Working Out

Question
Hi there.
I just got back from my Annual Physical Exam and I have a question I'd love your opin on.

I am a 44 year old, very healthy female.
I workout really hard 6x a week and eat a mostly very healthy diet (not crazy, but 80% really healthy, 20% not even that bad!)
I am 5'5 1/2".
Weight (today at my physical) was 128lbs.
BMI 21.

Last year at my physical my weight was 123 lbs.

Here is where my question lies.
I know I am not overweight or even close to it.  
In fact, I have a slender build with long legs.

My clothes all still fit the same.

Last summer when I my Annual Physical I had weighed in at 123.
The 123 was down from about 130ish prior years.
The reason I think I got down to 123, was that I had recently begun changing up my workout from 8 years of Bikram Yoga straight 6x a week and nothing else, to a mix of Hot Vinyasa Flow Yoga and Yoga Sculpt which is Hot Yoga with Weights.
I had lost about 7 lbs from the year before from doing that.

Since about March 2011, my workouts have increased in intensity even more so, to include a BootCamp Workout which is half hour cardio intervals, and half hour weight/resistance band/medicine ball etc.. training 2-3x a week, Yoga Sculpt which is also very much strength training for about 30 min 1-2x a week, Yoga Pilates 1-2x a week, and a Hot Vinyasa Flow Yoga.
Also I participated in a 2 Week Circuit Training/Bootcamp style program 2 mos ago.

Bottom line, I think I have upped my strength type of intensity workouts quite a bit over the past 8 mos.
I can see more muscle definition in my arms, back, legs (I am pretty skinny so I have never really had much in muscles before, now I have small muscles that are defined well).

Given that, is my 5 lb weightgain from Summer 2010-Summer 2011 likely due to that?
Or is it more of as each year you age, you gain weight type of thing?

Nothing else in my life has changed except I have upped my strength type of training to more times a week.

Just seems odd to me that doing Bikram Yoga I weighed close to what I weigh now, where there is no strength training involved.
Then when I changed up my workout I lost 7 lbs.
But then when I upped my intensity of my workouts even more, instead of losing more weight, I gained back 5 lbs.

My Dr says I am amazingly healthy, fit etc... and he wishes all of his patients would be more like me.
He says its not of any concern at all, and likely bc of the training but he said he cannot know for sure.
But my Dr also says he mostly sees patients who are overweight and its hard getting them to exercise at all, so for him I must seem like a superwoman.

I was just wondering if I look pretty much the same, and my clothes fit pretty much the same, that it is reasonable to equate a 1 year 5 lb weight gain to be due to increased strength training?
Or if I need to try to shed those 5 lbs in order to get back to where I was a year ago?

Or am I even crazy for asking you......

Thx for your opin.

Tamara

Answer
Hi Tamara



Well the truth of the matter is when it come to muscle weighing more then fat the answer is no, but muscle is denser then fat which would explain the weight gain. In other words if your body dimensions have not changed and you have put on more muscle then you would be heavier because the muscle that filled the space where there was fat is denser thus being heavier. This is a good thing because that would mean you added muscle and subtracted fat. If you took a body fat measurement prior to gaining this weight your body fat percentage would have been more then it is now.  

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