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Big Drop In A Week

I weigh myself once a week on a digital scale. I just started my weight loss journey a week ago. The scale shows a 4 pound loss! Did I lose water, fat, muscle, which one? I'm thinking water because I'm eating a lot less carbs than I did before and am eating a lot less food volume than before. What do you guys think? I'm 5 foot 4 inches and went from 203.5 to 199.5 in a week!

Best Answers

  • lisakatz2
    lisakatz2 Posts: 648 Member
    Answer ✓
    That's what I thought. I even ate Chinese food with brown sauce for a couple of days (steamed chicken breast meat and vegetables, no rice - pretty high in sodium I think) and I still lost 4 pounds of mostly water weight.
  • tomcustombuilder
    tomcustombuilder Posts: 2,349 Member
    Answer ✓
    You generally disregard your first week of lowered carbs due to the loss of water. It takes a few weeks before you start seeing how you’re doing regarding the loss of actual fat, sometimes a month or more in some cases.

Answers

  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 18,853 Member
    A bit of fat, mostly water. Cutting carbs will make you lose a lot of water weight, when I go to even moderately low carbs, I can 'lose' 6-7 lbs in a week.
  • lisakatz2
    lisakatz2 Posts: 648 Member
    Tom, you bring up an excellent point, thank you very much.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 2,002 Member
    Every 1g of glycogen comes with 3g water.

    You should disregard first week weight loss in your tracking.