A new Arizona State study is generating a lot of talk on the subject of why some women gain weight after starting an exercise regimen.
New York Times physical education columnist Gretchen Reynolds says the group was a cross-section of relatively sedentary but healthy women in their 30s who were overweight.
“They walked 30 minutes three times a week, and at the end of 12 weeks, most of the group of women had gained weight. And they have gained fat, not muscle,” Reynolds says.
The eating habits of the women were relatively normal and didn’t change after the study began, Reynolds says. Scientists noticed women were gaining or losing weight about a month into the study.
The study did find that the women who lost weight in the first four weeks continued to lose weight.
But the study, which was published last month in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, did not track the eating habits of the 81 women. Nor did the study track the women’s movements away from the lab.
So, it is not known whether the women who gained fat ate more after exercising or rested more after exercising.
“So the takeaway is, if you want to use exercise to lose weight, get on the bathroom scales after a month, and if you’re not losing weight, look at the rest of your life — make sure you’re not eating more [or] sitting too much and you might actually succeed in losing weight,” she says.