Gained 6 lbs in ONE day!!?? why.....

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I have been doing really well ( i think ) with exercising 5 days a week and eating healthy. Yesterday i weighed myself and then went and did P90X plyometrics. I just weighed myself tonight, and ive gained 6 lbs!
Sundays are usually my "cheat days" because i heard having a cheat day will throw your metabolism off and prevent plateauing so i ate around 1450 calories instead of my normal 1200 but i dont think it would cause a 6 lb gain! Any thoughts on this?
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Replies

  • balesalicia
    balesalicia Posts: 80 Member
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    and another added question.....i dont understand why when i excersize, MFP tells me to eat so many more calories? I want to lose weight, so i just stick to my 1200 a day even though it tells me to eat many more calories and it keeps telling me i am not eating enough?
    I am graduating in June and really want to lose this weight before then so i am having a hard time finding balance.
  • Pamko57
    Pamko57 Posts: 182
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    6 pounds in one day is clearly water weight. There is no way you have gained six pounds of fat in a day. When you're doing a lot of working out, you may gain a bit due to muscle, but I wouldn't think six pounds.

    I am guilty of weighing too often, about twice a week. And I really grab the tape measure too often. In fact, I've given it to my husband with instructions to hide it and not let me have it for 3 weeks. Just keep doing what you're doing and know that in a month, it's going to average out
  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 48,619 Member
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    Because you ate 21,000 calories. That's how many calories are in a pound of fat.


    Realistically, it's water retention. And it fluctuates throughout the day. Quit weighing 2 times a day. In fact, once a week should be plenty if your scale is going to dictate whether you fail or succeed.

    And under eating (net calories) can result in a lower metabolic rate resulting in even slower and stalled weight loss. 1200 isn't magic number.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal/Group FitnessTrainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
  • sarahmonsta
    sarahmonsta Posts: 185 Member
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    Id say water weight.
  • balesalicia
    balesalicia Posts: 80 Member
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    My grandma told me she used to weigh herself tons to see how different foods were effecting her so thats why i thought it would be a good idea. and it is hard to eat more than that due to just plainly not being hungry (weird i know because im overweight but i guess that switch just flipped in my head from wanting to snack a lot to not at all) i will slow down on the weighing and see if that helps
  • JustasiaAusterus
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    I agree with ninerbluff about the under-eating. I know you're eager to lose weight, but you still have time, and it's only going to be effective if you do it in a healthy way. If you keep at a lower calorie that your body needs, the cravings will become unbearable. Believe me, been there, done that. And you'll only feel worse once you eventually indulge.

    Not to mention the stress it puts on your body. Calories, carbs...it's all converted into energy your body needs. If the body does not get enough energy from the food you eat, it does start to eat at the fats first. But after continual strain, it starts to take energy from muscle tissues. While this is going on, there is considerable strain on the various systems of the body as they must try to maintain their functions with minimal energy. That's known as survival mode. Worst case scenario, if you keep doing what you're doing, by June you might be in the hospital dealing with the effects of an eating disorder.

    You're young, don't fret too much about the weight. Remember, it's more about healthy living than about weight loss. Don't let weight loss be your primary motivation to eat healthy and exercise. As my Physiology teacher told our class, do it because you want lots of energy, you want your skin to look great, and your hair to shine, and to feel good about yourself, and to challenge yourself.
  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 48,619 Member
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    My grandma told me she used to weigh herself tons to see how different foods were effecting her so thats why i thought it would be a good idea. and it is hard to eat more than that due to just plainly not being hungry (weird i know because im overweight but i guess that switch just flipped in my head from wanting to snack a lot to not at all) i will slow down on the weighing and see if that helps
    It's the sodium in the foods that affect your weight. That and the weight and calorie density of the food. Your best bet is to just stay within a moderate calorie range (20% of your TDEE) and be consistent.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal/Group FitnessTrainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
  • TrainInsane29
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    The reason the MFP tells you to eat more when you work out is simple:

    Your food goal is 1200cal daily (that's probably way too low, but we won't get into that now). Now, if you eat 1200 cal on, let's say monday, and do cardio and burn 500 cal, then you really only ate 700cal that day. Why? Because those 1200 cal are calculated from your average daily activity (how much you move at school/work etc). So if you work out on top of that, you're burning much more, and need to supplement with more food to fill in the gap from 700 to 1200.

