Gym goer gaining body fat

[CraftyC]

I am 5ft female, 33 years old, 9st 8lbs, size 10, but have a body fat of 38.6%. I have ost about 4lbs in 2 months. The body fat is up from 36% at the start of October. I have been going to the gym twice a week which I never did before, cut my alcohol down (2 bottles of wine a week to maybe 1 bottle), I prep low calorie lunches, have the same 280 calorie breakfast and eat about 1400 calories a day, I have a moderately active but quite stressful teaching job. I don't have a sweet tooth at all. I can go weeks without eating chocolate. I cook everything from scratch, all home cooked sauces and veg in every dinner. I don't understand how I am gaining body fat and barely losing any weight. It's driving me mad. Could there be a medical reason? I did have basic bloods done about 8 weeks ago and I am quite anaemic but now on iron tablets. But everything else is fine. I do have some uterine cysts that don't cause me much bother.

I am feeling very disheartened. I really want to get the body fat down but my efforts are going in the opposite direction. Even my fitness freak husband is baffled. He keeps saying "it has to be the machine" but 2 machines have said the same thing. Any ideas?

My issue is I can't do more than 2 sessions a week. With day work, no family support ( I get a date night twice a year when my parents visit from abroad), a husband that works over 1 hours away, kids hobby sessions, I tutor in the evenings, my husband runs teice a week, and I am doing an online course. My life is quite chaotic. I need to make the most of the 2 sessions.

You can do enough with 2 days a week. Just need to hit the big muscle moves, squats, deadlifts, bench presses.

If you have large breasts, fat percentage is bollocks. I weigh 47.3 kg / 7 st 6 lbs after a few weeks on a keto diet. Only 145cm / 4' 9" but body fat is just under 40%. I'm a 30G.

If you only have two sessions make them HIIT sessions

Then hook up with a PT and start weight training.

I don't understand why more people don't do it. Especially if they like their grub. They're very nice, they want you to keep coming back. It's weird at first but you get used.

no way you can measure body fat to within 2 percent. Ignore those stats.

Body fat is important but your scales won’t be giving you an accurate number. Try measuring it one day then drinking loads of water and trying again an hour later you’ll see you’ll get a totally different number. you will see the changes in the mirror and how your clothes fit as you start to get more toned etc better than you’ll see as % body fat on those scales.

I would ignore all the advice that your gym going activities “aren’t enough”. You sound like you’ve made a tonne of positive changes and they are starting to come through. It might feel slow but the best diet and exercise you can do is the one you can stick to.

If you were a couch potato before eating lots of takeaway etc before then you don’t need an Olympic based weight lifting regimen to improve your health. Cardio is not the devil it’s great for you. And you are lapping everyone on the couch! You will naturally go longer and faster on the treadmill as you build up and get bored. Like I said, the best exercise is the one you can stick to so do what you feel like. If you’d like to do something different I’d recommend trying out a few classes as tasters.

Unfortunately I don't 🤣 c cup here

Maybe you should try a different machine. Could the reading be faulty?

Oh and people are talking rubbish when they say cardio doesn’t aid weightloss. A 10k run for me burns 600 calories. Thats a lot of calories for an hours work! Yes you could eat those calories back but you could say that about any type of exercise.

Surprised at the comments on the exercise you’re doing won’t help. They are wrong, and I can only assume not gym goers. Walking up a ten incline for 25 mins at 5,3 will burn a lot of calories. That’s not a leisurely stroll. By any manner of means. It should help with leg, glute, stomach muscles.

For a 5ft woman at a brisk pace you need to do 7.84km to hit 10,000 steps.

www.thecalculatorsite.com/health/steps-km.php

Ignore those machines. If you're in a calorie deficit then you're losing fat. And ignore people having a pop at your gym routine. Yes you'll benefit more from weights and some guidance from a PT than just doing cardio but you're doing it! That's the first step. Be proud of yourself. And ignore those machines! You've lost 8lbs, you won't have built any muscle, so you're losing fat.

