Water retention ?

lobylou5

I give up the booze a week ago stuck to my recommended calories and haven’t lost any weight I have been drinking more water. Could it be water retention is this normal when you first stop drinking alcohol
Advise please

yirara

Are you actually consuming less calories? How do you measure your calorie intake?

lobylou5

I’m using the MFP app with allocated 1200 calories

yirara

Ok, but how do you know you eat 1200 calories? Are you using the information on packaging, spoons or a scale in grams?

Can you give us a bit more information to help you?
What is your current weight and goal weight
How tall are you, how old
Female or male?
weight loss goal?

lobylou5

I’m using information on packaging and kitchen scales. I’m female age 60 current 5ft 2” 10stone 11 pounds Goal weight 9st 3lbs

callsitlikeiseeit

lobylou5

Thanks for information

cmriverside

First, congrats on giving up alcohol.

Second, you don't have much weight to lose and it's only been a week. I think 1200 is too low, to be honest - but if you are comfortable there it won't hurt you in the short term. I wouldn't try to stick at that low calorie for very long, though.

Set your Goals to "Lose 1/2 pound per week." Be honest on the Activity setting and as accurate as possible with the food logging, then give it time...adjust after a month.

The quitting alcohol thing - it does sort of depend on how much you were drinking, what your general nutrition was like while you were drinking. When I quit drinking it took many months for my nutrition to be good enough to be able to lose weight. Stay the course. I know all I wanted to eat was carbs when I first quit drinking. My body would prefer I give it what it needs.

Poobah1972

I don't know enough to comment on the possible correlations between non-drinking and water retention...

But congratulations on giving up the booze! And all the best to you in your endeavors!

cwolfman13

How much booze? My wife and I are both not drinking right now...she didn't really drink all that much, maybe a couple of glasses of wine in the evening. She's not losing weight, but it's a lot easier for her to also offset the calories from not drinking with more calories from a couple of snacks or something. For myself, I was taking in around 1500 calories per day in alcohol alone...the weight is falling off of me right now like leaves on a cottonwood in October.

I don't know that water retention specifically related to cutting alcohol is a thing...but I do know that many people compensate a bit with food and often also develop a sweet tooth.

kshama2001

cwolfman13 wrote: »

How much booze? My wife and I are both not drinking right now...she didn't really drink all that much, maybe a couple of glasses of wine in the evening. She's not losing weight, but it's a lot easier for her to also offset the calories from not drinking with more calories from a couple of snacks or something. For myself, I was taking in around 1500 calories per day in alcohol alone...the weight is falling off of me right now like leaves on a cottonwood in October.

I don't know that water retention specifically related to cutting alcohol is a thing...but I do know that many people compensate a bit with food and often also develop a sweet tooth.

Yep, I developed an M&M habit when I quit drinking. And all AA meetings I've attended were chock full of sweets.

I was able to lose weight, but like you was getting a considerable amount of calories from alcohol which I did not completely offset with the M&Ms, and I clamped down on that fairly quickly. (As I was doing WW at the time, I do not know how many calories of either it was.)

lobylou5

Thank you for all your replies I was consuming about 500 calories a day with alcohol Thankfully I haven’t got a sweet tooth I’m sticking with the calorie counting and see what the scales say on Friday morning