Gaining on 1400 cal

Mrsindepenant1

I have posted before about my weight loss and activity levels and was told by numerous people I should up my calories. I have lost 5 kg in just over 3 weeks on 1200 calories. I decided to up
My calories for a week by 200 and see what happened. Iv been gaining about .2 of a kg a day! I’m still very active and nothing’s changed In my life other than eating the extra 200 calories. I keep within my sugar and carb range and eat fairly well so I’m not sure why I would be gaining on 1400 calories.

cathipa

How are you accounting/measuring what you are eating? Are you logging everything?

zeejane03

What are your stats?

I'm currently losing around .5lb a week on 1,400 but day to day the scale fluctuates and that's completely normal.

Last week I was up the whole week because of PMS/start of tom. This morning, after going over my maintenance calorie intake yesterday, (intake around 2,000 calories), I'm down a pound and saw a new low on the scale for this weight loss cycle. It all evens out over time though and my trend is .5lb a week. I'm 5ft, 6in, 40 years old, sedentary and BMI as of this morning is 21.8

Look at your trends-a week is not long enough to accurately tell you anything.

eta: edit

Redordeadhead

One week is not long enough to judge and those could easily be normal water weight fluctuations. Give it a bit more time.

TavistockToad

Mrsindepenant1 wrote: »

I have posted before about my weight loss and activity levels and was told by numerous people I should up my calories. I have lost 5 kg in just over 3 weeks on 1200 calories. I decided to up
My calories for a week by 200 and see what happened. Iv been gaining about .2 of a kg a day! I’m still very active and nothing’s changed In my life other than eating the extra 200 calories. I keep within my sugar and carb range and eat fairly well so I’m not sure why I would be gaining on 1400 calories.

So how much have you actually gained in what timeframe?

Mrsindepenant1

Today is day 7 and iv actually only gained a kg all up. But I would have assumed 1400 calories is enough to still be loosing at a steady rate. I log everything correctly and weight it all. I’m doing 10k steps a day and have a very physical farm/horse job. I’m 168cm, 86kg.

Mrsindepenant1

I do have pms symptoms for about 2 weeks prior to pms so am dealing with that. I suppose that could affect it also?

apullum

How tall are you? Unless you're very short, you're not gaining on 1400 per day. The most likely answer is that you have a bit of extra food/water weight from increasing your calories.

shadow2soul

Daily fluctuations are totally normal and a 1kg weight increase is well within normal fluctuation range.

http://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations/

Fatty_Nuff

No you are not gaining on 1400 calories. A person would have to be comatose to gain on 1400 calories. You upped your calorie intake for one week so far, and apparently have been weighing yourself every day. A week is too soon to make a judgement on your new program.

TavistockToad

Mrsindepenant1 wrote: »

I do have pms symptoms for about 2 weeks prior to pms so am dealing with that. I suppose that could affect it also?

Bingo....

Look at your weight over 6 weeks, not one.

zeejane03

Mrsindepenant1 wrote: »

I do have pms symptoms for about 2 weeks prior to pms so am dealing with that. I suppose that could affect it also?

Yep, you just answered your own question I've had fluctuations of up to 5lbs overnight, due to PMS. It's temporary and will calm down in a few days.

Do you use a trending app for your weigh-ins? It's a very useful tool that helps you see your trends over time, and gives you a better picture of where you're actually at.

cwolfman13

If you lost 5kg in 3 weeks on 1200, mathematically it would be impossible to gain actual fat on 200 calories more.

Mrsindepenant1 wrote: »

I do have pms symptoms for about 2 weeks prior to pms so am dealing with that. I suppose that could affect it also?

Yeah...you retain hella water. Beyond that, bodyweight fluctuates naturally and you're not going to see linear weight loss...it's going to be up and down with some weeks with bigger losses, smaller losses, no losses, and gains. The long term trend is what you need to watch, not the individual weigh ins.

Mrsindepenant1

Thanks for the reply’s. I’ll give it a few more weeks. It’s not very cool seeing the scale go up .2 one day, .1 the next and .3 another day etc and kind of had me panicked. It just seemed like a steady increase.

SCoil123

Mrsindepenant1 wrote: »

I do have pms symptoms for about 2 weeks prior to pms so am dealing with that. I suppose that could affect it also?

I’m up 4lbs in 48hr...just checked my cycle tracker and period is due anytime. That could definitely be affecting your weigh ins

brittlb07

Mrsindepenant1 wrote: »

Thanks for the reply’s. I’ll give it a few more weeks. It’s not very cool seeing the scale go up .2 one day, .1 the next and .3 another day etc and kind of had me panicked. It just seemed like a steady increase.

This was happening to me. I was in the 137’s for a week and most of that was going up the whole week. Then I went from 137.4 to 136.0 and then 135.6 the next day! I’m not sure I buy into the “whoosh” theory as I’ve seen conflicting research on that but looking at my data I HAVE noticed having a pattern of stalls and then BOOM!

Notice my trends circled.

paperpudding

and anyway, regardless of periods, if anyone loses 5kg in 3 weeks that is a big loss in a short time frame so some of that is going to be water weight which will go back on as you get used to your new diet.

so if you lose 5 kg in 3 weeks and then gain 1 kg in 1 week then your loss for the month is still 4 kg - about 8lb. Still an aggressive rate.

MikePTY

To give you an idea at the math, it is literally impossible to be gaining .2 kgs of fat a day (.44 pounds) on an extra 200 calories a day. There are 3500 calories in a pound, so for .2kg gain of fat, you would need to eat an additional 1540 calories over maintenance. Even if 1200 was your maintenance level (basically impossible, but for illustrations sake), that means you would need to eat 2740 calories in a day to gain .2kg in fat. So that is not what is actually happening to you. Your body is just experiencing normal fluctuations. You should still be able to lose on 1400 calories and I expect you will if you stick with it over the longer term.

jasonpoihegatama

How long have you been on 1200 calories? My understanding is woman flux in weight with pms but it so becomes right.

ouryve

Stop weighing daily, if it's offputting.

PAV8888

To recap, you really should be comparing your weight at similar points of time in your cycle.

daily weigh-ins are perfectly fine, in fact are probably the best way to go, as long as you're considering the weight trend** as opposed to the individual weigh-ins in isolation, and as long as you're taking expected fluctuations into account.

And as explained above, even if you had been eating at maintenance as opposed to an aggressive deficit, the scope of your caloric increase mathematically does not support the weight change you've seen. Therefore the cause of the change is not the extra calories.

csplatt

if it's only been a week, what you're probably seeing is that extra bit of food sitting in your intestines, etc. if you're measuring, etc. then mathematically you aren't putting on fat.