Starting to be concerned over my daily fluctuations :/

Cinarocket
Cinarocket Posts: 49 Member
edited October 2014 in Health and Weight Loss
Alright, I weigh daily and I've learned better than getting worried about the odd gain overnight (waterweight blabla i know) but this is starting to worry me.

Here are my latest weigh reports from last week 4659b205a34db42753eb1674cd18c286.png
(Those are in kilos so double them and a bit for lbs)
And here is what is puzzling me :

From Sunday to Thursday, I've played more sports than I ever had before in my life over 4 days.
I played respectively 2hours of basketball on sunday, 4hours of basketball on monday, 1 hour of soccer on tuesday and 3 hours of basketball on wednesday. That's 10 hours of intense sports over 4 days.
I have been losing at a very fast pace for 3 months up to this point and when I was down to 86.6 on Sunday and knew I was going to play a lot of sports I had hopes of reaching my goal of 85kg within a week or two and instead I've been gaining weight every single day instead of losing...

My eating has been fine and similar (1184,447,1558,1014 nets calories over those 4 days, it's nearly impossible to eat back all the calories burnt) to before so I doubt that is the problem.

I mean maybe I should have the same reaction as if this was just one odd gain but I really have a hard time to believe that 10 hours of sports + fine eating is supposed to make me gain weight (nearly 2.5lbs) over those 3 days.

Should i just keep doing what i've been doing and consider it as an odd thing and move on or should i considering switching up in my diet/exercize ? If i had to switch up that'd not be too pleasing as i was very satisfied with what I had been doing up to this point.

Thanks!

Replies

  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
    you've lost half a pound in a week... how much were you expecting to lose? what is your deficit set to at the moment?
  • beckyheinz
    beckyheinz Posts: 2 Member
    edited October 2014
    Firstly - I can fluctuate up to 3 lb in a few days, regardless of my eating and exercise!

    You mentioned water weight - The time of day, what meals you've eaten, the time it takes you to digest what you've eaten, and (sorry) whether you've been to the toilet recently will make a difference!

    Taken from shape.com:

    "A lot of factors can influence your weight—including your workouts.
    Have you ever noticed that right after (or even a day or two after) an intense workout the scale goes up? That's normal, and it doesn't mean you've put on ‘weight,' Dolgan says.

    "A person's scale mass is a combination of muscle, fat, bone, the brain and neural tract, connective tissue, blood, lymph, intestinal gas, urine, and the air that we carry in our lungs. Immediately after a workout routine, the percentage of mass in each of these categories can shift as much as 15 percent." Intense workouts cause variability on the scale due to factors like hydration status, inflammation from muscle damage repair (we call this delayed onset muscle soreness), even the amount of intestinal by-product or urine and blood volume, Dolgan says."

    Don't stress :)
  • Phrick
    Phrick Posts: 2,765 Member
    beckyheinz wrote: »
    Firstly - I can fluctuate up to 3 lb in a few days, regardless of my eating and exercise!

    You mentioned water weight - The time of day, what meals you've eaten, the time it takes you to digest what you've eaten, and (sorry) whether you've been to the toilet recently will make a difference!

    Taken from shape.com:

    "A lot of factors can influence your weight—including your workouts.
    Have you ever noticed that right after (or even a day or two after) an intense workout the scale goes up? That's normal, and it doesn't mean you've put on ‘weight,' Dolgan says.

    "A person's scale mass is a combination of muscle, fat, bone, the brain and neural tract, connective tissue, blood, lymph, intestinal gas, urine, and the air that we carry in our lungs. Immediately after a workout routine, the percentage of mass in each of these categories can shift as much as 15 percent." Intense workouts cause variability on the scale due to factors like hydration status, inflammation from muscle damage repair (we call this delayed onset muscle soreness), even the amount of intestinal by-product or urine and blood volume, Dolgan says."

