Six weeks progress over Thanksgiving and Xmas period

Retroguy2000

I weigh myself once per week, each Monday morning. For the three months before Thanksgiving, I was in the range of 218-222 (tall male). I'm now 224, with a peak of 226 in mid December, so about 4 pounds gained in six weeks. I'm aware that with a weekly snapshot, there could be noise on any given day, but I don't feel the need to do daily weight tracking.

I'm feeling quite good about this four pound gain, for several reasons.

Firstly, I started taking just over 5mg creatine daily four weeks ago, no loading phase. I see estimates of 2-5 pounds weight gain after starting creatine due to water retention. Maybe that's more prevalent after loading it first. Maybe it's relative to starting bodyweight too, so a taller and heavier person like myself presumably takes on more water weight. There's a good chance most of my weight gain was from this.

Secondly, I didn't miss a single workout in December, including over an hour of weights on Xmas Day. While I didn't work out for a few days around Thanksgiving, that was during a genuine deload week which was due, and I timed it then on purpose.

Thirdly, I enjoyed the indulgences. This included 5,500 calories of Galaxy chocolate which was the bulk of the sweets, but there was other chocolate and other things too. Most of it is finished now.

I did track everything, except for a few days around Thanksgiving (Game of Thrones shame shame). I had a big weekly weight jump of 5 pounds the Monday after Thanksgiving. I think I put on a lot of water that week, then I started the creatine and my weight stayed around there for December. Obviously I didn't gain five pounds from a couple days over-eating in November, so I assume it was water weight and the creatine then helped to retain that water.

Based on December tracking, I would expect a weight gain of 1.1 pounds in the last four weeks, which assumes a) MFP's baseline TDEE estimate is accurate for me, and b) my MET based estimates for workouts are accurate. This roughly fits with the stats around creatine weight gain though.

Overall, could be about 1.5 pounds gain from the six week holiday period due to going over maintenance calories, plus about 2.5 pounds water retention from starting creatine. Give or take.

Now back to the slow grind. I'd like my weight range to drop about 10 pounds in the next six months.

How was your progress?

claireychn074

I love been trying to gain a couple of kgs back (lost weight following illness in autumn). Managed to put half a kg on before the Christmas period and another half over the Christmas week (although a chunk of that may be water weight). BUT - contracted another virus, appetite has plunged, and I’ve already lost the whole kg and a bit more. Again, hoping it’s water weight and as soon as I get my carb intake back up, my weight will go up.

I know it might sound irritating to people wanting to lose and I apologise for that, but I compete in a certain weight class and I need my weight to be steady. It’s blooming irritating!

DFW_Tom

My scale has jumped all over the place the last 6 weeks. It was steady through Thanksgiving, but I increased calories to maintenance on Dec. 02 per Doctor's directive, then went to an All-Inclusive resort in Mexico for 8 days, scales went from 205.5 to 224 lbs. Lost most of the water retention by Christmas Eve morning and was down to 206. Went completely off my personalized meal plan for a couple of days (eating carbs) and jumped back up to 216 lbs by the 28th. Back down to 207 on Jan. 1st and still there.

I'm glad to see the Holiday period wasn't any worse than it was, up a pound and a half. I figure the over maintenance calories added a few pounds some of which are already gone. Happy to be back on plan, 500 calorie deficit/day eating healthy. Keeping net carbs under 90g/day.

Retroguy2000

@DFW_Tom So you've gone from 205 to 224 to 206 to 216 to 207, all in the space of a month! That's crazy. My water weight changes have never been more than about 5 pounds and I'm slightly heavier than you. It makes me wonder, do you drink enough water normally? I'm always hydrated.

DFW_Tom

Retroguy2000 wrote: »

@DFW_Tom So you've gone from 205 to 224 to 206 to 216 to 207, all in the space of a month! That's crazy. My water weight changes have never been more than about 5 pounds and I'm slightly heavier than you. It makes me wonder, do you drink enough water normally? I'm always hydrated.

Agree. It is completely crazy and less than healthy. There was a lot of beer, sodium and sugary stuff involved. Yes, I do drink a lot of water/coffee every day, maybe even more than I should. I took a diuretic for 25 years to help control edema and blood pressure but haven't needed it the past 6 months as long as I limit carb and salt intake. Having dropped 95 lbs over the last 15 months, I have plenty of slack skin to make room for this extracellular water retention.

I'm curious about the creatine water weight gain mentioned in the first post. For me, the water retention whoosh from the extracellular water is much faster (and insistent) than the whoosh from losing fat cell (and/or muscle cell) water. The bloating before the whoosh is identical though. @Retroguy2000, did you experience any bloating/swelling when you started the 5mg creatine supplement? A quick googling says that the maintenance dose is 3-5 grams daily. Was the "mg" a typo? I'd think any water weight gain from the creatine would easily be masked by the increased muscle bulk after 4 weeks.

Retroguy2000

DFW_Tom wrote: »

I'm curious about the creatine water weight gain mentioned in the first post. For me, the water retention whoosh from the extracellular water is much faster (and insistent) than the whoosh from losing fat cell (and/or muscle cell) water. The bloating before the whoosh is identical though. @Retroguy2000, did you experience any bloating/swelling when you started the 5mg creatine supplement? A quick googling says that the maintenance dose is 3-5 grams daily. Was the "mg" a typo? I'd think any water weight gain from the creatine would easily be masked by the increased muscle bulk after 4 weeks.

Good catch. Yes, a typo.

I felt there was some bloating a couple of weeks ago which I would not expect based on my diet at the time. It's hard to be precise about the personal first month creatine only effects since a) I wasn't doing a loading phase, b) for at least a couple of weeks around that time I was eating quite a bit more than usual.