Why you gain weight if you eat more than your cut
michellekicks
Posts: 3,624 Member
It seems this is new information for a lot of people and it could potentially relieve a lot of anxiety about weight gain when increasing calories. So for anyone who thinks, "But 1700 calories IS my maintenance amount!" Or, "I must just have a really slow metabolism because when I go over 1200 I gain." ... this post is for you.
The reason most people think they have to eat so little to maintain their weight is because our bodies naturally store glycogen and water in our muscles. This is the body's ready energy. When you eat at a caloric deficit, the glycogen stores (and the water molecules they must bind to in the cells) are shed first. That's why you get a big loss the first week of any diet. You just depleted your glycogen stores and now the body has no choice but to resort to fat in a continued caloric deficit.
So you keep up your deficit and your body is burning both glucose from the food you're eating and fat from your body (and some lean mass because you're in a deficit and that will just happen anyway) and you finally get to a weight you like. So you increase your calories to stop losing...
Or, you just decide to ditch the caloric deficit for a weekend of eating without discretion...
Or Christmas rolls around or you go on vacation and you eat to satisfaction and maybe a touch more...
... and you find you almost instantly put on 5 lbs.
All that has happened is your body has restored its glycogen stores and the water that glycogen must be stored with. In fact, trained endurance athletes will deliberately store extra glycogen by carb-loading before major events in order to have more energy for sustained effort. The body will, under perfect conditions, store this energy for use. It's part of being human.
So suppose you want to maintain your weight at 125 lbs. You diet down to 125 and then think, "Awesome! I will diligently increase my calories to maintenance." So you were eating 1700 calories/day to lose and you increase to 2000 calories daily... and after 1 week you've put on 1.5 lbs... so you cut back down to 1800 and your weight stays the same but now you're at 126.5... but you want to be 125lbs, so now you're just pissed off. So you go back down to 1500 calories for a week and you get back down to 125lbs. Then you increase by only 100 calories/day for a week and your weight stays the same... so you do it again... and you stay the same. You think, "Yay! I'm maintaining!"... And any time you eat over 1800 calories daily you start to gain again.
Why?
Because your body just wants 5 lbs of glycogen stores. The solution? Cut down to 5 lbs under your target weight and then eat at maintenance. Your body will rebound up to a healthy non-glycogen-depleted state and you'll be able to maintain relatively effortlessly and eat more food.
The reason most people think they have to eat so little to maintain their weight is because our bodies naturally store glycogen and water in our muscles. This is the body's ready energy. When you eat at a caloric deficit, the glycogen stores (and the water molecules they must bind to in the cells) are shed first. That's why you get a big loss the first week of any diet. You just depleted your glycogen stores and now the body has no choice but to resort to fat in a continued caloric deficit.
So you keep up your deficit and your body is burning both glucose from the food you're eating and fat from your body (and some lean mass because you're in a deficit and that will just happen anyway) and you finally get to a weight you like. So you increase your calories to stop losing...
Or, you just decide to ditch the caloric deficit for a weekend of eating without discretion...
Or Christmas rolls around or you go on vacation and you eat to satisfaction and maybe a touch more...
... and you find you almost instantly put on 5 lbs.
All that has happened is your body has restored its glycogen stores and the water that glycogen must be stored with. In fact, trained endurance athletes will deliberately store extra glycogen by carb-loading before major events in order to have more energy for sustained effort. The body will, under perfect conditions, store this energy for use. It's part of being human.
So suppose you want to maintain your weight at 125 lbs. You diet down to 125 and then think, "Awesome! I will diligently increase my calories to maintenance." So you were eating 1700 calories/day to lose and you increase to 2000 calories daily... and after 1 week you've put on 1.5 lbs... so you cut back down to 1800 and your weight stays the same but now you're at 126.5... but you want to be 125lbs, so now you're just pissed off. So you go back down to 1500 calories for a week and you get back down to 125lbs. Then you increase by only 100 calories/day for a week and your weight stays the same... so you do it again... and you stay the same. You think, "Yay! I'm maintaining!"... And any time you eat over 1800 calories daily you start to gain again.
Why?
Because your body just wants 5 lbs of glycogen stores. The solution? Cut down to 5 lbs under your target weight and then eat at maintenance. Your body will rebound up to a healthy non-glycogen-depleted state and you'll be able to maintain relatively effortlessly and eat more food.
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The other actual benefit to that being the weight gain - it increases metabolism.
The main energy burning for the body's BMR is water management, part of LBM.
As LBM goes up, even without an increase in muscle mass, RMR goes up because the body is spending more energy managing more water.
So those weight fluctuations based on glucose coming and going along with water, is great.0 -
I was actually coming on to the boards to search for info about this and here it was! Thank you SO MUCH. What a great explanation. That person you described getting pissed off is me!! THANK YOU!0
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Glad I read this!0
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Ah, now that makes a ton of sense!
Honestly, though, I'm not worried about my exact weight. I care more about the clothes I want to fit into. And if that water weight doesn't affect them, I don't really care what the scale says.