    Don't stress :)

    +1 and saved me a lot of typing :)
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,151 Member
    weight fluctuation is totally normal and often with increased exercise you're going to retain water. Relax
  • _Zardoz_
    _Zardoz_ Posts: 3,987 Member
    Relax weigh yourself less and stop obsessing. My weight can vary up to 5 pounds a day. It's perfectly normal
  • rivka_m
    rivka_m Posts: 1,007 Member
    What everyone else said. That amount of fluctuation looks completely normal to me. I often weigh more for a while when I've been exercising more than usual, but eventually the water weight will go away.
  • TimothyFish
    TimothyFish Posts: 4,925 Member
    You're gaining weight overnight? That shouldn't be possible, so have you considered that you might be sleep walking?
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
    You're gaining weight overnight? That shouldn't be possible, so have you considered that you might be sleep walking?

    the what now!? :wtf:
  • ndj1979
    ndj1979 Posts: 29,136 Member
    stop weighing every day and just weight yourself once a week at the same time…

    also, if you know better to be worried over daily fluctuations, why post this?
  • malibu927
    malibu927 Posts: 17,562 Member
    You're gaining weight overnight? That shouldn't be possible, so have you considered that you might be sleep walking?

    Apparently every woman before menopause is sleepwalking?

    OP, if you've increased your activity, it's your muscles holding onto water for repairs.
  • NoelFigart1
    NoelFigart1 Posts: 1,276 Member
    uys74p0jda1z.jpg

    So, I plugged your numbers in and did a formula that plotted a ten day moving average, an yes, it does look like a trend dipping up.

    That said...

    I don't think in this case without historical data of more than a week, that we're getting the full picture.

    And yeah, if you've increased your activity -- especially to the point where you're experiencing muscle soreness, I'd suspect fluid rather than fat.
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
    uys74p0jda1z.jpg

    So, I plugged your numbers in and did a formula that plotted a ten day moving average, an yes, it does look like a trend dipping up.

    That said...

    I don't think in this case without historical data of more than a week, that we're getting the full picture.

    And yeah, if you've increased your activity -- especially to the point where you're experiencing muscle soreness, I'd suspect fluid rather than fat.

    how have you done a 10 day moving average with 7 days of data?
  • NoelFigart1
    NoelFigart1 Posts: 1,276 Member
    uys74p0jda1z.jpg

    So, I plugged your numbers in and did a formula that plotted a ten day moving average, an yes, it does look like a trend dipping up.

    That said...

    I don't think in this case without historical data of more than a week, that we're getting the full picture.

    And yeah, if you've increased your activity -- especially to the point where you're experiencing muscle soreness, I'd suspect fluid rather than fat.

    how have you done a 10 day moving average with 7 days of data?

    Approximated with a weighted formula. It's not perfectly accurate, but close:

    =SUM((C3-D2)*0.1)+D2

    The C column would have the daily weight, and the D column has the approximate average for each day.
  • Oishii
    Oishii Posts: 2,675 Member
    The time scale and weight variation is far too small to mean anything. Exercise will make you heavier via water weight before it makes you lighter via fat loss.
  • Cinarocket
    Cinarocket Posts: 49 Member
    I got trendweight.com and it says my trend has been even for last few days. Up to this point my trend would always go down .1 or .2 kilos per day.

    As I said, chances are I'm completely overestimating this fluctuation but before this point, my negative fluctuations (as of weight going up) would never occur 3 days in a row and certainly not after a ton of exercize.

    Thanks to those telling me not to worry it's perfectly normal etc... Sometimes for a sensitive person desperate to reach his goal, it can be hard to rationalize the disapointment of seeing the scale go up 3 days in a row especially when those 3 days correlate to the days where I put in a lot of work.
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
    Cinarocket wrote: »
    I got trendweight.com and it says my trend has been even for last few days. Up to this point my trend would always go down .1 or .2 kilos per day.

    As I said, chances are I'm completely overestimating this fluctuation but before this point, my negative fluctuations (as of weight going up) would never occur 3 days in a row and certainly not after a ton of exercize.

