Calorie deficit + daily exercise and I GAINED??

Could you please provide us with some basic information?

Age, height, weight, goal weight, bodyfat percentage if known, calorie goal, if you are weighing your food, how much and what type of exercise you are doing, and if you have had any changes in your diet or exercise regimen lately.

Don't get discouraged. Remember muscle weighs more than fat. Also your weight goes up and down through out the day. I always weigh Monday mornings after using the restroom. Don't let that 1 lb get ya down!

This is very important. Your body has normal weight flucuations due to different carbohydrate and sodium intakes. Another factor that could be at play is your menstrual cycle, which also causes water retention.


I wouldn't worry about it.

Don't get discouraged. Remember muscle weighs more than fat. Also your weight goes up and down through out the day. I always weigh Monday mornings after using the restroom. Don't let that 1 lb get ya down!

Muscle does not weigh more than fat. Muscle and fat differ in density but a pound is a pound. A pound of butter does not weigh any less than a pound of broccoli.

Edited because I forgot to add this - Don't freak out. Your weight will fluctuate. As long as you are eating good and working out you'll get there.

Try and weigh in every/every other day and take a weekly average, because your weight's going to fluctuate due to lots of reasons - water retention, poop timings, amount of sleep etc. So as long as you're seeing 1-2 pounds of weight loss a week things are on track.

Weigh only once a week, with all the same conditions.

Not the best thing to do imo, as you can't always be in control of all those conditions. If 2 consecutive weigh-ins were off by 2lbs then that's half a month of unclear readings and frustration/excess calorie adjustment/excess cardio as a result. Every other day and a weekly average of such would give you much more accurate, consistent results unless there's some reason you can't step on a scale every other morning.

As for sleep, and this is an awful source that I hate using http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/excessive-sleepiness-10/lack-of-sleep-weight-gain

I weigh myself every morning. On morning I woke up unusually early, weighed myself and then went back to bed. Two hours later I got up again and lost 2 pounds in 2 hours. A good night's sleep is vital to weight loss.

A day or two before my period my weight goes up and by the end it's back down.

I wouldn't stress about 1 lb. Weight fluctuates throughout the day. My weight fluctuates by a lb every day. I 'gain' and 'lose' a lb in just a matter of hours. It's normal for weight to do that. Especially if you're nearing your time of month, haven't used the bathroom, just showered, just ate, or depending on sodium intake.

I guess I should also note that I weigh in every morning after I wake up and use the restroom/before consuming any liquids or food. Seeing a consistent loss every day no matter how small was at least motivation on the tough days.

Every day the typical person takes in 13 pounds of oxygen, water, and food, on average, and excretes about the same amount in liquid and solid wastes and carbon dioxide. (If you're losing weight, you'll excrete more than you take in; if gaining weight, vice-versa.) However, those are averages. Daily fluctuation can be as much as 5 lb. due to water retention, the amount of fiber, constipation, etc.

Even someone losing 2 lb./week will lose, on average, only 4.57 oz. each day. That's an order of magnitude less than your daily oxygen, water, and solid waste fluctuation. If your weight has dropped every day up until now, that's very rare.

Here's a typical month (August 2013) in my daily weight log (using the Hacker's Diet Online site by John Walker):



Note that the daily weights (blue diamonds) go up and down. But the trend (the red line) is almost always going down. That month there were only 3 days out of 31 when my weight was above the trend line - a clear sign that I was losing weight. But if I looked only at daily weights, I might have had a meltdown after seeing my weight go up every day from the 20th to the 24th.

If you're going to weigh yourself daily--which I recommend, by the way--you should do two things:

(1) Read the chapters on "The Rubber Bag" and "Signal and Noise" in The Hacker's Diet (free online at http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/).

(2) Use a spreadsheet, Walker's site, or TrendWeight.com to calculate an exponentially smoothed weighted average, and use that to assess how well your weight loss is going.

I've not read the whole thread, I'm sure someone has already said this but i'll say it again..

a pound overnight is waterweight. nothing to fret over.