Bizarre weigh ins - makes no sense! 2lbs gain overnight?

2»

Replies

  • MegaMooseEsq
    MegaMooseEsq Posts: 3,118 Member
    If you're that close to your goal and miserable with dieting, it sounds like time to switch to maintenance and focus on fitness. As for the fluctuations, you will only drive yourself bonkers unless you can make some peace with the fact that they happen. I find it helpful to take notes whenever I have an usual spike to try and see the patterns. For example, I almost always gain a pound or so of water weight when I eat pizza, even if it's comfortably within my calorie goals. Burgers, fries, buttered popcorn are all fine, but pizza gets me every time.
  • shaunshaikh
    shaunshaikh Posts: 616 Member
    The answer to the original question is easy. Water weight is repsonsible for the majority of daily fluctuations. Beer is a diuretic so drinking a lot of it still means you're going to pee a lot out. Sodium and carbs affect water retention, as does starting a new workout regimen or something like that. Therefore it shouldn't be surprising you were low after taking a diuretic and higher the following day. Don't pay attention to risky fluctuations, pay attention to long term trends. If you're not losing the weight you expect to, sounds like you need to tighten up your logging.
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
    It doesn't pay when dieting to try and maintain total control. It's made worse if the dieter thinks that if less is good, even less is better.

    This has taken all the fun out of your experience.

    Track your weight on weightgrapher or something similar. Follow your trend line.

    Eat as much as you can possibly get away with and still lose weight.
  • motoned
    motoned Posts: 0 Member
    People need to stop looking at weight as this absolute quantity in weight loss. Here's a much more healthy view- as someone said it's not linear. Calories in and calories out over time make up our weight. Muscle mass, water retention also make up our weight. I do weigh myself everyday, despite advice that its better to weigh weekly. I go in looking at my weight as a range- it's always going to vary 1, 2, 3 pounds (heck maybe 5 some days) based on time of day, hormones, water retention, etc. I am always hunting for that new low- that's real weight loss. That's a new low in my range! If I have sushi for dinner and soy sauce- I expect my weight range to be higher for a couple of days. If I am sore from working out, I expect my muscles are retaining more water and I'll be up a little. Start looking at weight as a changing range and every little fluctuation isn't an "OMG! I gained two pounds moment" PS. this is said with love and the scale is an *kitten*.
  • asviles
    asviles Posts: 56 Member
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    My water weight fluctuates ~5lbs daily.

    I started a run and weighed in at 227.2. After 10 mi I weighed in at 222.4. I lifted heavy that evening and weighed in at 229.6 the following morning.

    Water and glycogen have a short term impact, but really irrelevant as your primary concern is reducing body fat %.

    Focus on the long term trend, not a few aberrant data points over a day or week.

    This. If my weight is funky high, I'll go for a run to see how much of it was just water. I've dropped 7 pounds of water weight in a weekend just by going for some long walks in the hot summer sun. Low and behold I realized that I had been eating gumbo the week before, basically salt water with salty meat and some veggies. All that salt was keeping it in. Worse yet, you can have more salt than you need and hold on to more water than usual for up to a week after you've consumed the salt. Go sweat and watch the scale meet your calorie consumption.
  • quiksylver296
    quiksylver296 Posts: 28,439 Member
    MegaMooseEsq wrote: »
    If you're that close to your goal and miserable with dieting, it sounds like time to switch to maintenance and focus on fitness. As for the fluctuations, you will only drive yourself bonkers unless you can make some peace with the fact that they happen. I find it helpful to take notes whenever I have an usual spike to try and see the patterns. For example, I almost always gain a pound or so of water weight when I eat pizza, even if it's comfortably within my calorie goals. Burgers, fries, buttered popcorn are all fine, but pizza gets me every time.

    Spaghetti for me, not pizza. Pizza hits my hubby, though. Pretty weird.
  • Debbie_Ferr
    Debbie_Ferr Posts: 582 Member
    edited September 2017
    Silentpadna wrote: »
    What gets continually lost in all of this talk about retaining water is that retaining water is not a bad thing....unless you have a specific medical issue with it. If you are lurker reading this thread, my biggest advice is to not try to control how much water your body is retaining in an effort to chase a scale number. It's pointless. It's not relevant to fat loss, it's not relevant to fitness. It's a body's natural mechanism. Just know how it works. And know how the deficit process works.

