why do i gain weight when i eat a "normal portion" of food?

rikixchristine

i've been trying to keep a steady weight that is healthy, but any time i eat, i gain 1-2 pounds! i'm not talking about binging pounds, i'm talking about healthy portion/healthy food pounds! anyone know why this is?

kshama2001

Would you please change your Diary Sharing to Public? http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings

KateTii

What's a "normal portion"?

Open your diary, it's the best way for us to help.

MommyL2015

How are you determining what a "normal portion" of food is? And unless you're eating 3500+ calories over your maintenance amount every time you eat, you're not gaining 1-2 pounds of fat. Your weight can fluctuate up to 5 or more pounds daily. It's normal.

dizzieblondeuk

Weigh yourself in the morning, before eating anything and then DON'T WEIGHT YOURSELF AGAIN THAT DAY! My weight can change by up to 5lb, depending on how much I eat and drink during the day. The only time it's acceptable to reweigh yourself is if you drink 500ml of water in a short time, and then step on the scale because, yes, 500ml of water does equal 500g in weight! That's just for sh*ts and giggles though!

The OP is only 18 years old - I'm going to allow for questioning something that seems obvious to others, because she may never have considered putting food into her stomach means that food weighs x grams/pounds, and so directly impacts on the number on the scale right at that moment. The good thing, if you're eating at a deficit, over the space of 24 hours (and then 7 days etc), your body's amazing biological systems will burn a certain number of calories, simply to keep your heart beating, your liver working etc, and your activity will burn the rest, plus any stored reserves to make up for the deficit - and that's how you'll lose weight.

PaulJRaymond

shell1005 wrote: »

Last Tuesday I had a doctor's appt...it was also my weigh in day. So I weighed in when I get up and then hours later at my appt they also weighed me. I weighed 3 lbs more. Did I gain 3 lbs in 3 hours? Or...was it the weight of my clothes and the food and water in my stomach? I'll go with the latter.

Or the scales were calibrated differently?

bendyourkneekatie

PaulJRaymond wrote: »

shell1005 wrote: »

Last Tuesday I had a doctor's appt...it was also my weigh in day. So I weighed in when I get up and then hours later at my appt they also weighed me. I weighed 3 lbs more. Did I gain 3 lbs in 3 hours? Or...was it the weight of my clothes and the food and water in my stomach? I'll go with the latter.

Or the scales were calibrated differently?

I somehow lost weight one morning between my scales at home and the one at the gym. Must have been one hell of a walk.

auddii

Are you talking about getting on the scale after you eat a meal? I'm thinking you need to stop weighing so much; seems almost like disordered thinking. Take a breath, relax, and follow the plan MFP gives you.

WBB55

... food you eat has weight. If you weigh yourself before you eat, and then you have an 8 oz steak and an 8 oz glass of water, and then you weigh yourself, you will have "gained" 1 lb according to the scale. But you didn't "gain" 1 lb of fat. Is that what you're counting as "gaining" every time you eat?

beemerphile1

Of course you gain weight when you eat. You just put food in your stomach. You also gain weight when you put on your coat.

vivelajackie

Weight fluctuates a loooot. That's why you keep track of weight over time, not day to day. Don't get discouraged.

PinkPixiexox

Everyone's opinion on 'normal portions' will vary!

For example - I recently purchased a chicken casserole ready meal for my boyfriend and I to have for dinner one evening. The box said "Contains 4 portions". I ended up serving myself the equivalent of 3 portions thinking it was more like ONE! The boxes interpretations of '1 portion' was enough to feed a baby mouse (in my opinion heh!). I'd definitely suggest weighing your food with an electronic food scale to determine how many calories you are actually consuming. Before I weighed my food, I was under estimating calories by around 300, sometimes 400 per day so it was no wonder my weigh loss was stalling!

Hope this helps!

wkwebby

A few key facts here:

-Your "normal" is very different from a male, 6 ft., at 200 lbs "normal" portion.
-You can't create or destroy matter or energy (that food and drink weighs something and is going into your body, it doesn't magically disappear).
-Until you peed and pooped, you have the weight of everything that you've eaten or drank minus whatever you've used up in energy (exercise and sweating will take away SOME of the weight, but not all of it).
-1-2 lbs could easily be water weight. It isn't unusual to see a 5 lb water weight gain after eating an unusually salty meal and drinking a gallon of water or other liquid.

Hope this you can digest all the info everyone gave. Bottom line is to NEVER worry about one day's 1-2 lb gain. Trending is a lot more important (if every day you gained 1-2 lbs without ever having lost that 1-2 lb by morning or by pooping/peeing, then you've got a problem somewhere in what you're doing). Good luck!

cwolfman13

your problem is that you are trying to keep something static which is inherently not static...

DeguelloTex

If you gain weight over time, you're taking in more calories than you're burning, regardless of how normal you think the portions are.

AnnPT77

I weigh myself daily, first thing in the morning. I have gained as much as *five pounds* from one morning to the next, and I guarantee I didn't eat 17,500 calories! Two to three pounds is not unusual. It's time of month, salt consumption, hydration, exercise, sleep, weight of recent food still in your system, and more.

Maintain a carefully-tracked healthy deficit, track your weight over a period of weeks, and you'll see a downward trend over time. You'll be fine.

XavierNusum

AnnPT77 wrote: »

I weigh myself daily, first thing in the morning. I have gained as much as *five pounds* from one morning to the next, and I guarantee I didn't eat 17,500 calories! Two to three pounds is not unusual. It's time of month, salt consumption, hydration, exercise, sleep, weight of recent food still in your system, and more.

Maintain a carefully-tracked healthy deficit, track your weight over a period of weeks, and you'll see a downward trend over time. You'll be fine.

Right here!!!

Kalikel

Most people gain as the day goes on.

One time, I weighed when I got up, waited and hour and got back on the scale - didn't eat, drink or even brush my teeth. I was up a pound and a half. It just happens.

Don't sweat little scale fluctuations! If you do, you'll drive yourself mad because that scale is going to fluctuate all the time.

Watch the trends. See how the 1st of the month compares to the 15th and 30th.

WinoGelato

My weight fluctuates by about 5 lbs throughout the course of the day, the week, and the month. I know exactly what time of day, which day of the month I will be the lowest point because I see daily, weekly, and monthly variations from a number of different contributing factors (water weight, need to poop, TOM, etc), but those fluctuations are all very predictable.

If these fluctuations are going to stress you out, don't weigh yourself so often. Personally I enjoy weighing myself at different times of the day, week, and month to help sort out what those patterns are going to be, but if it was causing me angst I would only weigh once a week.