One day of Eating bad

jocelyn_jose

Hello guys! Just feeling a little discouraged today. I worked out all last week and a couple of days actually lost 1000 calls through exercise and ate well. I ate pretty bad over the weekend and stepped on the scale today and the scale didn’t budge from last week Any advice on when the best time is to weigh yourself?

cmriverside

When I was losing weight I weighed daily.

I didn't lose every week, you probably won't either.

You don't really give enough info for us to be much help...do you log everything? Even the days you eat above your goal? What is your goal? (Height, weight, calorie goal?)

Lietchi

You're only weighing once a week? Weight fluctuates from day to day and changes in water weight and food waste in your digestive tract can easily mask fat loss on the scale short-term.
'Eating bad' over the weekend can have a short term impact on your scale weight: extra food being digested if you ate more than usual and extra water weight from extra carbs being digested and extra sodium intake. So your weekend may have caused a temporary uptick on the scale, making it look like you didn't lose weight since the previous week.
Since you mention exercising as well, that can also cause an uptick on the scale if the exercise is new/more intense than usual (water retention for muscle repair).

Your weight trend is best evaluated over several weeks: ideally one month/menstrual cycle at least. Purely from a data standpoint, it's better to weigh daily and look at the overall trend (for example using a trending app like Libra or Happyscale) - more data points makes it easier to spot the trend. It can be really informative to see how our scale weight reacts to high sodium meals, heavy exercise sessions etc.
However, some people have trouble accepting these fluctuations and prefer to weigh weekly. If that's your case, perhaps it's better to shift your weekly weigh-in to Friday morning, which for many people will be a day where they are less likely to have a temporary high weight (most people tend to indulge on the weekends and less during the week).

springlering62

Don’t stress, and don’t divide your days in stone as good days and bad days. You’re new at this. There is a learning process. If everyone said,”oh I think I’ll start losing weight this week” and was immediately perfect, there’d be no overweight people.

Give yourself the grace to learn, to break in new habits, to become accustomed to it all.

It took me several months to find my stride.

Also- 1,000 a day deficit. Not a good plan. You’re hitting it too hard. 99.9% of people can’t keep it up at that pace. You get tired, hungry, unmotivated, angry at the world, even angrier at yourself.

You’re setting yourself up for failure.

Set yourself a more reasonable daily deficit and I bet you won’t experience the highs and lows as amplified as they’ve felt the past week.

ReenieHJ

This is a lifetime process, not a weekend fling. As long as you stay within your calorie goals most days, you'll win it in the end. But don't fret about not losing anything in a week, or even gaining a pound or two. It'll all work out if you stay consistent in the long term.
And I agree with 1000 cal. a day deficit being too hard to stick with. Do something, eating and activity wise, that you can live with.

Good Luck!!

goal06082021

Whenever you can do it consistently. I do it first thing in the morning, in the nude, after using the toilet (because that's likely to be my lowest reading for the day), but if there's another spot somewhere else in your daily routine that works better for you, the more important thing is that you do it under the same circumstances each time as much as possible.

feisty_bucket

IMO, it's best to weigh yourself daily, log it, and notice if it's trending in the direction you want. My weight will easily fluctuate by almost five pounds a day, up or down, eating normal stuff.

azuki84

the best time to weigh is when you can remove the most variables AND do it consistently. after you wake up and use restroom, weigh daily, then take weekly average. even then you will still have water stores/hormones that will affect it so don't worry over it so much!

Xellercin

If you expect the scale to respond exactly as you expect, you are setting yourself up for brutal frustration and discouragement.

I lost weight steadily by being incredibly consistent, but I could only see that it was steady by looking at my daily weight data over a year.

Some months the scale didn't budge, some months it would rise, frustratingly for weeks on end, but the *average* loss over time was always consistent as long as my eating was consistent.

So don't depend on the number on the scale on any given day to encourage you. You have to find a way to be consistent *over time* without the positive feedback from the scale, because you won't always get it, no matter how much you deficit.

In fact, a severe deficit is traumatic for your body and may produce a huge swell of inflammation, which can make the scale go up.

Remember, the scale indicates a lot more than just fat, so you can't depend on it to indicate how much fat you have or have not lost. You can only see that over very long periods of weight data.

I give any lifestyle change at least 6-12 weeks before concluding anything about it. So start with a lifestyle change that you can actually stick with for a few months first, and then adjust.

If you are swinging wildly back and forth between restriction and over eating, you will never be able to maintain anything or be able to tell what works for you.

JbeanR0212

I agree with much of what was said above. I didn’t like the daily weigh in myself either but one of my accountability groups insisted on it. The easiest time for me was as stated above, when I get up in the am and use the restroom. If I have too much sodium or over-indulge I’ve noticed it takes a day or two to show up. Also things like my water, cycle, workouts (DOM’s) or digestive process will easily affect it. The important part is to watch your trends and keep going. I agree that pushing yourself too hard isn’t healthy, you will get discouraged too quick and are more apt to give up. Also if you are starving yourself with that deficit you are setting yourself up for another host of health issues. I’m down 10lbs since March 10. Stick with the process. Consistency is key, hang in there you’ve got this.


“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” - Winston S. Churchill

COGypsy

Yep, the scale is definitely not the be-all and end-all of weight loss metrics. Case in point, my weight has "mysteriously" gone up a couple of pounds in the last few weeks. Right about the time I started eating a couple of hours later than I do in the colder months. Nothing in my diet has changed, I just haven't done as much digesting by the time I get on the scale in the morning.

Aubgurl81

I weigh everyday but only track my weight once a week. Weighing daily helps you see if what you are eating makes you retain water or things like that. I know a lot of people weigh daily and then average the daily weights and track that once a week. Females also tend to retain water when on their period, so that can factor in as well.

sbelletti

One thing too... How many days should it take you to reach your goal? 90? 180? More? One day of going way over isn't going to make a huge impact in the long run. Don't fret over the scale... Just don't let that one day turn into an excuse to give up. Start again tomorrow and remember this feeling before you make the decision to go over your calorie budget again.