By Heidi Mills, Outside

Shannon Scott thought training for a distance triathlon would help her drop the few extra pounds she’d always hoped to shed.

Scott began working out for an hour and a half to two hours each day. When she didn’t lose weight, she cut back her daily calories to 900 a day. Still, she couldn’t get the scale to budge.

She signed up for Ironman Canada, adding even more volume to her training schedule each week. Aware of the physical demands on her body, she raised her daily caloric intake to 1,200 calories a day, but wouldn’t allow herself to eat any more than that. Each week of training, she gained another pound.

“It was so frustrating and counter intuitive,” Scott said.

Scott is just one of many athletes who start training for an endurance event with the expectation of losing weight. While some do indeed drop weight, others feel defeated as they watch the scale move in the opposite direction. On forums of endurance web sites such as Slowtwitch.com, conversation threads show athletes expressing frustration over weight gain during training.

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