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This makes so much sense! Thank you for posting it here, or else I'd have never found it.0
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Over the years, I had trained myself to not eat or eat very little in an effort to lose weight. When I was younger it worked. Now (47 years old) it does not work. I still tend to eat very little during the day, and always eat a good dinner. However, I took my maintain calorie intake amount minus 400 calories and set that as my new calorie daily intake amount in order to lose weight. In addition, I added working out every other day. However, I am having a hard time just meeting that new daily calorie amount consistently, or I will go over because I ate a high calorie food. If I am not meeting that daily calorie amount will I not lose weight?0
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Over the years, I had trained myself to not eat or eat very little in an effort to lose weight. When I was younger it worked. Now (47 years old) it does not work. I still tend to eat very little during the day, and always eat a good dinner. However, I took my maintain calorie intake amount minus 400 calories and set that as my new calorie daily intake amount in order to lose weight. In addition, I added working out every other day. However, I am having a hard time just meeting that new daily calorie amount consistently, or I will go over because I ate a high calorie food. If I am not meeting that daily calorie amount will I not lose weight?
So you have 18 lbs to lose, taking a 400 calorie deficit from a daily maintenance based on what?
And you are going to exercise and create more deficit, or eat those calories back maintaining your 400 deficit?
If you are reaching some balance between days you are fine. Consistently over that 400 calorie deficit (if you have maintenance correct), and you have no deficit, no weight loss.
Consistently missing it by huge amounts every day doesn't help either.0 -
I cant seem to drop weight I want to have muscles I am 5'6 normaly 138 but currently 141 since starting p90x I would like to be ripped dont care about the number. I eat 1500 goal but 2000 is maintaince so really anything under 2000 I count as a win.
Goal 50p 30c 20f but what I have been eating 40p 40c 20f or A bad day would be 60 carb which I am trying really hard to correct.
any tips please?
Mid aug 2013 I am going to try to "lift heavy" @ home in addition to basketball so im gathering info for that right now too. any tips on this?
great post helpful thanks0 -
Wish I had read this when I finished losing. It would have saved me so much grief, etc.
I've read abut this before, but this is the first time it has really made sense!0 -
I cant seem to drop weight I want to have muscles I am 5'6 normaly 138 but currently 141 since starting p90x I would like to be ripped dont care about the number. I eat 1500 goal but 2000 is maintaince so really anything under 2000 I count as a win.
Goal 50p 30c 20f but what I have been eating 40p 40c 20f or A bad day would be 60 carb which I am trying really hard to correct.
any tips please?
Mid aug 2013 I am going to try to "lift heavy" @ home in addition to basketball so im gathering info for that right now too. any tips on this?
great post helpful thanks
Then you need to eat much closer to maintenance if you really want results from the exercise, the fat will still be burned.
And p90x is such an intense carb burning workout, you'd probably be better served increasing % of carbs, as you eat more, that makes sense.
Only need at max probably 0.82 grams of protein per lb of body weight even if you were weight lifting, or 1 g / lb LBM if you know that figure.
Fat should be 0.4 g / lb bodyweight, carbs get the rest.
And you think 2000 is maintenance with doing P90X? How often are you doing it?0 -
Bump for later:)0
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I knew this happened but for the life of me couldn't work out how to not gain it back again! I did have a vague plan in the back of my mind that I would get below my ideal weight so that I had a bit of wriggle room so i was nearly right (or right for the wrong reason!)
Thanks for making this clear...0 -
thank you 0
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Deleted an off-topic question I had.
On-topic: This is one of the clearest explanations I've seen about this subject so far. Easy to follow and really explains why getting those pounds to stay off seems to be so hard.0 -
delete.0
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This is so helpful - thank you for posting this! Now I'm even more excited to reach my goal, and to be able to live there comfortably - without that "final" struggle (of "I cannot stay here!"). I'm psyched and so grateful.
Also this forum in general (and all I've learned from EM2WL) it has helped me a ton - e.g. I increased my calories from 1240 to 1480 based on the info I learned here, and now I've been losing more weight and I'm so much more comfortable. Big thanks to you all.0 -
Thanks. Always wondered why people kept saying when you lost weight fast it was always water.0
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I am at the beginning of my weight loss journey and I am so glad I read this!!1
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I am at the beginning of my weight loss journey and I am so glad I read this!!
