Originally Posted by laparshall

Tt our WW meeting on Thursday night there was a discussion about why you don't lose and in some cases you may even gain when you begin to work out. The leader shared a fact from a seminar she had gone to for WW last month. She said that when you work out, small slits/or tears in the muscle occur. That is normal, and the very reason you should alternate your workouts. ie, walk/jog every other day, core exercises on the other days. This gives your muscle a chance to heal. But her point was that the slits/tears in the muscle fill with water, and the body holds the water there. And you may see a plateau or worse yet, a weight gain. But eventually as the muscle strengthens it won't tear and there is no space for water to be retained.

There were several of us at the meeting that had experienced a weight gain after we were working our butts off and making sure we kept within our food points range and we were all starting to feel discouraged. Guess what, keep eating right, and keep on moving, because once you get past that certain point, you will see those pounds start melting away. Muscle burns calories faster too. So the more I build, the faster the fat will burn off. Once I passed that point and others there said the same thing, I had a few pretty big losses and now I am losing beween 1 and 2 pounds a week. I haven't had a gain in awhile, and if I happen to, I will know it is because I didn't keep track of what I was eating. My body is starting to show a bit of a waist once again. I keep looking at myself in the mirror and I can see the changes now, and the beginning of definition. And for me once I got that momentum going, I feel like this is getting easier. And summer is coming, so the outside activity is going to be easier.

By the way have I ever mentioned that my workout consists of walking on the treadmill for 30 minutes a day M,W,F, and doing core exercises for 20 minutes Tues, Weds, and sometimes on Saturday. So my TOTAL workout time for the week is only 2 1/2 hours. I am definately worth taking 2.5 hours of my time to get healthier and to feel better about myself.
Linda