Is it Possible to Gain 4 lbs in 1 Weekend???

I'd guess water weight is most of it- probably from excess sodium consumed. Just be good for a few days, drink extra water and I'll bet you see the pounds come off again quickly.

No I wouldnt think that would be fat..probably just water. Jump back on and it will come off :-)

sounds like water weight IMO I would up my water drinking and weigh again in a few days and bet it comes right off

I did it too, just two weeks ago. Don't get discouraged..just get back on track. This morning on the scale the 4lbs are gone. Good luck and don't give up! :drinker:

i think it takes something like 3500 cals to gain a lb of fat..so sodium is probably your culprit

This happens to me. My husband would tell me that it was water weight because it takes 3500 calories to gain a pound. I finally believe this myself. I have been using MFP since January and have lost 24 lbs. Of course, I have really ramped up the exercise and that is a big reason that I was so successful. Alcohol, carbs, and some foods, like pork or ham (maybe it's the salt) are real culprits for me, but I find if I "get back on the horse" I can bring the weight down to where it was in 2 or 3 days with just my typical dieting and not starving myself or extra exercise.

Good luck!:happy:

Sodium can wreak havock on a diet (I use that term as in food choices for a lifestyle change, not a diet since it's a word that has the word "die" in it!).
Make sure you're monitoring sodium as well as protein & fiber - add extra water into those days you may eat/drink more than usual (we're all human & enjoy celebrating with friends & family) and I also like to add xtra cardio for a couple days after to help remind my body it needs to work at this journey, it's not just along for the ride.

Congrats on your first loss, do not be discouraged as this is a lifestyle change - your body needs time to adjust to the change and there will be hills, slopes, mountains & cliffs on this journey. Just know that others are there with you, have traveled these roads (some of us a time or two!) and know there are rest stops before you can continue. :flowerforyou:

Dont stress, just be mindfull...:) Give it a week or less...drink lots of water.it will go away.

To put it in perspective, 4 lbs of fat would be about 14,000 calories (since 1 lb of fat contains 3500 calories). I really doubt you went over by that much in 2 day. So chances are it's not fat.

There are about 1800 calories in a lb of carbs (I got this from 4 cal/g and 454 g/lb), so even if that weight was carbs (ie glycogen stores as suggested), that would be 7200 calories extra in 2 days. That's still a lot, you probably didn't get that much extra.

16 oz (1 pint) of water is 1 lb. So 4 pints (or 1/2 gallon) would be 4 lbs. Is it possible you retained this much because of sodium, etc? I don't know - probably. Much more likely, IMO.

So I agree, don't stress it. Watch your diet this week, especially sodium, and drink extra water. Also exercise regularly, that can help, too.

I've learned to just step away from the scale after a week away or a long weekend of extra food. It makes me feel down and unmotivated if the scale has gone up. I get right back to working out and staying under my calories for a few days before weighing myself.

I have read about this recently in a newsletter from Dr Amanda Sainsbury-Salis, an Australian Weight-Loss Scientist. To sum up, your body has stored Glycogen which acts like a sponge and stores water. Once you return to your normal eating behaviour it will go away.

Quote:

Diet Disaster Recovery
OK, so you step on the scales and are dismayed to realize that your recent eating or drinking patterns have led you to gain far more weight than you ever imagined they would. What to do?

The first and most important thing to do is to remember that it's almost impossible to gain a significant amount of fat in just a few days.

Let's take Emily's example. Imagine that she really was "doing something very wrong" as she suggested in her e-mail, and that she really did overeat for five days solid.

In order to gain 2.5 kilos of fat in five days, and knowing that you need to consume approximately 29,300 more kilojoules (or 7,000 more calories) than your body needs in order to gain a kilo of fat, Emily would needed to have over-consumed 2.5 times that amount (73,250 kilojoules or 17,500 calories) over the course of five days.

This means that on top of everything she normally eats and drinks in order to maintain her weight, Emily would needed to have consumed an additional 14,650 kilojoules (or 3,500) calories per day for five days straight. That's equivalent to eating your normal meals plus 36 chocolate Tim Tam biscuits...or 10 McDonald's Hot Fudge Sundaes...or 14 packets of Cheezels...every single day for five days in a row. Can you see that even to gain just one kilo of fat, Emily would needed to have eaten an enormous amount of excess food? Knowing Emily's recent eating patterns from her Success Diary, this was clearly not the case.

So if the majority of the weight you may gain from short periods of overeating is not fat, where is the weight coming from?

The answer is water.

Whenever you eat or drink more than your immediate needs, your body converts some of that excess into glucose (a simple sugar) and then into glycogen, and this is stored in your muscles and liver to tide you over until your next meal.

When you're losing weight (as Emily had been before she went to stay with her daughter), your body doesn't store much glycogen because you're using up all of the kilojoules you put into your body. However, when you eat more than you need your body accumulates up to about half a kilo of glucose as glycogen. Glycogen is a bit like a sponge in that it holds roughly three times its weight in water. So if you gain half a kilo of glucose as glycogen from a period of temporary turbulence, you'll likely weigh about 2 kilos more on the scales due to the weight of the water that is stored with that glycogen. Add to this weight the water retention that often comes from eating salty party foods or meals outside the home, and it's quite easy to see disproportionately large ('unfair') weight gains in response to what seems like relatively small slip-ups.

In response to Emily's e-mail, I reassured her that her sudden weight gain would most likely right itself if she simply continued to do what she had done to lose those 2.5 kilos in the first place, as you'll see in my e-mail below;

"I would fathom a bet that if you were to get back to eating your fruits and veggies and to scoring all 2s and 3s in your Success Diary for the whole day today, then if you weighed yourself tomorrow morning you would see a significant loss on the scales, taking you quickly back towards the weight you were before your trip. This would also be an opportunity to see your Fat Brake in action. If you ate a bit more than usual at your daughters' place, then you will likely find that you are not very hungry today, and it may take just the fruit and veg and hardly anything else to satisfy your hunger today. You may also notice that you need to go to the toilet more often than usual today, as your body breaks down excess sugar that has been stored in your muscles and liver as glycogen, releasing the water that was stored with that glycogen. If you're going to the toilet a lot today, it's a good sign that your body is eliminating the fluid that was stored with any excesses you may have eaten while away. I look forward to hearing of your experiences."

Sure enough, within four days of that initial shocking weigh-in result, Emily had not only lost those 2.5 kilos (a sure sign that her sudden weight gain was mostly water weight, after all), as well as realizing an additional half a kilo loss, taking her total weight loss to 3 kilos in eight weeks.

In all this time, including her time away with her daughter, Emily had obviously been on the right track, because for the same reasons I've explained above it's simply not possible to lose 3 kilos of fat in just four days. However, if Emily had freaked out and given up after seeing that shockingly sudden weight gain, as many people are apt to do, she never would have seen the fruits of her ongoing attentiveness to listening to her body.

End Quote by - Dr Amanda Sainsbury-Salis, PhD