Newbie - HELP!!

what are you doing for "strength training" ?

perhaps you are eating the wrong stuff at the wrong times ? do you eat a lot late ? heavy on pasta/bread/rice/cereal/etc ?

do you keep a log on your caloric intake for the day ?

I don't weigh myself except at my yearly physical.  I works really well for me.  Eat well, train smart, forget about your weight.  At the end of the day you'll be happier.

You mean a pound of muscle weighs more than a pound of fat.

As a former personal trainer, I always encouraged my people to focus more on inches than weight. I'd generally say that your strength training is packing on some muscle weight, but there are so, so many variables involved.

My first question: Are your clothes fitting different?  ...good sign...

Keep training and welcome to the club!

first off, are you trying to lose weight?

if so, try myfitnesspal.com

there is also a great App

you can log your calories and exercise data and shoot for a weightloss goal

I also use mapmytri.com to log all of my workouts.  I find the calories burned to be more conservative there and then input that calorie number into myfitnesspal.  There is a great barcode scanner for the App.

Good luck on the Tri!

One suggestion I would make is to really understand the variability in your weight from day to day and then start looking at longer-term shifts in your average weight.  I'm a math guy so I wanted lots of data. For example, each time I take a measurement I want to actually take three measurements back to back and chart the average of the three to reduce overall measurement variation.  I want to measure my weight daily and at the same time... I do it when I step out of bed.  I then want to see a trend line so that I can see what is really going on.  I'm also interested in understanding my percent body fat and how that is changing over time so a scale that measures that is important to me.  Although scales that measure body fat through skin inductance and compare to a population set of data to determine your measurement aren't the best for getting an absolute value, they are very good at detecting relative changes over time if measured on a regular basis.

All of this can be time consuming and time is something that I don't have.  So I invested in a Withings Wi-Fi Scale.  This scale sits in my bathroom but is connected to my wireless network.  It automatically uploads all measurements to my Withings account (free with purchase of scale).  Within my Withings account I can see charts like the one below.  If you have different people in the house using the same scale it automatically detects which user has stepped on the scale.  I also do the same for my pulse and blood pressure using their blood pressure monitor which works with an iPhone or iPad.   I am very happy with both products and I have absolutely no financial interest or any other interest in Withings or these products.

Finally if you look at my weight measurements you will see that my day to day variation even when weighing at the same time each day and taking multiple measurements is quite a bit and if "weight loss" was a goal for me and I was determining my success based on these readings... I would have a lot of bad days and might try to take corrective actions that weren't needed and might be detrimental.  However if I tracked the white line (the trend line) I will get a true sense of what is going on and stay more focused on the longer-term, big picture.  Good luck!

Agreed. When I see my waist shrink and my pants get looser, I'm thrilled. The scale just tells me a number...which is usually higher than it was before, because I've added muscle.

This.  And conversely, if you are burning more than you are consuming you will lose weight.  

Easy there.  Red font is sarcasm.  Just ribbing.