Sleep and the Scale

kyraleigh7163
kyraleigh7163 Posts: 21 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Does anyone else experience their weight going up after a night of not sleeping well?
I wake up at 6:30 for work, and usually I check my weight every morning. The days that I can sleep in, my weight is a lot lower (3-4lbs lower) than it is when I wake up early. It just keeps going back and forth so I’ve been stuck at roughly the same weight for about 5 weeks now. Highly frustrating..

Replies

  • angelsja
    angelsja Posts: 859 Member
    You have gone longer between meals when you sleep in than when you get up early..
  • kyraleigh7163
    kyraleigh7163 Posts: 21 Member
    Shouldn’t I still be losing weight in general though? Like I said, I’ve been stuck at roughly the same weight for about 5 weeks
  • stanmann571
    stanmann571 Posts: 5,727 Member
    What's your deficit? How did you pick it? How are you ensuring that you're meeting it?

    Also, what's your current height/weight and goal weight?
  • kyraleigh7163
    kyraleigh7163 Posts: 21 Member
    My calorie intake is 1230 a day, because my goal is 2 pounds a week. I am 5’5 and 165 pounds right now, although the scale said 167 this morning. I started at 202lbs and I want to get to 135-140lbs
  • fitoverfortymom
    fitoverfortymom Posts: 3,452 Member
    I've never watched the data specifically related to sleep, but if I'm not getting my 6-8 hours on the regular, the scale certainly moves less predictably. Eventually it comes off (water retention), but when I'm on-point with my sleep, so is the scale.
  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,522 Member
    You only lose weight by peeing, pooping, sweating, and breathing. Assuming you go to the bathroom right before weighing yourself, you will lose less weight if you sleep less.

    But you need to average several days (7, I'd say) to estimate your weight to within a pound. (I wish MFP would do that for us. I just do it by eye. NEW FEATURE REQUEST!)

    And, let me add that bodyweight-- meaning actual tissue mass-- reduces by via metabolic breakdown. The byproducts then leave the body in your breath (CO2) and urine, but not much in feces. A lot of the ups and downs you see in your weight are due to water balance and "food processing." Those are pretty natural and you shouldn't worry about them.
  • rogertramp
    rogertramp Posts: 1 Member
    You should check out Matthew Walker on a recent Joe Rogan podcast.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig
  • hippiesaur
    hippiesaur Posts: 137 Member
    I was constantly around 59.6-59.9 kgs for weeks now, I ate even a little bit below my 250 cal deficit cause I thought something was not okay with my diet. I didn't sleep well at all these days (only 4-5 hours), today I finally slept almost 7 hours and now I'm 59.0... I saw in the mirror that I couldn't be the same weight still, but the scale didn't want to move... It must have been water retention though. And no I didn't eat less carbs or less salt these days than before, so it was the lack of sleep which caused some retention.

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