatever. I know there's this idea women have about weight, but the really light tiny chicks can't open doors or hold bowling balls. Size may be important to you, but don't worry too much about weight. Since muscle is denser than fat, if you lost a couple pounds of fat and gained a couple muscle it would net you positive on the scale, but smaller in the clothes.
If it's bad gain, reevaluate your food. You need to be eating more than you expend to gain. So if it's more than fluctuation and you're unhappy about it, your answer lies somewhere between your hand and your mouth.
Thank you! I think it's a lot in my head (with the scale thing). Really I should stay off that thing for a few months! I know I'm tighter in some areas like my legs and arms, but my abs just are not there yet.
I think I need to re-eval my food intake as well though. Red wine in my vice...
Thank you! I think it's a lot in my head (with the scale thing). Really I should stay off that thing for a few months! I know I'm tighter in some areas like my legs and arms, but my abs just are not there yet.
I think I need to re-eval my food intake as well though. Red wine in my vice...
Well, there's issues with alcohol, fat burning, and esp abdominal fat.
Buuut... that aside... screw the scale. Some people, like me, are ok with it. Just a number, and without it there tends to be some straying. But for some it's just murder. If it's causing stress and you see progress elsewhere, ban the sucker for a bit. It's the beginning of the month. Take a measurement and set it aside. See how you are in 2 weeks or at the end of the month. *shrug* so long as you don't just get yourself a shovel for a spoon, you prolly won't do too much damage in a month. This past one has only put 3 on you.
In phase 1 I gained 4 lbs but my measurements and BF went down. Now, in Stage 2, I have lost 2 lbs total, but my BF is down at least 2%. Visually, I can see a huge change. So I"m trying not to use the scale as a judge of what's happening. It's hard, but I"ve been getting great feedback from my hubby and family, so I know the program is working. Now my measurements are funky--building muscle I guess--so I"m trying to prevent freakout.(not very successfully) EEEEE!!!!! Good thing this program is 6 months long. : )
Oh sorry... Thought it was just 2 weeks. Dooop. I started a cut about 4 weeks ago and have lost some lbs and bf%. The last 2 weeks have been moving very slowly for me though. So I am freaking out a little bit BUT thing is all my pants are loser now than they were. Hmmmmm.... Does the scale lie? I think so
At best the scale doesn't tell the whole truth. At worst it's just plain wrong. Margin of error, oldness and therefore messed up calibration, rounding, or just a crummy scale (we once had one that would play "pick a weight" and could have a 20 (yes, I said TWENTY) pound variation from one hop on to the next. Literally in seconds I could gain or lose a good 8 pounds with that thing.)
Elisabeth,
I just wanted to give you a heads-up that you need to fix your log URL in your signature.
The one you have "h t t p://http//forums.jpfitness.com/training-log/32173-abquest .html"
doesn't go anywhere.
The part I highlighted in bold is the part that needs to be removed. Also if people are reading your log on a regular basis, you might want to add -new-post to the end of the title so that the reader is directed to the point where he/she left off. Looks like this (minus the spaces put in so it didn't hyperlink):
h t t p://forums.jpfitness.com/train ing-log/32173-abquest-new-post.html
Welcome.
__________________ Just because your mother thinks you're special doesn't mean I do
Have you seen RedWifey's log? She gained a few pounds in the first 6-8 weeks of NROL4W. But lost some inches. Then she cut calories a bit and the weight started flying off.
__________________ Megaloi -- My Blog
"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers."
- Mignon McLaughlin
This is something I've been struggling with as well. I have gained probably 7 or more pounds since starting NROL4W (I just finished 6 Stage 7 workouts, having skipped Stage 6 for now). Based on caliper testing as of a month ago, that was almost ALL muscle (<0.5 pound of fat). Even given the variability in the caliper test results, it's pretty clear that I was putting on muscle and very little accompanying fat.
I'm not concerned about the scale going up, given those other data. BUT, my waist measurement is the same or bigger than when I started and none of my clothes fit. Again, if none of my clothes fit but my stomach were flatter, I'd be ok with buying new clothes, but instead my gut feels bigger. I also have, for a while, felt the squish so many have talked about on another thread, but no whooshing.
Before anyone writes to tell me to cut calories, let me add that I am almost entirely certain that I was, before NROL4W, eating little enough that I had indeed slowed my metabolism. I am eating at or just below the calorie levels I calculated based on the book and getting at least 30% protein a day - and I'm often hungry. I never adjusted my calories for the increase in weight because I was worried about the slippery slope of that decision, but now I worry that I may actually be at a caloric DEFICIT and that's why I'm not losing more fat. Any thoughts?
Stop weighing more than once a month. You'll go crazy. Shoot for in between your womenfolk cycle so that the weight isn't, um, inflated. Or do what Aoife said and stop weighing altogether. Who cares what the number is? Scales are mechanically different, calibrated differently, fluctuate based on altitude, etc, so you're not getting your real weight anyway. Take pictures, wait a month, take more pictures, wait a month, and so on. How do you feel (I mean physically, not in a "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me" kinda way)? Good? Then you're on the right path. Bad? Could be a number of factors, so re-evaluate. Don't cowtow to what Hollywood and the media say is the "right" number.
/soapbox
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Thanks for the thoughts and encouragement. I think I should clarify the question a bit, though. I'm not so worried about the scale (I weigh myself maybe every couple of weeks - and really only pay attention to it when I'm weighing in connection with a caliper test). This is truly remarkable considering how obsessed I used to be.
