Body weight

stuarta99

Ok thank you, again I wasn't aware of that. It wasn't a massive run, just run 2 of the couch to 5k, but I'll bin it and ignore and wait for my normal check of even wait a week

AnnPT77

stuarta99 wrote: »

Ok thank you, again I wasn't aware of that. It wasn't a massive run, just run 2 of the couch to 5k, but I'll bin it and ignore and wait for my normal check of even wait a week

If you didn't read the article at the link yet, please read it. If you did read it, read it again, and think how it applies in your life.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10683010/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-fluctuations/p1

I'm sorry if I seem harsh, but I'm with heybales: You're stressing over meaningless things. Please, please don't do that.

Unless you suddenly gain tens of pounds overnight or close, which could indicate a health problem, water weight is meaningless. Water weight is meaningless. Random.

The weight fluctuation you see within a day, up to as much as a couple of weeks (maybe longer for adult women not yet in menopause), is almost entirely meaningless. It's water weight.

The trend of your weight, over weeks to months, tells you what's happening with body fat. Body fat is what most of us care about.

The trend of your weight, over many months to years, if you're progressively strength training (lifting increasingly more over time), may be partly attributable to muscle gain. It's super slow. Some people care about muscle gain.

The hour to hour changes in weight, possibly even the changes over a few days to a short number of weeks? Not fat or muscle, not important.

stuarta99

I'm not stressing, far from it, I didn't even plan on doing the C25K but was walking in the park and thought sod it lets give it a go. Have read the article and it's great, a couple of things there that could be my reason, but my brain unfortunately has to compute as to what does and doesn't work.

Weighing this morning was just quickly out of interest and nothing more to see, but again as with all of this I wasn't aware that after some exercise it was a bad thing, well hour or so after as it probably was.

All of this is just a learning experience to me, as I said above, to see what does and doesn't work and everyday is a school day and grateful for responses on here as you've obviously all been doing it a lot longer than me.

Strudders67

You may find it an interesting learning experience to weight yourself every morning, shortly after you get up, and track that over 6-8 weeks on a graph. It'll go up and down, but the interesting point will be whether the overall trend is that it's going down.

stuarta99

Yeah I'm not doing every morning, normally once a week, just thought I'd try this morning midweek to check but obviously wrong time and then learning what I might be doing wrong if it goes up over time

Strudders67

I only ever weighed once a week. Just don't be alarmed if some weeks you don't see any movement or a small gain. That could be water weight. Tracking daily makes it easier to see the fluctuations.

stuarta99

Ok so lessons learned from my testing.

1 - Keep to once a week (which I've been doing for weeks until lockdown when I noticed the original increase).

2 - If it goes up one week, as long as I'm below my maintenance figure, it won't be traditional weight gain as such and therefore nothing to worry about.

3 - Don't weigh too close to exercise but then as long as I follow point 1 it shouldn't be an issue.

richardbrownuk1

I would say: get up, pee (is it ok to say that?), then weigh. Either weekly or daily. Don't try to time it before/after exercise or specifically avoiding salty food/water retention, as you're probably kidding yourself. If you want to weigh yourself daily but don't like the daily fluctuations, put it in a spreadsheet and keep track of the moving average of your last 7 days' weights. You'll still see your current weight but will get a better impression of the path you're on.

stuarta99

Well thankfully after all of this, I'm back to my normal weekly weighs and I'm still the same as I was post run in the week so have something consistent now to use