The "whoosh"
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CattOfTheGarage wrote: »
Edit: I also have what I call the rubber band effect--after a "whoosh," I'll gain a pound or so back for no apparent reason. There's still a net loss, but it's frustrating. Maybe something to do with the body trying to re-balance water/electrolytes? But all of the explanations so far are just speculation.
I think this is just regression to the mean - in other words, you just hit the low end of your weight fluctuation range and so you are likely to see an upward movement back to what you could think of as your "average weight" - the middle of the range.
Could be. I'd love to know why it happens, though. It's not fat--we don't gain or lose fat that quickly, and I'm in a deficit. I wish there were studies on this! It bothers me to not know how it works.
It's just water. You drink, you pee. Sometimes you drink more than you pee, sometimes you pee more than you drink. So your weight varies.
There are all sorts of reasons.
Injury causes swelling, which is just extra water retained in the tissues. Exercise causes swelling in the muscles as they heal and adapt, and Illness can also cause swelling, either localised or just generally. Any swelling means extra water and so increased weight.
Dehydration will make you lighter.
Eating extra salt changes fluid balance and will make you retain water and so gain weight.
Hormonal changes will cause water to be retained or lost in various places and that is insanely complicated.
Your glycogen stores (short term carb storage) go up and down depending on what you eat and your activity. Glycogen consists of about 4 parts water to 1 part carbohydrate by weight, so it is heavy and causes a lot of weight fluctuation.
There are just so many reasons. And on top of the water weight is the actual weight of food travelling through your gut, which will vary depending on what you have been eating and how regular you are.
There is nothing unexplained, as far as I know, all the reasons behind water weight fluctuation are well understood, but there are just too many factors to track them in detail and be able to say "I gained weight today because..." - it's like the weather, you just have to roll with it.5 -
When I was losing weight, I would "whoosh" every month if I was consistent with eating within my points (on Weight Watchers). I would lose .6 one week, then gain 1.2, then lose 3.6 and then lose another 3.4!1
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Thanks everyone for your help:-) I'll keep plodding along0
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CattOfTheGarage wrote: »
Edit: I also have what I call the rubber band effect--after a "whoosh," I'll gain a pound or so back for no apparent reason. There's still a net loss, but it's frustrating. Maybe something to do with the body trying to re-balance water/electrolytes? But all of the explanations so far are just speculation.
I think this is just regression to the mean - in other words, you just hit the low end of your weight fluctuation range and so you are likely to see an upward movement back to what you could think of as your "average weight" - the middle of the range.
Could be. I'd love to know why it happens, though. It's not fat--we don't gain or lose fat that quickly, and I'm in a deficit. I wish there were studies on this! It bothers me to not know how it works.
It's called water and waste.1 -
I lose my weight only twice a month in two big whooshes. Last month one of them was 3lbs which considering I'm 140lbs is a lot. My deficit is such that I should be losing 4lbs a month which I do but only in a couple of big chunks.
Very weird.4 -
I have this. Stall for 2 maybe 4 weeks (despite consistent deficit), body looks lumpy and fat feels more flabby, then whoosh 2-4 pounds go.2
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Pretty good article by Lyle McDonald about whooshes.
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/of-whooshes-and-squishy-fat.html
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My experiences are anecdotal, and I don't do daily weight tracking (although I weigh daily as a checkpoint mentally). It seems one week a month (maybe during ovulation, not right before TOM), I kind of hold on to some of the weight and I either maintain or lose very, very little. Then the following week, it's back to business as usual and I make up for the week before plus the weight loss for the current week. I don't know why it's that way, it just is.
I try to remind myself not to get frustrated during "fat week" and that it's just a part of the process. I am 99.9% at a deficit every day (no real "cheats" or unaccounted food, an occasional day at maintenance or slightly over every few MONTHS), so there's no real reason why I wouldn't continue to lose.3 -
I find I only loose weight across 2 weeks of a month which is so frustrating. At the moment I'm on a standstill week and even now realising my pattern I'm In the biggest strop as daily I have no loss.
