Help! Can you gain weight from exercising?

I started working out at the gym 3 times a week about 1 1/2 months ago. I do treadmill (level 4) for 30 minutes and do a circuit of weights for about 30 minutes. The problem is that i have gained 7 LBS!!!!   Am i doing something wrong?..... I am totally freaking out. Before exercising I was still losing weight.... Now i am not only not losing...but gaining!... Anyone have any insight?

I had to forget the scale for a while. Judge by the way your clothes fit. Yes you can slow down on the wightloss or gain a little weight. When you lose a bunch of weight very fast you lose a lot of muscle with it.

Thanks. I guess I am addicted to looking at the scale.....and I feel like I am failing if I gain weight. I was hoping to see a loss to keep me motivated at the gym.

The age old question...How is your sugar and carb intake??  If you are exercising hard then going out for pizzaa and a beer...maybe that's the answer.  Also water retention from your cycle might be to blame also.  You're doing great...avoid the carb monster and you should be fine.  Brian

I gained 10 pounds every time I trained for a marathon.  My appetite went through the roof.  It is more common to gain weight during training that you would think.  Now, I run every day but it's not often do I go more than 5 miles.  That keeps the appetite under control.

 you are so right.. the longer my runs go, the hungrier I am getting.. course I have a secret weapon (I can go get a fill :)  

Are you tracking your food? If not, you may be eating more than you think. I don't know how many times i've heard "I trained for an Ironman triathlon and GAINED weight." It's really easy to over-compensate for your exercise and eat too much, unfortunately.

While water can account for some of the gain (your muscles will retain water when you first start to workout or increase your intensity), 7 pounds is a lot and the water weight gain should be temporary -- maybe 1-2 weeks at most.

And don't believe anyone who says "you're gaining muscle". It's pretty much impossible to gain 7 pounds of muscle in 1.5 months. Generally, if you work very hard at it and increase your calories and protein, you can gain about 1 pound a month. We women just don't have the testosterone to be bulking up like that.

My sister always says she can out-eat ANY exercise!

Jenny

Thank you for your advice. I started tracking my food intake and realized that I wasn't being carefull about what I was putting in my mouth!!! It ia so easy to graze when your not copunting calories!!! Shoveling all of this snow here in Md (49 in total) has given me great workouts this week.

How many calories and carbs do you eat a day??

It varies. If I don't exercise, I eat 1650-ish a day and try to keep my carbs under 175. On days I workout, I eat more calories and more carbs, how much depends on how much I've exercised and what type it is.