    Thanks to those telling me not to worry it's perfectly normal etc... Sometimes for a sensitive person desperate to reach his goal, it can be hard to rationalize the disapointment of seeing the scale go up 3 days in a row especially when those 3 days correlate to the days where I put in a lot of work.

    you lost half a pound in a week... the scale has gone DOWN...............
  • 4daluvof_candice
    4daluvof_candice Posts: 483 Member
    OP, have you taken pics as progress? What is your deficit, goal? Im a little confused of what you actually want to do with your body....i.e. maintenance, weightloss, inches
  • sofaking6
    sofaking6 Posts: 4,589 Member
    You might want to think about weighing weekly instead of daily. It's easy to take it to the extreme if you have a need to see the number go down every single day.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    I'm almost 3 Lbs heavier this morning than I was yesterday...ohnoes.....

    Oh wait...I killed power snatches last night and doubled up on front squats and overhead squats afterwards.

    I think you might want to take a step back here and not weigh yourself so often if natural weight fluctuations are going to bother you so much.
  • TriShamelessly
    TriShamelessly Posts: 905 Member
    Daily fluctuations are perfectly normal. I can fluctuate up and down within a 10-pound range in the course of a week. Look at longer term trends (monthly) and the general direction. If you're obsessing about daily fluctuations like this, you need to either need to focus as suggested or stop weighing daily.
  • socalkay
    socalkay Posts: 746 Member
    Hi Cinarocket -
    I would add that it looks like you are almost to your goal weight. First, congrats on the weight lost. Great job! Second, I think it can often be harder to lose the last bit of weight as you near your goal weight. Be patient. If you stick to it, you'll get there.
  • dopeysmelly
    dopeysmelly Posts: 1,390 Member
    Happens all the time to me.

    If you're not reassured by the responses, maybe either weigh yourself weekly, or even monthly, or weigh daily plug it into a spreadsheet and only look at the longer-term trend. That's what I do, and works for me. I can still see the fluctuations (so I know it's normal and predictable), but they don't freak me out.
  • Cinarocket
    Cinarocket Posts: 49 Member
    OP, have you taken pics as progress? What is your deficit, goal? Im a little confused of what you actually want to do with your body....i.e. maintenance, weightloss, inches

    Not much of a pics guy but i'm still trying to lose a few kilos.


    ndj1979 wrote: »
    stop weighing every day and just weight yourself once a week at the same time…

    also, if you know better to be worried over daily fluctuations, why post this?

    As I said in my OP, this abnormal fluctuation is coming RIGHT after some of my best days exercise wise (i'd estimate having burnt around 5000 kcal in 4 days). I already knew that weight could fluctuate easily over a day or 2 but going up for 3 days after my best days in terms of exercise (and eating) is just... weird.


  • SweatLikeDog
    SweatLikeDog Posts: 319 Member
    You fluctuate 1.5 kilos in a week. That's normal. The mirror and the fit of your clothes are more accurate gauges of the direction your body fat is taking. Weigh yourself in the morning after using the bathroom for consistent numbers. Don't stress over normal.
  • Phrick
    Phrick Posts: 2,765 Member
    Cinarocket wrote: »
    OP, have you taken pics as progress? What is your deficit, goal? Im a little confused of what you actually want to do with your body....i.e. maintenance, weightloss, inches

    Not much of a pics guy but i'm still trying to lose a few kilos.


    ndj1979 wrote: »
    stop weighing every day and just weight yourself once a week at the same time…

    also, if you know better to be worried over daily fluctuations, why post this?

    As I said in my OP, this abnormal fluctuation is coming RIGHT after some of my best days exercise wise (i'd estimate having burnt around 5000 kcal in 4 days). I already knew that weight could fluctuate easily over a day or 2 but going up for 3 days after my best days in terms of exercise (and eating) is just... weird.


    actually it's the opposite of weird,that's what we're trying to tell you. After 4 days of intense exercise if you were NOT showing heavier on the scale, it would be weird. This is 100% normal.
  • Cinarocket
    Cinarocket Posts: 49 Member
    Good to know thanks!
  • FitMomOK
    FitMomOK Posts: 66 Member
    Liftng4Lis wrote: »
    weight fluctuation is totally normal and often with increased exercise you're going to retain water. Relax

    yep. mine can go up a couple of pounds after several days of intense exercise