Don't weigh yourself daily if it is going to frustrate you. I only weigh every 2 weeks on Mondays specifically to keep from getting frustrated by daily weight fluctuations. If you can stay away from the scale, it may just help your sanity. My $.02.6 -
I can weight the same for 4 days straight and then boom down 2-3lbs.5
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Last week I gained 1.5lbs (ovulation week); this week I have lost 4.5lbs in 5 days. Not sure its a "whoosh", more a hormonal issue that i can predict using HappyScale. Still irritating as *kitten* though.1
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Some it is probably the fat cells retaining water to replace the lost fat until the overhydration from exercising goes away, glycogen replenishment yada yada. Truly I feel like the whooshes come into play with people who unconsciously or intentionally calorie cycle. I can dehydrate myself and force my weight down during ovulation and my cycle to account for the fluid retention due to hormones, or I can leave it be. If I'm in a steady closely monitored calorie deficit I can lost extremely consistently .1 a day, .5 a week or whatever my calories are set to. However I don't force dehydration so what seems like a whoosh to me is just getting rid of bloating after my cycle and my true loss coming though to show itself once the water weight mask comes off. Also since I cycle calories and eat more for PMS lol and eat more on exercise days my gut may just be fuller with food than another day where I simply ate less volume, and had I weighed I would've seen a lower low.1
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I did not experience this for the first 10 months where I lost every week with very few exceptions (of course sometimes more and sometimes less but consistently) but now it happened to me twice in the last 8 weeks so it seems to be real for some people because my eating/lifestyle has not changed.0
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I did not experience this for the first 10 months where I lost every week with very few exceptions (of course sometimes more and sometimes less but consistently) but now it happened to me twice in the last 8 weeks so it seems to be real for some people because my eating/lifestyle has not changed.
Or it could just be your immune system fending off some virus. You wouldn't even have to have otherwise noticeable symptoms for your body to retain a little extra water for a while.0 -
TimothyFish wrote: »Or it could just be your immune system fending off some virus. You wouldn't even have to have otherwise noticeable symptoms for your body to retain a little extra water for a while.
Idk. Once would make sense for that, perhaps even twice but if the last week is any indication, I've just started my next "cycle" of not losing for a 2-3 weeks and then dropping more than a standard 1-week loss. It might not be long enough yet to be 100% sure but it looks like an emerging pattern to me right now.0 -
The other underrated factor is that your scale may be genuinely messing with you. Mine claimed I had gained 5lb this morning, and it stuck to this through 3 retries. I was suspicious, so I picked it up and shook it, then tried again. This time I had only gained 2lb (within my usual fluctuation). Digital scales can be temperamental beasts. Whatever method it is that they use to zero themselves produces some very weird effects when it goes wrong.2
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I weigh myself daily because I'm a data analyst nerd and I want to see the general trend my weight is taking. I use Kilograms because I find they aren't quite as sensitive to daily weight fluctuations as Pounds. I weigh myself first thing in the morning usually around the same time, after waking up but before eating breakfast to limit variability.
But yes the WHOOSH is totally a thing I experience regularly (just had a 1kg one today!). I've dropped as much as 3 kg over a few days after a several week period of only slight variation. I can usually correlate it either to the end of my period, a particularly intensive period of weight training, or a particularly large bm (especially if it's been slow going in that department for a couple of days). I find that at least 2 days after weight training I seem to gain a small amount of weight which I just attribute to swelling.6 -
Well, I'm male so I don't get hormonal cycles, but I've been losing weight in clusters of 2-3 lbs at a time. I'll go for a couple of weeks hovering around a set weight, then it comes off over a couple of days. I have no idea why.2
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TimothyFish wrote: »Or it could just be your immune system fending off some virus. You wouldn't even have to have otherwise noticeable symptoms for your body to retain a little extra water for a while.
Idk. Once would make sense for that, perhaps even twice but if the last week is any indication, I've just started my next "cycle" of not losing for a 2-3 weeks and then dropping more than a standard 1-week loss. It might not be long enough yet to be 100% sure but it looks like an emerging pattern to me right now.
The point is that there are more things than what you eat that can cause your system to retain or release things at various rates.0 -
For those who do experience the "whooshes", does your body feel/look 'lumpy and squishy' AFTER the apparent 'whoosh'?0
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