The journalist for the New York Daily News goes to great lengths trying to explain Bristol Palin's weight gain on DWTS, without stating the obvious.

Palin (l. in Sept; r. Monday) and her body could be changing due to increased muscle or increased eating - or both. (D'Amico, Larkey/ABC)

The Daily News:

Bristol Palin has surprised judges and viewers alike with her improvement on "Dancing with the Stars," but the single mom has also sparked one particular question.

How the heck is she not losing weight on this show?

Ah ha! Now finally reporters are going to ask the obvious questions and will undoubtedly reach to the obvious conclusions. Or am I expecting too much?

The ABC reality competition requires contestants to dance for hours on an almost daily basis if they want to last as long as Palin has. "DWTS" alum Kelly Osbourne credits her stint on the show as a catalyst for her 50-pound weight loss. And as fellow competitor Kyle Massey has demonstrated, the intense exercise can cause pounds to seemingly melt away.

But not always.

Last month, Palin herself acknowledged that she hadn't shed any weight while on the show.

"I haven't really noticed a change in [my body]," she told "Access Hollywood." "I think most people lose weight [on the show] because they're too stressed out to eat. I haven't had that problem!"

"Anyone who participates in any type of vigorous, regular physical activity could potentially gain weight," says Elisa Zied, a registered dietician and author of "Nutrition at Your Fingertips."

"Even if you're doing vigorous activity like dancing, pressures could lead you to over-consume calories if you're seeking comfort in food," Zied says, "and this is a girl who is definitely under the microscope in many ways."

WTF? Has this guy SEEN a picture of Bristol's weight gain?  In order for Bristol to gain THAT much extra weight, she would literally have to be eating thousands of calories more than her increased metabolic rate from all this exercise was capable of burning.  It is not just that Bristol is NOT losing weight, it is that she is GAINING weight!

I have spent years as a personal trainer so let me see if I can break this down so it is easy to understand.

When you exercise you increase your body's need for fuel to burn for energy, and nutrients to build stronger muscles to handle the increased stress. Your body will seek that nutrition by processing the foods you eat, which will leave less available for your body to store as fat. If that is not sufficient it will feed off the fat reserves and muscle tissue in your body to find the nutrients it needs to give your body the fuel required to keep up with the increased demand.

However if you are constantly working out and using your muscles THEY are going to demand nutrients to help them grow and to deal with increased workload as well. Which means unless you have dramatically bumped up your caloric intake, your body would be forced to burn the fat reserves to satisfy that need. 

That is how people lose body fat through exercise.

It is not uncommon for people to exercise very hard and STILL remain the same weight, or in some cases even gain weight.  And there is nothing wrong with that.

When you engage in resistance type exercise your muscles will increase in their size, which means when you step on the scale it might seem that you have not lost any fat, but in fact you have. 

I have literally had female clients come up to me crying because they have gained a pound or two and want to just quit the gym and go home to eat a cheesecake.  So what I do is measure their hips, waist, legs, arms, and chest.  Invariably they will see a dramatic change in those areas DESPITE not losing any weight according to the scale. And that is because muscle is LEAN, and therefore has much less volume than does fat.

However THOSE results usually come from doing anaerobic exercise, such as weight training, rather than from aerobic exercise, like running or dancing..  Bristol's dance training is almost exclusively aerobic, and not anaerobic, which means her increase in muscle density should NOT offset her loss of fat.

However having said all of that IT DOES NOT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE!  Bristol is NOT simply maintaining, or gaining, weight.  She is gaining SIZE.

There is absolutely no way that she could be sitting in her room and stuffing enough calories in her body to account for the dramatic increase in the size of her waist. No way!

Either the girl is pregnant, which is the theory I am currently subscribing to, or she has something terribly wrong with her metabolism which is causing a seemingly unnatural weight gain.  In other words rather than being on television the young woman should, either be visiting her obstetrician on a regular basis, or under the care of a specialist to determine what has gone haywire with her body.

But instead, for reasons that I simply cannot fathom, she is out in the public arena ballooning up in size, while Palin-bots and public relations people try desperately to divert our attention away from noticing, or commenting, on what is right there is front of our faces.

Update:  I still cannot get an embed but Gawker has both her horrible cage dance and the judges overly complimentary comments afterward.