Freaking out a little...is this to be expected?

Your chart reads a bit like mine, in my case that's maintenance in general and I know the fluctuations and when they happen.

Stick with it, for me generally after eating a bit more over the holidays the scale stays up for about 5 weeks and then it'll be back to normal fluctuations and seeing lower numbers.

Like others have said-your weight will fluctuate from day to day and those fluctuations have nothing to do with actual fat gains. Hormones/tom, water retention from sodium intake, digestion periods, constipation, water retention from exercise, batteries on scale getting old, weighing yourself at different times of day, weighing yourself with different clothes on, taking a shower before weighing, moving your scale to a different location, using a different scale (like at a doctor's office vs your home one) etc etc.

Look at monthly trends and if you're seeing your weight creep up consistently over several weeks then you can start to make adjustments and tighten things up

You're letting the scale control you instead of you controlling the scale. What you have to remember is your body weight is going to fluctuate from day-to-day week-to-week and from hour to hour.

I have scales at work that I've used as a reference point to educate myself about weight loss. There are some days where my weight will vary three to five pounds in one day depending on what I ate the night before what I had for breakfast and what I had for lunch. You really have to look at the long-term trends that are happening with your weight.

Since you're talking about Stones I guess you're based in the UK. To put things in perspective a liter of water weighs approximately 2 pounds or roughly 900 grams so if you drank more water than you normally did you could see a weight gain. Also if I did my calculations properly you probably way somewhere around a hundred thirty pounds US. You're only really talking about A1 percent weight gain which is insignificant

I had a similar experience. The scale didn't move for months. I was doing intense weight training and one of my mates suggested I eat more! I was so frustrated with the scale not moving down that I gave it a shot. I ate an additional 400 cal per day and did it for a month. Then when I finally weighed myself, I actually lost!
Our bodies are constantly changing. Mine needed more fuel. Yours may too

The closet you you get to a healthy bmi the slower and less predictable your weight loss will be. Last year when I was losing I got sick at 171 and fluctuated between 169 and 172 for like a month then all of a sudden one day whoosh I dropped to 168 a few days later it was 167 and a few weeks later I hit 165. I put on 15lbs over the winter from a bulk weight lifting experiment, now I'm stuck again at 171.

Thanks for the update, @Spitspot81. It's always good to hear back on a thread like this. I'm glad you were able to settle your mind, stay the course, and achieve your goal by doing so. Good show!

dakotashaver3 wrote: »

Muscle weighs more than fat! Your fat% is going down as your weight is going up a bit!

Actually, basic math suggests that the only way your BF goes down as weight goes up is if enough of the added weight is muscle, and in general you gain at about a 1:1 ratio of fat to muscle.