Can Exercise Really Make You Gain?

Consult your doctor before beginning any exercise program."

I had to remind myself of that as I started this blog about some of us that say exercise simply does not work for us and leads to weight gain and fatigue.

I'm struggling with that now and want to do cycling today, but it seems every time I do, I shoot up 5 lb and it takes three days to beat back down again.

Who this Applies To:

When I say "us," I mean people recovering from or still locked in a "syndrome" - one of those metabolic warp zones that turns logic upside down and good dieters into huge people. People lecture you about diet and exercize endlessly, and knowing those things are useless, you just tune them out.

My own syndrome I guess falls under the insulin resistance umbrella, and after over a decade of terrible health and bad advice, it's been traced to non functioning adrenals and thyroid.

This caused weight to pile on a certain way, and as I tried to fight it back and work it off, it still kept piling on.

Even months of motocross, a sport more demanding than any besides soccer, was no help. I rode as much as my friends for months and ate better and ate less, but I finished a season of training 60-70 lb higher than everyone I knew and could not even buy gear that fit. I was 245 going in, and 245 at the end after about 6 months of rigorous training with no breaks.

I thought I was the only one on earth like this, but as I talked about my own case more on the internet, I started finding more like me. What we had in common was weight due to some metabolic error. We are all getting the same story from experts - "you people are crazy."

How Can This Be?

This is hard to research or get advice on because people don't want to believe you. I am a mechanical engineer myself and this seems to violate conservation of energy. Doing any work takes energy, which burns calories, and burning calories equals losing weight. Anyone who says different must be wrong. But it happens.

I looked around for references and found some that were saying people just starting a program can be adding muscle, and are doing better than they think, let it happen. Then they go on to list the standard benefits of exercise, better sleep, moods etc. But if something is wrong that is keeping this from working, you won't get that benefit either, it just wears you down.

After giving up on exercize as a way to fight uncontrolled weight gain for an as-yet-undiscovered zappage of important parts inside, I just figured some people need to tune that junk out and no one will ever figure it out.

Over the years I tried again and again. I joined a gym. Started jogging. Bought a nice bicycle to entice myself to ride. The only time I could break even was rigorous motocross riding, which also results in expensive hospital trips and long recovery times. All the other attempts ended in fatigue and frustration, and none of the promised benefits.

Thoughts on the Cause:

I have to speak as a layman here, but if I understand something like insulin resistance correctly, that is when your body avoids converting food to fuel unless it is a carbohydrate. Eat a sandwich, burn the bread, store the rest - because of that - a few more triglycerides arrive to circulate in your blood forever.

So you start your program, run, ride, whatever, and get hungry. Eat a sandwich, burn the carbs, more triglycerides. Now the more you work out and fuel yourself, the more triglycerides. Another way of looking at it is put in a gallon, but only a quart can burn, store the rest. Run low, put in another gallon, burn a quart, store the rest. repeat. The harder you work, the bigger you get, and since its just carbs burning, you burn out fast, heat up, fade quickly, and feel tired.

For the people that just burn carbs for whatever reason and the rest stays, wouldn't that explain this anomally? You need calories to live and work out, but with this other problem, you have to put in more than you can burn just to break even.

I don't know really. I do know my dr is awesome and I've gone from 285 in late August to 235 now, and the only time it spiked back up was when I went back out for more exercise on a bicycle and it cost me 5 extra lb and 3 days of relaxing to get it back off. This has happened three times in a row.

I'm curious if others have seen this.

I'm going out on the bicycle again one more time, because I still can't believe it and don't want to, but the scale has not been lying all these years about this.