Holiday Weight

I feel your pain. I've gained a similar amount. Too much chocolate and boozy fruit cake. Back on track today and although I will struggle to stay under my calories, I'm atleast logging everything properly again.

malibu927 wrote: »

To gain four pounds of fat, you would've needed to eat 14,000 calories over maintenance. So yes, most of it is water weight. It should fall off within a few days to a week.

^^^ This! You don't really have to do much other than getting back on track with your new normal eating (whether at a deficit or at maintenance) to drop the water weight. I do find for me that drinking extra water helps to flush the system, but everyone is different, and YMMV. I think I clocked in at ~1.5 lbs heavier this morning, but know it's mostly water retention, so I'm not too concerned. Going out to do my normal exercising today helped bunches, especially since it was a much bigger calorie burn than what I was able to do over the holidays (2 hours of paddleboarding in 80F weather (500-600+ cals) vs. 1 hour of walking in 40F weather (~175 cals)). So hitting your normal exercise routine should help too.

ETA: I've spent at least 4 days over my calorie deficit goal...some days eating at maintenance, some days a bit more by a few hundred calories over. But I know it's a drop in the bucket. I might stall this week, but that's the worst it should be. Once I get back to my deficit eating, I'll be back on track with the typical losses, though I'm very close to moving into maintenance mode anyway.

I agree with many here. I too was up by 4 lbs from the Christmas weekend. I did not work out Saturday or Sunday, but was back in the gym all the rest of this week, giving it some extra umph! Only down 1 lb though, so I'm planning on watching the caloric intake more closely. Now to get through New Year's! Hang in there!

I say stop worrying and focus on what you know you need to do! You got this!

I don't know how to make this link go to page 1, but go back to the beginning and read the initial post. It is excellent.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10303793/who-gained-weight-during-the-holidays-i-have-a-solution

I too have been going over my daily maintenance calories daily. I've been baking goodies, receiving goodies, etc. I am in recovery from a knee surgery about 9 weeks ago, so just beginning to excercise again. I have been weighing myself weekly and last week I was up by 2 pds. So that's 2 pds gain in a week. I brushed it off, figured that meant I'd have to have eaten 7.000 calories over my weekly maintenance calories. That wasn't possible as I logged everything. So I started drinking more water daily. And being a little more conscious of what I was eating, while still eating the holiday goodies. I weighed yesterday ( a week later), and lost 1.8pds from the 2 from last week. So just drink lots of water to help flush out and log everything.