Why does my weight yo-yo so much?!?!

ysaidpie

Why does my weight go up and down so much?? It is so frustrating!! I weigh myself daily instead of weekly, but I feel like I have to in order to keep track of it. On any given day I can be 2 pounds heavier or 2 pounds lighter. No rhyme or reason. No extra sodium taken in the day prior to the weight gain, or decrease or increase of water consumption. Overall I have a general loss, but it takes like 2 weeks for the weight to truly stick. I will lose a couple pounds, wait a few days to see if it sticks, then record it in my progress. Then for no reason I will gain weight! Not all of it back always, but usually a pound or so. Then it will take another week for that pound to come off again! It's just frustrating. That's why I weigh daily, because if I weighed in on a designated day and it showed a gain, I think I would have an even harder time handling it. I have been exercising more and harder than what I used to, should I change my info to say lightly active instead of sedentary? I have it at sedentary and I just log in whatever "extra" I do for the day, like walking or my daily run. Does the fact that I have been jogging daily, increase my metabolism to the point where I should be eating more than my 1200 calories plus my exercise calories? I just get worried about starvation mode because I have been there in the past.... So when I lose a few pounds, then gain some back for mo apparent reason- I worry my body thinks I am starving due to the weight loss and starts hoarding calories and fat! Any help would be appreciated... I have been tracking this trend with my menstrual cycle and it doesn't seem like it is related.

cynthiaj777

My motto is when I see a decrease, I log it. Never mind that for 3 days after your low point you gain some back. Just push for a new low. That's why and how I weigh myself everyday. I LOVE seeing after 5 days of being over my lowest, being under my lowest! It makes me week, thus makes me happy and motivated to continue everyday!

GOOD LUCK

hroush

There are plenty of rhymes and reasons and this has been posted many times. The simple solution, DON'T WEIGH DAILY! Pick one day a week and weigh. Record that weight and move on. You may think you don't see weight loss and then you'll see even more next week, bu this is much easier on the mind in the long run. You could be a little more hydrated, less hydrated, bowels more full or empty, and the list goes on. If you are trying to lose 1 lb a week, that is only .14 lbs a day, which is the equivalent of 2 oz of water! So on any given day, just a little more or less water, food, etc will vastly outweigh any weight loss.

When I first started on this site I wanted to weigh everyday, even though I knew better. I thought, with all of this extra stuff I'm doing, I'm just going to shed the weight! Wrong. It only bummed me out that I couldn't see any change. After thinking about it, I managed to break myself of this and got back to my Sunday morning weigh-ins where I am much happier with the surprise change in the scale.

Another thing, many people have stated that MFP seems to over estimate calories burned during a workout, so don't take that as reason to eat a lot more. If you work out really hard one day, consume a little more (protein), but other wise just try to keep at your daily goal.

misspenny762

My motto is when I see a decrease, I log it. Never mind that for 3 days after your low point you gain some back. Just push for a new low. That's why and how I weigh myself everyday. I LOVE seeing after 5 days of being over my lowest, being under my lowest! It makes me week, thus makes me happy and motivated to continue everyday!

GOOD LUCK

This is pretty much what I do as well. I'm like the OP in that I know it's not recommended to weigh ourselves every day, but I like to to keep a monitor on myself so I can stop myself before I really derail my efforts. I keep in mind that my weight may fluctuate a couple pounds so if it's a pound or two over what I last weighed in at I try not to freak out, but this way I can tell if I'm doing something wrong and it helps to keep me on track. I only log my weight when I see a loss though.

misspenny762

Edit - double post, my bad.

somigliana

If weighing every day is going to freak you out, perhaps less often? Me, I'll admit to being a daily scale person and that it works for me, but I've learned to take a pragmatic, law-of-averages and trends view of the scale number.

For example, I'm in maintenance and my weight fluctuates up and down by around 1.5lbs on a daily basis (I weigh the same time every morning) depending on a confluence of many, many factors: water intake, sodium intake, time of month, what time I ate dinner the night before, whether I exercised the day before, if I'm feeling sick, bowel movement regularity (trying to put that one tactfully, lol), etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum.

So long as you see a downward trend in your weight from week to week, I wouldn't sweat the biological fluctuations of your body

eveunderground

Day to day weight fluctuations are normal, you eat, drink, exercise, go to the bathroom, etc...these all affect your weight. I'm a believer in weighing daily, it works for me, I've been doing it for years, I'm used to seeing daily fluctuations, it doesn't bother me to see the scale up or down a couple of pounds, it doesn't mean I've actually gained/lost weight. When it's true weight you will know, you'll look different in the mirror and your clothes will feel different. I always think of my weight in terms of a 0-5lb range of my ideal weight (I'm in maintenance), as long as day to day it falls within that range I'm happy, once it exceeds it I make an effort to get it back within my "happy range".

ysaidpie

Glad to hear that I am not the only one with these fluctuations. I have to weigh daily because let's say I were to weigh once weekly on Sundays, and then one week Sunday is a high day for me, then I get frustrated. I only record the loss, and only record if it sticks for a couple of days. I was starting to think I was abnormal, because even my husband can tell if my weight is up or down! He'll say, "really retaining water today, huh?" His weight faithfully decreases daily and weekly- lucky him! I don't record the when I gain weight back either because I figure there is no way it can possibly be real weight gain when I follow my diet & exercise, but started to feel like I was cheating, lol!