5 Reasons You May Be Gaining Weight While Training for Triathlon
HAVE YOU EVER GAINED WEIGHT WHEN STARTING AN EXERCISE PROGRAM OR DURING A RACE BUILD-UP?
This has to be one of the most frustrating situations. You’re training down the house, putting in endless miles, dealing with sore muscles, and still, the scale goes up. Spoiler alert! You probably haven’t gained 20lbs of muscle. (I’m guilty of telling myself it must be muscle gain).
SO, WHAT ARE THE POSSIBLE REASONS YOU MIGHT BE TRAINING WEIGHT?
1. Cortisol - A small increase in cortisol is a good thing, it helps you crush workouts and stay focused. However, if you continue to push your body with a tough training schedule and without proper recovery, cortisol increases and starts to work against you.
Cortisol has an intricate relationship with the hormone insulin, which controls our blood sugar. When cortisol levels increase, the cells in our body can become resistant to insulin. In turn, this may lead to an increase in blood sugar, weight gain, mood swings, food cravings, and disrupted sleep.
Bottom line, if your cortisol is too high from a lack of recovery, you are sleeping less, eating/craving more junk food, and likely gaining weight as your body is under stress.
The following are a few signs your cortisol might be too high:
Disrupted sleep – Are you waking up multiple times during the night? Or waking up early still tired and not able to get back to sleep?
Weight gain – Often around your face or abdomen while the rest of your body remains lean.
Increased thirst and urination
Mood swings – well this one may be hard to see the difference if you are in an Ironman training block, being hangry is no joke.
2. Not Incorporating Strength Training - Resistance training helps to increase fat loss by increasing both after-burn after exercise and muscle size. Thereby, increasing the number of calories we burn at rest. Muscle burns more calories at rest than fat, so when you are sitting down and recovering your metabolism is more active from that increased muscle mass. Plus, endurance training has de added benefits of making you stronger, increasing your power output, efficiency, and becoming more injury resistant. Check out our different Strength and Conditioning Services for workouts written specifically for you.
3. Using Calories to Try to Overcome Fatigue - I’m so guilty of this one. I’m tired I must need more carbs for this workout when in reality I’m just tired and all the carbs in the world won’t change that! If this is the case, we recommend talking to your coach and modifying your training plan.
4. DOMS - After particularity hard workouts, in the short term, your weight will go up as your muscles become swollen with fluid and stiff as they try to repair. This can also be true for the first 2 weeks of a new workout program. If this is the case, it wont stick around and as your body recovers weight will go back to normal.
5. Under Fueling - This goes back to the cortisol. If your energy needs are much higher than the calories you are eating, your body goes into starvation mode. Being under stress can disrupt your sleep, increase cortisol and make it very difficult to not only train, but recover as well. It takes time and experimenting to find the balance betoween fuelling yur body and over eating, however the easiest way is to eat whole foods to the point you are satisfied. I’m all about the 80/20 rule – 80% of the time I eat healthy and nutritious foods, while 20% of the time I eat chocolate and whatever else I’m craving.
To conclude, the best way to avoid weight gain during a big training block is to make sure you balance out the training with recovery, fuel well and listen to your body when it needs rest.
