Why Do You Look Like You've Gained Weight After Exercise?

Weight Gain After Exercise

It takes a lot of effort to get back into the exercise game after a long time off.

If your goal is weight loss, and you’re doing your best to eat right and exercise, feeling like you’re gaining weight can be really disheartening. 

However, the appearance of weight gain after exercise is usually normal - and the good news is, it can be solved.

It’s not a matter of body type or luck, but generally the result of not enough cardiovascular exercise (the stuff that gets your blood pumping), plus a lack of core and muscle strengthening. It also can be due to an off-balance between your caloric intake, and what you burn off. So don’t worry – it’s not going downhill! 

Jump to:

If you’ve been spending a lot of time on the sofa, or have taken a long rest from a considerably more active routine, then your muscle definition and volume will likely have changed, depending on how long you’ve been away. 

Pumping up muscles is a bit like blowing up a balloon. When you perform many sets with high reps, your muscles will start to swell and feel full. This is known as the pump. 

If you’ve fallen out of your usual gym routine, your muscles won’t be worked as much as before and will, therefore, shrink in volume. And if you haven’t been getting much cardio in during your time off, you’ll have likely gained in body fat, whilst losing muscle. 

Why you may have weight gain after exercise

The Pump

While at the gym, you’ll be actively working your muscles at the same time as dehydrating. This combination of your pumped-up muscles, dehydration and overworked muscles might make you feel well toned at the time, but a few hours after exercise you may appear like you’ve gained weight.

Essentially, when you get back to the gym and start working your muscles again, you’ll see that balloon like pump happening, but will likely have less muscle definition and more body fat.

Water Retention

Water retention can be another reason you look like you’ve gained weight post-workout. When we push our muscles, we cause micro-tears (in addition to inflammation), and repairing our muscles requires both water and protein. 

Muscles hold more water than tissue, and require water to help flush out toxins post-exercise. And of course, whilst we exercise, we’re usually drinking a lot of water, as we should be. Don’t be alarmed by water retention - drinking more helps your body continue to flush it out and lessen water retention over time.¹

So, your muscles have pumped up but your excess body fat has remained. 

People commonly see this in the abs area, having done several sets of sit-ups and a bit of running, only to find when they sit down exhausted at the end of the day that their physique is the same. 

The answer is patience. A toned physique doesn’t happen overnight, and there are a few things to bear in mind if you’re not seeing the progress that you want. So, let’s break this down into areas that you can address: diet, cardio- and toning exercise.