Why do I lose weight after eating a lot of calories?

AimiAutumn
AimiAutumn Posts: 22 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I'm sort of confused about this!
I can eat super healthy, 1300 calories a day and the scale will barely move, but the day after I eat about 1800 calories I drop a pound?

Its really confusing and I'm not sure how many calories I should be eating

I weight 185 pounds, 5'8 23 year old female. I'm an illustrator who works from home so I have a VERY sedentary lifestyle.

How many calories do you think I should be consuming to moderately lose weight?

My goal is about 2 pounds a week

Replies

  • SusanMFindlay
    SusanMFindlay Posts: 1,804 Member
    2 pounds/week is too aggressive a goal given your height and weight. 1 pound/week would be a better goal given that you have less than 50 pounds to lose. Especially if you're very sedentary (since you won't be able to safely get your calories low enough to achieve a 1000 cal/day deficit without exercise).

    The loss after a high-cal day may be a coincidence or it may be because stress raises our cortisol levels and cortisol makes us retain water. Destressing by eating maintenance-range calories for a day may just flush that extra water weight out.
  • Seffell
    Seffell Posts: 2,244 Member
    edited September 2016
    Weight does not (sadly) reflect the previous day calorie intake. Weight fluctuates very much unpredictably from day to day. You can only expect to see drops corresponding to your total deficit once in a week or even several weeks. So the drop you saw was not a reflection of your high intake the previous day but rather a collection of factors, like overall intake from previous weeks, time of month for women, water retention, glycogen stores, bowel movement etc.

    About the rate of loss - 2 lbs is too much. You should aim for 1lbs/week.
  • ronjsteele1
    ronjsteele1 Posts: 1,064 Member
    Don't know what to tell you OP, but this same thing happens to me. If I get stuck for weeks on end I will blow through my calorie limit for a day and within 48hrs I will usually dump several pounds off. Don't know if it's holding water or what, but I get the same whoosh effect after doing this once in awhile.
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
    I've read many times of big weight drops after higher calorie days. Unfortunately it doesn't work for me, as I've tried it plenty of times (with my fingers crossed) and the scales always go up, never down :sad:!
  • Evamutt
    Evamutt Posts: 2,731 Member
    My friend who lost 70lbs told me it's because it confuses your metabolism when you do something different once in a while
  • KrazyKrissyy
    KrazyKrissyy Posts: 322 Member
    singingflutelady wrote: »
    Your metabolism doesn't have a brain so you can't confuse it.

    You can cause metabolic damage though. Take it from someone who's been anorexic before.
  • CoffeeNCardio
    CoffeeNCardio Posts: 1,847 Member
    KrazyKrissyy wrote: »
    singingflutelady wrote: »
    Your metabolism doesn't have a brain so you can't confuse it.

    You can cause metabolic damage though. Take it from someone who's been anorexic before.


    Don't you think that's a little extreme to compare to OP's case though? Anorexia takes you into those very wild extremes of caloric deficit that don't apply to the general CICO weight loss community. I'm not denying YOU experienced metabolic slowdown as a result of your anorexia (thrilled that this seems to be a past-tense situation for you btw, well done, you've done something amazing), but OP isn't in a deficit so strict as to cause that, and certainly hasn't been in one *long* enough to cause that.
  • wally2wiki
    wally2wiki Posts: 36 Member
    Chris Aceto a professional nutritionist said that eating a large meal once in a while, during a very low calorie diet;tricks your metabolism into thinking food is available; as a result your metabolism goes up temporarily, so does your BMR and as a result you lose more weight at rest.

    I think evamutt is correct.
  • CoffeeNCardio
    CoffeeNCardio Posts: 1,847 Member
    wally2wiki wrote: »
    Chris Aceto a professional nutritionist said that eating a large meal once in a while, during a very low calorie diet;tricks your metabolism into thinking food is available; as a result your metabolism goes up temporarily, so does your BMR and as a result you lose more weight at rest.

    I think evamutt is correct.

    Source?
  • singingflutelady
    singingflutelady Posts: 8,736 Member
    KrazyKrissyy wrote: »
    singingflutelady wrote: »
    Your metabolism doesn't have a brain so you can't confuse it.

    You can cause metabolic damage though. Take it from someone who's been anorexic before.

    I've had anorexia too. Eating more one day will not increase your metabolism.
  • singingflutelady
    singingflutelady Posts: 8,736 Member
    edited September 2016
    CoffeeNCardio wrote: »
    wally2wiki wrote: »
    Chris Aceto a professional nutritionist said that eating a large meal once in a while, during a very low calorie diet;tricks your metabolism into thinking food is available; as a result your metabolism goes up temporarily, so does your BMR and as a result you lose more weight at rest.

    I think evamutt is correct.

    Source?

    Exactly.
  • jolive7
    jolive7 Posts: 283 Member
    You could be unintentionally giving yourself a refeed day. Refeeding increases leptin levels which has positive effexts on fat oxidation. Ref: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16030519
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,933 Member
    Very anecdotal evidence here, nothing scientific to see (though if someone has an explanation backed by science...). Often after high calorie days I find myself being lighter the next morning. However, I also get dizzy when I stand up from sitting. My guess is that I got rid of water weight somehow that slowly gets filled up in the coming days again.

    When I was still losing weight I noticed the same, and I do was a whoosher. So my guess purely based on own experience would be that your fat cells get less fatty but you store water instead for a while. Then something, maybe the higher calorie day, maybe coincidence triggers the release of the water and voila: you're lighter the next morning. Do you notice that you feel a big squishy before such a drop in weight, or that you pee a lot? Might be an indication.
  • RoxieDawn
    RoxieDawn Posts: 15,488 Member
    jolive7 wrote: »
    You could be unintentionally giving yourself a refeed day. Refeeding increases leptin levels which has positive effexts on fat oxidation. Ref: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16030519

    This leptin is real. And I can find some science based stuff if needed, but to be technical, leptin, grelin, coritsol, thyroid (all the little hormones that make us tick) get regulated by to a normal state as dieting causing stress on the body.

    For all practical purposes, I would say a woosh happened, maybe?. A lot of folks including my self loose weight in chunks like this. I can maintain weight for for 8 days in a deficit, eat a carb loaded meal and drop the next day up to 2 or 3 more days then the cycle rinses and repeats.
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
    Something not mentioned is that eating a larger meal or two is going to push things along in your digestive system, meaning that your output will increase and that can lower your weight.
  • workinonit1956
    workinonit1956 Posts: 1,043 Member
    jemhh wrote: »
    Something not mentioned is that eating a larger meal or two is going to push things along in your digestive system, meaning that your output will increase and that can lower your weight.
    I agree!

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