Hi Lloyd: Your question about unintentional (and undesired) weight gain during weeks of intensive training is a common problem with athletes. My response is below your detailed question:
Asked by Lloyd:
Over the holidays, I burned 15,000 calories in 8 days according to my Polar heart rate monitor. I didn't think I could possibly eat enough to replace all those calories, but I *gained* 2 pounds. I have a doctor's-quality scale good to 0.1 lb (and I've verified its accuracy and consistencey using known quantities of water!). I watch the trend line, not just one data point. The Polar HRM calorie count is very consistent, and accurate also (I think) based on numbers from a VO2 Max test done at SMI. So if I burned 15,000 calories, why did I gain weight? Could I really have eaten that much? I don't carbo-load with big plates of pasta, but I do eat chocolate, cheese, nuts and ice cream. Still, 15,000 calories is a big deficit, so I'm stumped. A DEXA scan today show 14.2% body fat (vs 12% in August), and muscle within 1kg of my best fitness last summer, but I'm 8 pounds heavier at 186 vs 178.
ANSWER: Note that while you have amazingly detailed information about your body composition and caloric expenditure, when it comes to your caloric intake you simply state "I do eat chocolate, cheese, nuts and ice cream." I was working with an endurance athlete recently who had a similar problem to yours who mentioned to me that they ate "some almonds every day as a snack." Upon further discussion, the athlete told me that they at one "small can" of almonds every day. It turned out that each can contained 1040 Calories of almonds, and this was only part of their snacking, and their meals were very large as well. With training, appetite increases MORE than our increased need for calories. Fats and/or carbs get consumed in larger amounts than we realize because of this training-induced appetite (consistently low blood sugar because muscle is absorbing fuel to recover, and we over-eat a little every time we feel hungrey, resulting in a little over-eating a dozen times per day). Your 15,000 Caloric expenditure as measured by your heart rate monitor in 8 days corresponds to roughly 2,000 Calories per day beyond your basal metabolic rate if you were sedentary, or roughly 4,000 Calories per day total. If you take your regular caloric intake when you are not training, add some supplements (carbohydrate powders and energy bars) during training, and a half dozen snacks that are three times as many calories as you realize (such as the fat sources you mentioned), it is easy to imagine an extra 1000 Calories coming in every day, which corresponds to 7,000 Calories beyond your needs in 7 or 8 days. One pound of body fat corresponds to 3500 extra calories, so that would explain your 2-pound increase. Of course, we do not know the details of your caloric intake, so this is all just theoretical discussion. I can tell you, however, that your problem is common, particularly as it applies to over-consumption of snacks high in fat among endurance athletes. If you had told me your weight gain was from a single measurement on the scale (as opposed to the trend), I would also discuss your electrolyte and fluid balances. Athletes who change weight by one, two or even three pounds from one day to the next need to realize that changes this large are NOT due to over-eating. Rather, such rapid large changes are due to a mis-match in their electrolyte losses and needs.
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