Help me understand this, please! Vacation eating & weight

ghartleroad1

I've been about 6lbs away from my ultimate goal (BMI 18.5; weight 118) for four month, fluctuating on the same 2lbs (122-124lbs). I am militant about keeping to my 1250 cal/day as a 5'7" woman, but lightened up a bit on my workouts - shifting from all cardio (HIIT & running) to cardio & weights. This has been my strategy for the past 14 months.

Last week was vacation. I did one 5mi walk. That's it for the entire week. While I still tracked my food, I took a more "eat what you want" attitude. So some portions were larger, was likely dehydrated, and I indulged my sweet tooth with a lot of ice cream. I mean A LOT. I was over my weekly calorie goal by 2000 cal and averaged over 1500 (vs my usual 1250) for the week.

I prepped myself to get on the scale yesterday, hoping against all hope to have not gained more than 1 to 1.5lbs. To my utter shock, my weight stayed EXACTLY THE SAME. Can someone explain this to me?

Did my body just get too used to my eating/workout routine? Is it possible my body went back into starvation mode before vacation? (This was the problem I had when I was first working out with running - my nutritionist informed me I wasn't eating enough when I first started trying to lose weight.)

Any/all insights are appreciated!

malibu927

Starvation mode doesn't work that way. I'd just chalk it up to weight loss not being linear.

Machka9

It was only one week. If you had kept it up for 3 weeks, it might have been a different story.

You might have eaten at maintenance. If you averaged in the 1500-1700 range, that's probably close to maintenance.

Exercising can cause some water retention ... I have noticed that I lose a bit of weight when I take a few days off exercise, possibly ridding myself of the exercise-induced water retention.

You could possibly be surprised by a 1-2 lb gain later this week. Sometimes it seems that the body takes a few days to catch up.

And weight loss isn't linear. These ups and downs happen.