Not necessarily. I did four months in the gym at a much higher intensity than you and I saw nothing until I changed what I was eating and recorded my calorie intake every day.

I am counting every calorie every day. 1400 or less all days bar the one I drink some wine

The thing about only doing cardio work is that as your body adapts, it gets more efficient so you need to do more to burn the same number of calories.

With proper lifting heavy, you develop more muscle, which burns more calories all the time.

Plus, as you age, running 10k every second day can start to take a toll on your body. I know quite a few women at my gym who used to run marathons but by 50 their knees were a bit knackered and they e switched to lifting.

But you can do both - my training sessions are half and half - 30 minutes strength work and I’ve built up to lifting very heavy for my age. Then 30 mins HIIT work. I train very hard twice a week with my PT, then less hard in 3 other sessions - a mix of classes and my own stuff. I also walk around 15000 steps a day.

I would say the percentage is inaccurate.
I am 34. 5ft3. Size 8. Weigh 9.10 stone.
I do a lot of weight training. My body fat is 19.8%
38% does not sound right at all. Not with your weight and height. I would say 25% max would be far more accurate.
How did you get 38%? Was it scales and were they on the right mode?

Mine came up as 25% initially but my PT checked and I didn't have it on sports mode (I weight train 3 times a week and cardio twice) and then on the correct settings it was 19%

The other thing about exercise is that different types of exercise suit different people. Clearly, the moderate cardio exercise you do isn’t doing what you want it to do. So maybe change the treadmill routine. Try interval training, that shifts you into much faster movement - a four hour marathon rate is 10.6 kph. So twice what you’re doing.

I agree with those who are suggesting weight training. Muscle weighs more than fat. You may not lose weight, but you'll lose inches.

Check out Caroline Girvan on YouTube. Life changing. Ideally follow one of her programmes, but if time is at a premium, 10-15 minutes with serious weight dumbbells most days also works.

Start off with 4-5 kg and work your way up. I'm 70 and using 8 and10 kg - hoping for a 12 kg set for Christmas.

Totally worth it.

It’s about the impact on your metabolism though. Your body just adjusts if you’re doing that regularly.

I can’t eat 1400 calories a day for more than 3 days without feeling awful, I do train a lot though, honestly OP read the book and change your approach. A healthy life doesn’t have to be miserable.

You might be eating and drinking less than pre-diet, but you might still eating too much for your height. At 5ft, you probably need to go lower than 1400 in order to lose.
Ignore the active calories. You moving around in your daily tasks or the two sessions a week at the gym will have no significant role in your weight loss. It is what you eat, period. If you are not losing, you are eating too much.
You record your calories, so tell us, what do eat.

As PP have explained, you cannot conclude that you have gained body fat because the scales today say 38.6% and 2 months ago they said 36%.

1. Scales are notoriously inaccurate and unlikely to give a perfect number. Get on and off the scales 3 times now, you'll get 3 different answers
2. A lot of factors affect the reading eg how hydrated you were at the time
3. If you weigh 100 lb with 50% body fat, and lose 5lb without reducing body fat - your body fat percentage will go form 50% to 52.5% even though the absolute number remains the same

So stop worrying about that. The fact your weight is going down and clothes getting looser is a MUCH better way to assess whether you're doing the right things. The body fat thing will follow, you need to not fixate on that

Breakfast is a 40g serving of cornflakes, skimmed milk and fruit with a cup of decaf coffee. 280 cals. Lunch is a variation of a salad with some pasta (30g) with veg and pulses and homemade salad dressings from recipes I follow on insta and more fruit, 350 cals and no more. When I get home I have some crackers and pate because I am anaemic so I need iron, 180 cals, and then I have a dinner of whatever I cook, so maybe my chickpea curry (550 cals) or chilli (450 cals) or fajita and rice (443 cals). That's my normal day. I don't snack after dinner. I have about 2ls of water a day but I have to be careful with the water because being a teacher I have limited access to a toilet.