The "whoosh"

apullum wrote: »

CattOfTheGarage wrote: »

apullum 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.

24clouds wrote: »

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.

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.