After vacation break, weekly weigh-in, pleasantly surprised

Retroguy2000

I was away on vacation recently, indulged, went to the upper end of my maintenance range (+/- 3 pounds or so) as a result. That's fine, I'm not worried. Since coming back two weeks ago, I was still indulging a bit, in part with the chocolate I brought back. It's so good, couldn't resist.

Last week:

Mon and Tue, 2.33 pounds of chocolate = 5,760 calories
Sat and Sun, entire tub of frozen yogurt = 1,800 calories (at least it wasn't full fat ice cream!)
Also Sat and Sun, >3 pounds of grapes = 1,350 calories (fruit is healthy, still a lot, heh)

At my weekly weigh-in today, zero change from last week

Yes, I'm aware about water weight changes etc. etc. Again, not worried.

I have been back to working out as usual, which helps I'm sure. Still, I'm pleasantly surprised. I do not intend to continue the trend though. I will cut out some of that stuff and get back to the lower end of my maintenance range.

The moral of the story is, don't worry about a vacation break, or a treat now and again, and don't stress about daily weight changes. It's the long term trend that matters.

pridesabtch

Always good to take a look at the whole picture. Great job!

pony4us

I also had a pleasant surprise. We snowbird for about 7 weeks, no scale (well there is a big one in PUBLIX) and just sort being careful about eating...but there was much more salute the sunset wine involved. I returned home at the same weight, first time I haven't had to go to damage control loss mode.

AnnPT77

This has been my experience, too. Limited-time, truly unusual eating above maintenance tends not to result in the amount of fat gain that theory would suggest is the maximum (a pound for every 3500 excess calories, roughly).

There are a variety of theoretical reasons why it would be less gain than that, but the bottom line is that catastrophizing about gain from a vacation or similar short scenario is usually unnecessary. The impact - after all the dust settles, after a couple of weeks or so especially - is likely not to amount to much in the big picture.

Really important, though, IMO, to get back to normal healthy routine as soon as the unusual circumstances end, though - as you're doing.

I hope you don't mind if I cross-link this with a similar post I made a while back. It's here:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10603949/big-overfeed-ruins-everything-nope#latest

. . . and I'll link your post there, too. IIRC, I've linked one or two other similar threads in that one, in case folks are interested in these kind of "case histories".

nossmf

I had a similar, but different, experience. Recently got back from a week's vacation, travelling to see my son, no gym time, lots of eating out. Told myself I wouldn't restrict my eating in any way, but I would record it, good or bad. Figured that would mean a bunch of huge-calorie days.

Turns out, of the 7 days on the road, only a single day was actually over-budget calorie wise, and that by only a couple hundred. Guess I've gotten so used to eating at a certain level that I simply wasn't hungry beyond that level, even when given the opportunity. I don't feel comfortable enough with that assessment to stop logging and rely only on my gut, but I did find it encouraging.

DFW_Tom

I too was pleasantly surprised yesterday to see that the scale only showed a 1.2 lb gain after 8 days in Illinois visiting family. It is the first trip of our last five, 7-10 day trips since changing my forever way of eating, that I didn't blow up with fat and water weight gain (18-20 lbs after the other 4 trips). This time I tried to really stay with healthy food and limit deserts/bread intake. I recorded what I ate everyday for the first time on a trip and that helped, but still averaged 227 kcal/day over maintenance. (Didn't log it until we returned home). Net carbs over those 8 days averaged 166 g/day. The 17 beers consumed pretty much account for those overages. The only time I experienced bad carb craving was a couple of hours after a Family Reunion. I believe I could have avoided that if it had been my family, but it was my wife's family reunion and I wasn't about to insult any of them by not trying a little of everything.

The experience leads me to think that with just a little bit of caution, we can go on more trips without losing a month of slow-but-steady weight loss.