Great to learn before... So many of us did a bunch of yoyo dieting and learned this after damage has taken place.0 -
I too am in the beginning of my journey. I could always tweek just a little with exercise and food and almost loose weight overnight. I am now 6 months post hysterectomy and then boom... 20 pounds just showed up. I feel like it will be difficult but I am trying to retrain my body and approach food differently.0
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I need encouragement! I have been on the low cal high exercise wagon for a very long time. I have had it. I started a metabolism reset two months ago, no calorie counting. I just started to use MFP again and found your site. I have gained probably 10 maybe 15 pounds since I stopped dieting. I am still working out a lot because it's what brings me joy. I run marathons and do roller derby and I love it. I'm sick of this extra weight now and I don't know what to do. I'm scared that this weight gain is permanent. But, I didn't do this metabolism reset in order to go back to starvation and pushing myself through 12 mile runs with not enough fuel in the tank. Can you help me? I'm lost.0
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I need encouragement! I have been on the low cal high exercise wagon for a very long time. I have had it. I started a metabolism reset two months ago, no calorie counting. I just started to use MFP again and found your site. I have gained probably 10 maybe 15 pounds since I stopped dieting. I am still working out a lot because it's what brings me joy. I run marathons and do roller derby and I love it. I'm sick of this extra weight now and I don't know what to do. I'm scared that this weight gain is permanent. But, I didn't do this metabolism reset in order to go back to starvation and pushing myself through 12 mile runs with not enough fuel in the tank. Can you help me? I'm lost.
I'm sorry you're feeling stressed. What you're experiencing has nothing to do with glycogen specifically and it's a very different situation from the one I've outlined in this post.
What you need to do is go through all the stickies and read what to expect for your reset. This is a long process and no one can tell you how much weight you might gain doing it. The point, though, us you can't really have a healthy metabolism without going through it.
Did you increase to your supposed TDEE all at once or was it a gradual increase?0 -
I need encouragement! I have been on the low cal high exercise wagon for a very long time. I have had it. I started a metabolism reset two months ago, no calorie counting. I just started to use MFP again and found your site. I have gained probably 10 maybe 15 pounds since I stopped dieting. I am still working out a lot because it's what brings me joy. I run marathons and do roller derby and I love it. I'm sick of this extra weight now and I don't know what to do. I'm scared that this weight gain is permanent. But, I didn't do this metabolism reset in order to go back to starvation and pushing myself through 12 mile runs with not enough fuel in the tank. Can you help me? I'm lost.
Suggestion, log what you eat right now with no changes, for at least a week. Don't let the logging influence changing what you eat.
If you have been basically maintaining your weight, then you are eating at maintenance, right, otherwise called your TDEE. Rarely does someone have the opportunity to nail this figure so easily.
See what 15-20% of that would be. So if eating around 2300 on average, that would be 345-460 calories.
Find 345 calories in your daily foods to remove, don't change anything else that changes calories lower than that.
See what MFP says your BMR is with current weight.
That TDEE divided by that BMR is your activity factor for whatever your current level of activity is. If you are likely to keep it around that same level going forward, you'll need that activity factor after you lose 10 lbs.
New weight, new BMR x your activity factor = new TDEE.
Same 15% off, eat at that level now.
Repeat.0 -
Thanks so much for your response.
I am not maintaining my weight, I'm gaining. You're right though that I wasn't logging while I was trying to reset my metabolism. I just started logging again last week and I did all the math to figure out my TDEE and my BMR at my current weight and I set a calorie goal that is 15% off my TDEE. The problem is that just by logging I can tell I'm cutting. Even now I know I should eat more because I'm WAY under my calorie goal and I had a strenuous cardio workout this morning and I had 2.5 hours of roller derby practice tonight but I don't want to eat anything else. I just wanna go to bed. I'm just worried that I'm going to keep gaining weight....sorry to hijack this post. I'll look for another post to maybe thread this under. Or maybe you could suggest one.0 -
Okay I have a question. I got to my goal weight of 120 and thought I looked good and felt comfortable with my body. So then I lost about five more pounds to make room for glycogen restoration putting me at 115. But I like how I look at 115 more so than at 120. So to maintain how I look now at 115 will I need to lose five more pounds before moving to maintenance? Will the return of glycogen make a five pound difference in how I look or will it just change the scale but not my measurements/look?0
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Okay I have a question. I got to my goal weight of 120 and thought I looked good and felt comfortable with my body. So then I lost about five more pounds to make room for glycogen restoration putting me at 115. But I like how I look at 115 more so than at 120. So to maintain how I look now at 115 will I need to lose five more pounds before moving to maintenance? Will the return of glycogen make a five pound difference in how I look or will it just change the scale but not my measurements/look?
Depends on what muscles you use the most that the body wants to put it in. At least very rarely is that the stomach or back.
Unless you do those tons of situps at one time - that's endurance for that muscle.
So as muscle swells with water stored with glucose, something will get bigger. But unless you have a lot of fat over that muscle, losing more fat or weight won't stop that effect no matter when you do it.0 -
So basically I need to just accept that how I look while on a deficit is not going to be how I look while eating at maintenance regardless of how much I weigh?0
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So basically I need to just accept that how I look while on a deficit is not going to be how I look while eating at maintenance regardless of how much I weigh?
Somewhere. But it may not even be where you care or is noticeable. Won't know until you stop losing and eat at maintenance.0 -
Got it! Thanks! I think I am going to continue at a -250/day deficit (I have a Fitbit that is fairly accurate for me) until the new year and then begin maintenance. My weightloss has been sporadic anyway since I am in a healthy range and am too lazy to weigh. Thanks again for helping me understand this better!
eta... Weigh my food that is....0 -
BUMP0
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