scales are up????

krazyforyou

I'm a critical care nurse working 12 -13 hr shift at the hospital. I find that the day after my 3 day shift the scales are always up 1-2lb from where I left off and slowly come back down. I take my own food, premeasured to work, dont eat out of vending machines, and never drink soda. Now as a nurse there is never a "set" time to eat so I find I'm grazing during the day. And getting enough H2O forget it. I barely get enough time to go tinkle much less anything else. Its really dishearting to see that scale go up every Mon morning. Any ideas or suggestion, other than not to get on the scales on Mon.

rg4u

You may be retaining fluid from being on your feet all day. Try drinking as much as you can to flush it out. Maybe wearing support hose would be helpful since staying on your legs is mandatory for the job...

carrieo888

Yup, it's water weight. Your body will actually retain water if you don't get enough water (it's a stop-gap measure to prevent dehydration). If you don't drink water, it won't flush any out. Don't worry about it and in fact I'd say don't weigh yourself the day after your long shifts. Unless you can think of the number on the scale as simply data ("the scales are up and I ate correctly, that must mean I didn't hydrate"), you don't need that bit of information bringing you down. OBTW, eating lots of small meals in a day ("grazing") is actually better for you. You feel fuller longer than if you ate all that food at once. Keep your long-term goals in mind and don't let short-term ups & downs niggle at you :-)

HotSoupGirl

I like your reply to this Carrie. About treating the scale as "information" rather than doom(assuming your doing stuff right). I'm a gifted water retainer and it makes weighing myself sometimes illogical and other times just plain depressing.

It's good to see things in a different angle.

HotSoupGirl