    Fluctuation of 5 pounds overnight is not bizarre. It's normal.

    yes. So many people freak out 1 or 2 days after consuming a large quantity of sodium while eating out.
    1- The scale jumps up 5 pounds, and they think they've gained 5 pounds of fat.

    2- They then proceed to exercise heavily, and the weight drops the next day.
    So they assume the weight loss was because of the heavy exercising. WRONG

    When in essence, most of the time, the weight gain was water retention.
    And the weight loss was because they're system finally flushed out the sodium and water-retention.

    btw~ to gain 5 pounds of fat/muscle you'd have to consume and retain an additional 17,500 calories.
    1 pound = 3,500 calories. so 3,500 x 5 = 17,500.
    Most of us don't consume 17,500 calories within a couple of days!!

    so don't sweat the small stuff. :):)
  • JRSINAZ
    JRSINAZ Posts: 158 Member
    I am on board with those voting water weight. Alcohol especially always screws that up for me. I cook my own food mostly to cut sodium but it's a battle too. Lots of sodium replacement options out there.
  • Summrbunni
    Summrbunni Posts: 3 Member
    I have noticed on my digital scale that I sometimes need to weigh 2-3 times so that the scale calibrates because it needs to adjust to the surface. It has been a big difference in numbers! FYI in case that might be the issue for you as well.
  • klowieislyfe1
    klowieislyfe1 Posts: 46 Member
    Whenever I go out drinking, I initially wake up the same weight or lighter, and then through the day as I drink water it gets retained. Plus alcohol dehydrates you, which also means you could wake up lighter before you replenish what you lost. So I think the damage from a night out takes a day or so to show up.
  • cebreisch
    cebreisch Posts: 1,340 Member
    That’s why you track things like that over time. I swear when I was “on the wagon” a few years ago, I was consistently losing an average of 1.5 pounds/week. Thing was, there were weeks when I’d be really diligent and gain 3-5 pounds for no reason whatsoever. THen I’d go back the next week and lose 4-6 pounds.

    Our bodies are an ongoing chemistry experiment. You don’t know exactly what meal will cause you to hold onto water, or to get rid of all the water. THen the plateaus. You don’t know when they’ll arrive, but you know you can’t be on this path and have it not happen either.

    Get a spreadsheet to track the ups/downs over time - look at the stats enough to be able to see if you can predict when they might hit, or review your food journal to see if you can tell if any of the food you ate that week could have caused it. It’s all about the data and reviewing it to see what trends you can find to either explain why something happened and maybe glean something to help keep it from happening in the future - at least to such a great degree.
  • RamboKitty87
    RamboKitty87 Posts: 272 Member
    phwdjones wrote: »
    RamboKitty87 wrote: »
    I know full well how the scales can get annoying but trust your instincts I knew I had lost weight but sometimes just keep weighing yourself, I had put 2 lbs on recently but I knew I could not have due to my restricted diet ( I have a faulty gallbladder ) I have a very sluggish digestive system due to my illness and constipation and water retention plays a big part in it for me, you could be consuming too many carbs or sodium which can have an impact on weight, make sure the food you are logging is accurate in the system as sometimes it can be wrong so compare food labels with the system, weighing/measuring can make a huge difference also, you'd be surprised how different you think it weighs to actually weighing it, I made a few mistakes a long time ago due to this, especially bananas lol I used to just put them down as 100g.... sometimes bananas can weigh anywhere between 60g - 200g maybe more... anyway plus the less you weigh the harder it can be to lose weight (sometimes) I would put if you haven't already to lose 1lb per week and see if it makes a difference. I wish you all the best.
    Edit: maybe lay off the burgers and what are you doing with the eggs as you have just put eggs, are you frying them? boiling them, poaching? scrambling? also maybe make sure fat, carbs, sodium, etc are not in the red, it can make a difference, even switching to reduced fat versions of things or wheat versions of things can make a huge difference.

    Thank you. With my eggs I usually scramble with a bit of frylight (the 1kcal cooking spray).
    I find burgers are very satiating for me and help me feel like I'm not on a diet! Stupid really but hey, after trying to lose weight so long I need home comforts.

    Hey, do you add milk? butter to your scrambled eggs? it makes a difference trust me :)
    also you could try and make your own burgers... look up healthier burger recipes or something or use turkey mince or lean mince so you know whats in them... it is frustrating at times I know :)
This discussion has been closed.

Categories