Prevent Weight Gain: Causes of Unexpected Fat and Belly Bloat

Unexpected weight gain can occur despite exercise and healthy eating due to factors like sodium intake, hormonal shifts during periods, or metabolic responses to calorie cutting.

Two Women Enjoying Lunch Date In Delicatessen Restaurant

The Scary Side Effects of Weight Fluctuations

Weights fluctuate. Some seasons (ahem, winter), the scale goes up. From time to time, diets and workout routines bring it back down. And, a lot of the time, weight loss doesn’t last.

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How to Avoid 4 Common Weight-Gain Traps

The never-ending fight against weight gain sometimes seems like a lost battle. One minute you're devastating the competition -- eating healthy and fighting off junk-food cravings. The next, you're back on the ropes, muttering to yourself, "I can't believe I ate the whole thing."

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Knife and fork on finished dinner plate

Will You Gain Weight Eating 2,000 Calories a Day?

Regularly consume more calories than you burn, and you'll gain weight. Although food labels use a 2,000-calorie diet as the benchmark for average calorie consumption, that amount of calories could prompt weight gain in some sedentary people of small stature.

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Raspberry banana mango smoothie

Can Protein Shakes Cause Belly Fat?

You'll gain weight when you eat more calories than you burn, regardless of how healthy those calories are. However, excess calories in certain foods can encourage the development of belly fat, also known as visceral fat, that inflates your waistband and increases your risk of chronic disease.

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Calendar fruit

Can You Break a Fast Without Gaining Weight?

Whether you're fasting for a religious observance, weight loss or other personal reasons, you can expect your fast to affect your metabolism -- and, potentially, your weight. How much it affects your metabolism depends on how long and how often you fast.

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Young man sleeping in bed

Do You Get Fat if You Sleep After Eating?

Weight control is all about calorie balance -- if you eat too much and move too little, you end up with a surplus of calories that leads to weight gain. When you eat those calories doesn't matter as much as their quality, their amount and your activity level all day long.

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sea salt

How Much Weight Can You Gain From Sodium?

Sodium doesn't actually make your body gain fat -- it causes bloating and water retention that causes the number on your scale to rise. You can't predict, however, how much these numbers will increase when you overindulge in salty foods.

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Close up of woman?s hand on scale

Gaining Weight and Eating 1,200 Calories a Day

Restricting your daily intake to 1,200 calories per day requires diligence and, oftentimes, hunger. With that effort and deprivation, you would expect to lose weight. When the opposite happens and the scale numbers go up, however, you may feel like throwing in the weight-loss towel and eating with abandon.

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Bag Of Raspberry Jam Doughnuts With A Bite Taken

Foods That Make You Fat Quickly

Too much of any food can lead to weight gain. The ones that make you fat most quickly are, predictably, those with lots of sugar, fats and refined grains. These foods provide easily digested and processed calories with minimal nutrition content.

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Woman drinking green smoothie

Do You Gain Weight After Juice Fasting?

Juice fasting typically involves subsisting on just fruit and vegetable juices for the length of the fast, although in some versions people add some cashew or almond milk to slightly increase the protein content of their fasting diet.

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Close-up of hands at dinner in cafe

Eating Before Bed & Gaining Weight

Weight gain occurs if you consume more calories than you burn daily, regardless of what time of day you eat the calories. If you're eating late, heading straight to bed and the number on the scale is going up, it's possible that you're eating too much.

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Feet of woman on scales

Why Do Some People Gain Weight Faster Than Others?

Your best friend seems to eat everything in sight but never gain a pound, while you look at a slice of cake and start packing on pounds. It may be the luck of the genetic draw, but diet and lifestyle factors also help determine how you manage your weight.

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