Water Retention and Muscles

This past Saturday I busted out my home workout DVDs to find one that would give me a good full body workout. What I decided on was a circuit training video from Cathe Friedrich called "Cardio + Weights.” I’m not sure if I've mentioned on here in the past that Cathe is my favorite trainer. She kicks your butt in a no nonsense kind of way and explains the moves you are doing and what muscles you are hitting. She is NOT easy! If you look at her website, you can see that primarily her videos are either intermediate or advanced. (Let me just take a timeout and tell you that ‘intermediate’ means really hard and ‘advanced’ means a workout so hard you feel like throwing up after.)

So I busted out the video and went at it. I kept up for the most part, but I was rusty on some of the moves and it took me a while to catch on. I finished the workout and felt really good. Tired, but good. I took a good 30 minutes after just stretching my legs. I know from experience that doing her videos leaves my calves and hamstrings SUPER tight. I thought that by stretching I would avoid a little bit of soreness.

Holy hell was I wrong!

Sunday I was a little sore. Monday I was SUPER sore. Yesterday I was still sore but not so much and today I am feeling almost back to normal. Hilarious enough today is the day I do it all over again.

Anyways, I made the mistake of weighing myself yesterday. I went up by 4 lbs. YES!!! 4 lbs. I've always known that weight lifting causes water weight gain but never did I think 4 lbs. worth. I must admit that despite knowing that there was no way that in 3 days I would gain 4 lbs. it still messed with my mind. Instead of going butt crazy about the number on the scale, I decided to research water weight and weight lifting and I found out that you can gain up to 5 lbs. of water weight!

Basically, you retain water because your muscles are swollen. The water retention can last up to 96 hours. Seems like common sense huh? You would think, however I'm so on a mission that it made me panic for a second. Then I slowed down my mind and thought to gain a pound I would have had to eat 3,500 calories OVER my normal daily intake. I did not do that, let alone eat 14,000 calories over to gain the 4 lbs. So I calmed down and just waited until I could consult The Internet. As a result of my research I decided to chug down water like a mad woman yesterday. Drinking water reduces water retention...kind of counter-intuitive. I know!

So I weighed myself today and I'm back down to where I was.

All is well in the world.

To read more on water retention and weight lifting I would recommend either googling the topic or you can read the two articles I read online to ease my mind:

http://cathe.com/weight-gain-myths

http://www.livestrong.com/article/402701-does-weight-training-cause-water-retention/