The reason it factors in here, though, is that what I'm struggling with is that if my goal is to lose fat at this point (having gained muscle - yay! - but also gotten a bit bigger around the waist), how do I adjust calories? I'm worried that if I don't adjust upward that I might keep my metabolism suppressed - or re-supress it (I am 99% sure I am one of those women who was eating so little my metabolism had slowed waaaay down), but that if I add too much I'm not going to lose. Even if it weren't for the waist-size increase, in general, how does one approach the issue of caloric needs as weight increases as a result of adding muscle, given that one does not want to infinitely add calories and increase in size?
I'm not sure I made that any clearer ... but here's hoping.
Well, after having read it myself, I'd say quite likely Fat Loss Troubleshoot might help ya out. That or the Metabolic Repair, if you're really bad off. The thing is your eating needs to support your activity. There's formulas and whatnot to help you figure out where you should start, then you need to tweak appropriately.
If you want to start by trying an increase, do it slowly. 200 cals a day a week, and see how that goes. The other direction is about the same, assuming you're not eating too little now... go about 100 or so calories a day for a week or 2 adn see what results you get.
It took me (not doing NR4W, just working in general) a couple weeks to see any real progress, as weight fluctuated a lot and the trend was even, and then I started slowly losing. So taking another 100 off has upped the loss without really making me suffer much during the day. That's always the case for me. I start at what I know is a reasonable number and then have to tweak.
I am one of those undereaters too and the problems that we have are fairly easy to overcome from a physical sense and deadly hard from a mental sense. First question you have to ask yourself is if you can do this alone or if you need help. Most of us need help. I have a local personal trainer. Many of the others on this board use Leigh Peele to guide them. She knows all about us types. I am a very strong person and yet could not imagine dealing with this issue alone.
Now that said I also see that MOST people who think they have screwed up their metabolism are really screwing up their reporting. In other words they are eating more than they think. Many of them measure food to some extent but they get sloppy about adding that handful of nuts that they grabbed on the way out the door or that extra bite of something else. They make all sorts of excuses why this or that doesn't count and they all make sense to them at the time. Trouble is they think they are eating 1300 cals a day when in reality they are eating 1700 or higher. It is deadly easy to mis-count and a food scale is actually a great tool to rein that sort of thing in.
So if you are not weighing on a food scale everything you eat then it is possible you fall in the second camp. It is cool to see people get enlightened when they first buy a food scale and then it is a simple matter of eating what you say you are eating. Again this is hard for a lot of folks but many of them can go alone whereas the chronic undereaters are in need of some stronger support I think.
Your first task would be to make sure that you are really being honest about what it is you eat. If you are and it is very low in cals and you have been doing that for years then it is a possibility that you have tanked your metabolism.
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The BIGGER I get the smaller you look
BF% when I started was ~23 and now it's a little under 22, but I've gained like 7 pounds so I have managed to put on muscle and lose fat. I'm thrilled about that, don't get me wrong. So when I say I don't mind the scale going up, I mean it ... mostly - it's just my belly still being bigger than I want and my pants not fitting (and not just b/c of more muscular thighs and butt - that I could be happy about) that I don't like.
The other thing is that with only ~21-22% BF, I don't really have much fat to lose and remain in the healthy range (NIH suggests no lower than 21% for even athletic (though not professional/competition) women. So Alwyn's afterburn program and things like that seem like they might be bad ideas for me.
I do think "tanked my metabolism" is pretty accurate. Just being on this program and eating probably 50% more than before I started was pretty amazing to not just blow up like a balloon. In the last few days I've added 100-150 calories more/day (and kicked up my workouts - adding more intervals) and I am less tired, so I think I'm on the right track.
Ive gained weight too. In the past 5 weeks on Stage 1,my weight has gone up one pound.
I am also weaning from breastfeeding and adjusting my cals, so I expected my weight to go down. I havent checked my bodyfat though........I will do that and see if there is a trend, before I start flipping out.
I just did my measurements and weigh-in after completing stae 1. Unfortunately I did not take a lot of measurements at the beginning- just waist, abdomen, hip bone, and hips. Those measurements are exactly the same, all my clothes fit the same, but I have gained 7 pounds. I've been tracking my food, eating high protein, not cutting calories but staying in maintenance range, usually 1700-1800 calories a day. I do see a great difference in my upper body. I'll take pics today or tomorrow and see if there are any other visible differences. I'm not freaking out too bad, but it was quite a shock to see that much gain. I'll probably weigh tomorrow too in case it was a fluke.
I just did my measurements and weigh-in after completing stae 1. Unfortunately I did not take a lot of measurements at the beginning- just waist, abdomen, hip bone, and hips. Those measurements are exactly the same, all my clothes fit the same, but I have gained 7 pounds. I've been tracking my food, eating high protein, not cutting calories but staying in maintenance range, usually 1700-1800 calories a day. I do see a great difference in my upper body. I'll take pics today or tomorrow and see if there are any other visible differences. I'm not freaking out too bad, but it was quite a shock to see that much gain. I'll probably weigh tomorrow too in case it was a fluke.
could be some fluid retention like they mention in the book or maybe a fluke. Did you eat anything particularly salty or carby the last two days? That can cause a temp blip on the scale. You didn't gain 7 lbs of muscle in Stage 1, especially if you were just eating around maintenance level.
weight gain
I think so
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