    If you don't eat back your calories, your metabolism will slow down, and weight loss will take longer! I know it sounds strange, but it's fact! Don't make the mistake of undereating, it will kill your results!
  • themeaningofthemorning
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    It's water weight! And you need to be eating more. Exercise is not to lose extra weight, it's to improve your health and body composition. You should be eating back most if not all of your exercise calories.
  • themeaningofthemorning
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    Actually, I'l amend my previous statement. When you build muscle your body begins to burn more calories, so, to a certain degree, we do exercise to lose more weight. HOWEVER, you must EAT the proper amount in order to develop new muscle and in turn rev up that metabolism. It might seem backwards because of the nonsense us girls are taught about eating like birds to stay slim, but it's the truth!
  • neandermagnon
    neandermagnon Posts: 7,436 Member
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    to gain 6lb of fat, you need to eat 21,000 calories over and above your TDEE. If your TDEE is 2000 (to give an average figure) then you'd need to eat 23,000 calories in one day to put on 6lb of fat in one day. Unless you attempted to eat the entire contents of a Krispy Kreme donut shop or something like that, then it's not fat that you gained.

    It's water weight, and the usual culprit for that is sodium. If you have been low carb dieting (or undereating, for that matter), you may have depleted your glycogen stores, then if you suddenly eat a lot of carbs, your body stores them as glycogen, which results in quite a big water weight gain. (and the initial losses on a low carb diet are water and glycogen, not fat, which is why the weight piles on again when you go back to eating a normal amount of carbs... although you can lose actual fat on a low carb diet if you're eating less than you burn off) - both these scenarios (or the two together) could result in a 6lb water weight gain in a day.

    Ignore any big jumps on the scale, because unless you've eaten twenty thousand calories or so (which is nearly impossible, you'd be full and nauseous long before you ate that much) the gain isn't fat. It's 3500 calories over and above TDEE to gain 1lb of fat.
  • JJordon
    JJordon Posts: 857 Member
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    The Beachbody programs usually require you to eat quite abit to keep up metabolically with their advanced programs. 1200 seems abit low for any Beachbody program, let alone the much lauded P90X (I'm currently on Insanity). I do have the dvds and nutrition guide and quick looky-loo show some calculations. Did you use them when determining how much to eat?

    Cause 1200 is just too low for advanced workout programs, period.
  • twilks11
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    ninerbuff thats helpful information actually thank you. I was a everyday scale user. My doctor asked me to put it away for one month because i was one of those that if i gained i wouldn't eat. The water retention is still interesting. Can we really gain that much in water and if you go to the gym everyday and try to build muscle will you gain even more?
  • boboff
    boboff Posts: 129 Member
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    Did you need a Pooh?
  • jshot278
    jshot278 Posts: 42 Member
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    All I can add, is that I gained 7lbs. in a day. I knew I'd been eating well and didn't know what was going on. I did get upset, but told myself that if I continued to eat right, it would go back down. I did in fact have a large sudden loss again.
  • RunDoozer
    RunDoozer Posts: 1,699 Member
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    Because you weighed yourself at night and havent properly digested or pooped it out yet. Its the weight of what you ate.
  • balesalicia
    balesalicia Posts: 80 Member
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    Thanks so much everyone for the advice and stories. I really didn't know i was under eating so bad. I just figured if i kept my same diet, then whatever extra i burned off a through a work out was bonus calories(and in turn weight) coming off! If i had any disorder with eating, it was that i ate to much.....I love food! and i just wanted to stop eating crap so i eat tons of vegetables but they don't have very many calories so i guess it isn't cutting it. I plan on being more responsible and to whoever simply explained the caorie/tdee deficit thing, thank you i think i understand now!
  • nhradeuce
    nhradeuce Posts: 168 Member
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    Stop weighing yourself so much. Pick a day and weigh yourself first thing in the morning on that day every week. Your weight will fluctuate (as you noticed) throughout day so it's not really a very good metric. Instead, take your measurements and track those, they tend to be a better gauge of your progress. Who cares what the scale says as long as your body looks the way you want it to?
  • LorinaLynn
    LorinaLynn Posts: 13,247 Member
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    Yesterday i weighed myself and then went and did P90X plyometrics. I just weighed myself tonight, and ive gained 6 lbs!

    And at any point during the course of the day, did you eat or drink any food at all? Of course you're going to weigh more at night. There's food and drink in your body that hasn't been pooped and peed out yet.
  • lookin_new
    lookin_new Posts: 18 Member
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    It is normal for a persons weight to fluctuate like that from morning to night, I had to do my best to only weight myself first thing in the morning because that is your "true weight" if I do weight myself again at the end of the day i can be almost 4-5 pounds heavier. and before my friend taking a human kinetics course in university told me about the fluctuation I would get really discouraged but it was always so much better in the morning.
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