Ugh.....frustrated

weight fluctuates within a day and day to day. look at the TREND over a week or two.

i weigh daily and use a weight trending app (Happy Scale)

lezooby wrote: »

Thank you. I will do that.
Maybe I am doing something wrong. Or sabotaging myslef without knowing it.

what is your goal? you have posted in maintenance but is your goal weight loss?

lezooby wrote: »

Thank you. I will do that.
Maybe I am doing something wrong. Or sabotaging myslef without knowing it.

No, you're not. That's how a healthy body behaves. It adds/removes water weight to balance electrolytes (sodium, postassium, etc.), to help digest carbs, to repair worked-out muscles, to heal injuries, to mediate menstrual cycles in premenopausal women, and more; on top of that, we have varying amounts of digestive contents in transit (end-to-end, digestive transit can take up to 50+ hours). None of that is fat, so there's no point in stressing about it.

Current weight, over days to a week or two, is a range, up and down. That's mostly changes in water and digestive contents.

Over weeks to months, there's a longer term trend, and that's where we see fat loss happening if our habits are consistent. For example, here's a chunk of data from my weight loss (during part of which I loss too fast for good health, BTW). The solid, mostly-downhill slope is the trend, reflecting fat loss. The little vertical lines up and down from that connect the daily weigh-ins to the trend line. You can see that they jump up and down sort of randomly, a little up, a little down day to day . . . but they head downward over time.

lezooby wrote: »

Oh wow! Thank you both!
This makes so much sense. I feel much better. I've learned from this thread is that my weight should fluctuate by a few pounds up or down as a way of making adjustments, but as long as I am losing weight overall then I am headed in the right direction. AnnPT77 are you tracking your weight in the happy scale app also?

Ps. This may seem like a dumb question, but how can I tell how much fat I've lost versus muscle mass that I've gained. Makes sense?

I'm using Libra, not Happy Scale. Happy Scale runs on Apple, and I prefer Android.

Fat vs. muscle: Muscle gain is very slow under the best of conditions. "The best conditions" includes consistently following a well-designed progressive weight training program that has muscle gain as its goal; excellent nutrition, including ample protein; a calorie surplus (not deficit); and relative youth. Under ideal conditions, half a pound of muscle gain per week would be a very good result for a man; a quarter pound per week for a woman.

A weight training beginner, especially an obese one, has hope of gaining a little muscle mass in a calorie deficit (i.e. while losing weight), but it will be slower than that.

As you know, fat loss at half a pound per week would be very slow: Hard to notice amongst daily weight fluctuations except over multiple weeks or months.

Bottom line: No realistic amount of muscle gain is going to outpace a satisfying rate of fat loss.

Weight training is still worth doing! Since muscle is slow to build, it's useful to keep as much existing muscle as possible alongside losing fat. Also, for beginners, strength gains can happen fast: That comes from better recruitment and utilization of one's existing muscle tissue, even before building new muscle fibers.

Best wishes!

lezooby wrote: »

Thank you. I will do that.
Maybe I am doing something wrong. Or sabotaging myslef without knowing it.

But you're not. This is how bodies work. You're not gaining and losing 2 lb of fat within a 48 hour period... it's totally normal to have changes in the scale +/- several pounds from day to day.