While at the gym, you'll be actively working your muscles and all the while dehydrating. The combination of your pumped up muscles, dehydration and overworked muscles might make you feel well toned then, a few hours later, you appear flabbier despite the exercise you know should be making you lean.
This surge of fluids causes your muscle cells to swell up, making your muscles look larger than usual. When you get a muscle pump, it might feel like your muscles are "full," in a sense.
“When you work out, your blood is pumping more, which improves the circulation of oxygen and nutrients throughout your body, including your skin and ultimately leads to that post-workout glow,” dermatologist Yoon-Soo Cindy Bae, M.D., tells SELF. The effects last about an hour.
Exercise can cause temporary changes in your body that may make it look worse at first. For example, when you start exercising, your muscles can become inflamed and swollen, which can cause your body to look more bloated and less toned.
Runner's face is a term used to describe changes in the facial appearance that some runners may experience over time, including leathery, saggy, aging, lean, and tired-looking skin.
You Feel Like You're Looking Worse
Some people call this the whoosh effect. The idea is that just before a significant weight loss occurs, you actually look a little pudgy and soft. Why? Because you've started to break down your fat cells and now they're filling up with water.
Your Muscles are Retaining Water
Weight training exposes muscles to stress to strengthen them and the resulting soreness causes the surrounding tissues to swell until things calm down. “Extracellular water increases transiently in the muscle to relieve inflammation of the muscle soft-tissues,” Tamaki says.
Working out does not burn or melt fat. When you work out, your muscles will begin to grow and expand under the already existing layer of fat there. The expansion of muscles, coupled with the fat in your body, will make your waistline bigger.
There are several research-backed reasons why you might notice a slight weight gain after exercise. These include muscle gain, water retention, post-workout inflammation, supplement use, or even undigested food. In most cases, post-workout weight gain is temporary.
As a result, women and men can develop sunken cheeks, deepening folds, and under eye hollows – a look that has been dubbed “gym face.”
“Increasing your circulation with cardio delivers a greater amount of oxygen and nutrients to your skin, which helps repair it and increase collagen production,” says Kanchanapoomi Levin.
While sweating is a healthy way to release build-up and impurities, it can also clog up your pores, causing breakouts and other skin issues on your face and throughout your body, especially if you are wearing heavy makeup or other acne-causing products.
He said long-distance running and long-time runners could develop thin and older-looking faces because of the bouncing associated with running. "If you are an experienced runner, you have done it for 10 to 20 years, it is possible your face could look older than someone who does other types of exercises," Geier said.
However, the good news is that running is one of the best forms of exercise to lose belly fat, and there are even a few small tweaks you can make to your regular running schedule to deliver a sustained fat burning boost.
Core exercises like planks, weighted crunches, and side bends lead to far greater levels of abdominal wall activation than squats and deads. Heavy, frequent ab and oblique training can create a blocky waist or "turtle shell" abs.
Cardio can't directly cause you to gain weight or fat. According to Mayoclinic, how you eat and drink in addition to your physical activity level are things that ultimately determine your weight. This is also impacted by your metabolism — the process by which your body converts what you eat and drink into energy.
One of the main reasons why burning calories through exercise may still not result in weight loss is due to overexertion, or inflammation of your body. If you exercise too hard on a daily basis, there is an excess of inflammation in your body. All the added up inflammation makes you gain more weight than lose.
You're gaining muscle. The scale might be stuck because you're building up your biceps and glutes—and that's a good thing. The number on the scale is less important than the breakdown of how much water, muscle, and fat are in your body, Jovanovic says.
Mostly, losing weight is an internal process. You will first lose hard fat that surrounds your organs like liver, kidneys and then you will start to lose soft fat like waistline and thigh fat. The fat loss from around the organs makes you leaner and stronger.
Some other signs of fat loss are:
You'll see changes in your body composition. Losing pounds or losing inches is the primary sign you're burning fat. It leads to a slimmer appearance and more muscle definition. Your exercise stamina increases, and you are getting fitter.