Explanation of the 'Whoosh' effect following a stall

AllMyUsernamesRTaken

Here is a post from another board which is an explanation of the ‘whoosh’ effect. This was written by Lyle McDonald, who has written several books about body-building, fat loss, ketogenic diets, etc.
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Fat cell water content and fat loss

It's something I've mentioned over the years, an assertion that my exercise physiology professor had made wrt: fat loss.

Note that under normal conditions, fat cells contain ~90% triglycerides and ~10% other stuff where other stuff includes some water, the cellular machinery that makes all the stuff that fat cells make and a couple of other things that I'm forgetting right now. Basically, fat cells do not normally contain much water.

He told us that, after triglycerides were removed from the cell, that the fat cells refilled with water in the short-term, eventually the body dropped that water and the fat loss 'became evident' (a goofy way for me to try to describe when the fat loss actually shows up on calipers, one of those dumb Tanita scales, or visually).

If nothing else, this gives a plausible mechanism for the non-linear fat loss that is so often seen. Folks will do everything right for weeks with no results. then overnight, something happens and the scale drops a bunch. Many diet newsgroups and forums refer to this as a 'whoosh' which often follows a stall.

A couple of empirical data points in support of this: people who use tanita scales have often reported that it will tell them that their BF has gone up right before a 'whoosh' occurs and a big drop. This suggests something goofy is going on with water balance.

Another is that fat often gets squishy (suggesting a change in what's in there) prior to a drop in skinfolds/ improvement in appearance.

I looked for research on the topic for a decade to no success. I made up my own plausible mechanism having to do with glycerol levels in the fat cell (glycerol is hydrophilic); if fatty acids were being lost at a greater proportion than glycerol, this mght explain how water is attracted into the fat cell. Except that, usually, glycerol and fatty acid are released in about the proportion you'd expect (3:1 FFA:glycerol).

edit: For what very little it's worth, Colgan mentions something similar in OPtimum Sports Nutrition, something about the body 'tracking' glycerol to keep track of fat stores. It's possible that the research on this is just pre-medline. Or he and my teacher just pulled it out of the old *kitten*.

A couple of years back, a paper came out showing an increase in water content of visceral fat with dieting. First semi-direct data I've seen. I don't recall the mechanism being mentioned but I may not have ever read the full paper.

Francl27

Bump!

That's why it annoys me when I lose 3 pounds in a week and people say it can't be fat. No, it's water... but I still lost that much fat in the weeks before that...

AllMyUsernamesRTaken

Franc127 you are doing a fantastic job!!! What is the longest time you experienced a stall? And once your body broke the stall how much weight did you lose?

Francl27

5 weeks, but I didn't get a period that month (typically I only experience the whoosh effect after my period)... then I lost 4 pounds in 10 days or something.

Then 5 weeks again, I ended up losing 3 pounds in 10 days again, but my deficit was smaller and half of it was water weight I had gained 2 weeks before (which I proceeded to gain again the next day pretty much LOL).

SezxyStef

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/another-look-at-metabolic-damage.html#more-9313

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/of-whooshes-and-squishy-fat.html


The first link references women...don't take it to heart...but read about the cortisol from stress...(us have stress noooooooooo) and how it can mask weight loss too...stupid water.....

chrisdavey

Love this post. Stick to the plan and good things happen. Just need to have patience. Despite what many think, we aren't just calorie calculating machines and because of this weight/fat loss is never going to be linear.

adorable_aly

I get this.

I've been weighing daily to try and get an overall picture of my losses, and I definitely notice that I'll stall for a couple of weeks, which tends to fluctuate by 2lbs, and then I suddenly get a 'new low' which sticks around for a couple of days, then the scale goes up, but lower than it's previous high, then rince and repeat a few weeks later. Overall the trend is down, but if i didn't weigh myself every day I'd probably think I was maintaining.

moosefacedgoose

This is exactly what happens to me, i have a new low weight each month, but with wiggles in between. Im just trying to keep focused on the longer term, stick to the plan - keep reaching new low weights.

DrJenO

Someone posted about Hacker's Diet on one of these threads and I checked it out.

I don't agree with all that he says about actually losing weight, but what I did take away from it was his online tool for averaging out your daily weights to get your "true" weight. It makes you feel a lot better about all those ups and downs; smooths out all the "signal noise". Kind of like people do on wall street to get the true value of a stock.

It's funny too, because if you look at my graph over the last 6 mos, you can SEE where my periods happen - I'll have one week of a flat line, followed by a steep decline, then a more reasonable decline, then another flat line. I can actually predict when it's about to happen.

Star_1234

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/another-look-at-metabolic-damage.html#more-9313

to read later

SharonNehring

This seems to be my standard routine. I'll go 3 weeks without losing a thing and start getting frustrated, lose 5-6 lbs in a week, then nothing again for another 3 weeks. It's been this way for several months.

Thankfully I started to recognize the cyclic nature of this early on, which helps me to stick with the plan even when that darn scale doesn't cooperate.

margannmks

I just had a whoosh and im pretty sure it was caused by changing exercise routine i think i wasnt giving my body any breaks to let go of the water. And i do feel "squishy" which freaked me out thinking i was already losing muscle from not lifting everyday.