Dieting is frustrating when you can’t figure out why you’re gaining weight. This is particularly true when you have been especially diligent about keeping up your workouts. You walk, you take the stairs, you do your cardio, strength training and even yoga every week. Essentially, you’re keeping up all your exercises faithfully, but you’re not seeing the results you expect.

Even worse, you step on the scale and the number rises! There are many reasons why you’re gaining weight even if you’re exercising regularly. It’s important to understand them so you can know whether everything is actually as it should be or if your efforts need to be altered.

Here’s Why You’re Gaining Weight Despite Exercising

You’re Not Eating Right

The food you’re eating can easily be one of the reasons why you’re gaining weight even while exercising. Have a look at your average food intake. To make that easier, track your meals and snacks for a full week or two. Are your macronutrients balanced properly? Are you eating the right number of calories?

If it turns out that the way you’re eating explains why you’re gaining weight, keep tracking and make the necessary changes. You should start seeing results again once you make the right changes and maintain your workouts.

You’re Not Sleeping Well

If you’re not sleeping well, and it’s happening on a regular basis, this could be affecting your weight. The reason is that when you don’t sleep properly, your body changes its hormone production. The outcome is that you crave sugary and fatty foods (comfort foods), are hungry more frequently and find it harder to satisfy your appetite.

If you want to resolve this issue behind why you’re gaining weight, start keeping up healthier sleep hygiene. This involves setting a bedtime and waking time you stick to every day (even on weekends). It also means you’ll need to start winding down at least an hour before bedtime, without any screens, with dim lights, and with calm activities. Try to stick to the same before-bed routine to help prime yourself to be restful to sleep each night.

You Have a Hormone Imbalance

If you just don’t know why you’re gaining weight, it could be a matter of a hormone imbalance and not something you’re doing wrong. Hormones can easily cause weight to be gained even among people who eat right, sleep enough and exercise regularly. Check with your doctor if this is a concern. There are many ways to help to restore hormones to balance and your doctor will help you with this if hormones are the cause.