Most you’ve gained on scale from a cheat meal?
Christismylife
Posts: 93 Member
I am feeling a little frustrated and came here for some (hopefully) encouragement.
I have been diligent with sticking to my calorie goals for the last 3 weeks. I haven’t gone over by more than 100 calories any day (net)—until yesterday. I had a combination of feeling hungry much of the day plus a date night with my husband.
I made the conscious decision to go over on my calories for the day. I was over my net by almost 1,000. I counted my dinner at Chili’s: shared chips/salsa (it’s possible I may have not eaten exactly half the chips—could have been more, not sure, but I counted it as half), grilled chicken with rice and beans, and shared a dessert.
My weight is up this morning 2.6 lbs since yesterday! I so hope this is just mostly water weight. I expected a jump on the scale and have recently started using Happy Scale to watch the trend.
Please tell me, what’s the most you have seen the scale jump up in one day after a high calorie day? And how long does it usually take you to see the scale come back down somewhat after a high calorie/sodium meal?
I have been diligent with sticking to my calorie goals for the last 3 weeks. I haven’t gone over by more than 100 calories any day (net)—until yesterday. I had a combination of feeling hungry much of the day plus a date night with my husband.
I made the conscious decision to go over on my calories for the day. I was over my net by almost 1,000. I counted my dinner at Chili’s: shared chips/salsa (it’s possible I may have not eaten exactly half the chips—could have been more, not sure, but I counted it as half), grilled chicken with rice and beans, and shared a dessert.
My weight is up this morning 2.6 lbs since yesterday! I so hope this is just mostly water weight. I expected a jump on the scale and have recently started using Happy Scale to watch the trend.
Please tell me, what’s the most you have seen the scale jump up in one day after a high calorie day? And how long does it usually take you to see the scale come back down somewhat after a high calorie/sodium meal?
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Replies
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7lb
Going from a low carb diet to a meal of pizza, pasta, fries, garlic bread and a big chocolate brownie
Took about 5 days back on my normal diet for the water weight to shift9 -
I don’t know how much sodium affects my weight usually, but I looked at my log from yesterday. I was over 5,000 mg of sodium for the day. That should probably be higher because my salad at home at lunch included ingredients I had prepared with salt that I didn’t count the salt content.1
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...and some people think cheat meals are a great idea.26
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For me maybe 2lbs after a higher calorie day/days. I usually eat lighter during the week and heavier on weekends so I am used to the fluctuations and use Libra (trend weight app) so sort through it. The biggest jumps for me are actually from changes in my workout programming. 3-5lbs sometimes and if I keep up that volume the weight stays on and becomes my new normal. That was a bit alarming at first but again now I'm used to it.1
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If you ate significantly higher carbs and sodium than usual, it's probably just some bloating. Carbs and sodium make your body rain every bit if water it can. It will be back to normal in not too long. I've gone of the rails and cheated a lot in a single day and weighed close to 10 lbs more the next morning, but it drops off fast.3
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Shoot my weight fluctuates 2-4lbs on any given day regardless of whether or not I cheat. Maintaining sanity and relationships are more important than minute set-backs any day! Get back with the program and no regrets!10
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There are a lot of things that can make the scale look higher after the cheat day - water weight from sodium or alcohol consumptions are big ones for me. Or if you ate a ton and haven't had a BM
Sometimes that makes a big difference. I also fluctuate a lot depending on where I am in my cycle - like I gain 3-5 pounds in water weight right before I start my period that disappears at the end of the week, so I usually have to check my calendar and make sure I don't freak out!
The important thing to remember about cheat days - there are 3,500 calories in a pound. Did you eat more than 10,000 calories over your limit? Hell no. That's probably not even possible unless you aren't telling us about the 9 pints of Ben and Jerry's you ate when you got home (and somehow didn't barf after). And that's why I'm a big believer in cheat days myself - at worst, you're only going to set yourself back 0.5 lbs of progress in the long run. I try to only do it when I'm at or ahead of my goals, but it has really helped me avoid unhealthy food fears and obsessions and keep up diets for the long term.
Drink a lot of water over the next few days and avoid sodium and alcohol. It'll level out!
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3 lbs. It's water weight. You can't gain that much fat from one meal or one day or even one weekend. My weight usually goes back down in 2-3 days, depending if it was just a meal or an entire bad weekend (it happens).
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7lbs after a all you can eat buffet meal for my birthday5
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To gain 2.6 pounds from fat you would have needed to eat around 9000 calories over maintence. Obviously you didn't do that. It'll be gone and then some by this time next week if you are back on track.3
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...and some people think cheat meals are a great idea.
Theres nothing inherently wrong with cheat meals. The issue with them comes from people's lack of understanding in regards to water retention and weight fluctuations. Some people think they're a great idea, others opt to enjoy what they want in moderation without classifying it as a "cheat." It's highly subjective, really.8 -
Thanks for the feedback!
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Christismylife wrote: »I am feeling a little frustrated and came here for some (hopefully) encouragement.
I have been diligent with sticking to my calorie goals for the last 3 weeks. I haven’t gone over by more than 100 calories any day (net)—until yesterday. I had a combination of feeling hungry much of the day plus a date night with my husband.
I made the conscious decision to go over on my calories for the day. I was over my net by almost 1,000. I counted my dinner at Chili’s: shared chips/salsa (it’s possible I may have not eaten exactly half the chips—could have been more, not sure, but I counted it as half), grilled chicken with rice and beans, and shared a dessert.
My weight is up this morning 2.6 lbs since yesterday! I so hope this is just mostly water weight. I expected a jump on the scale and have recently started using Happy Scale to watch the trend.
Please tell me, what’s the most you have seen the scale jump up in one day after a high calorie day? And how long does it usually take you to see the scale come back down somewhat after a high calorie/sodium meal?
For me the most was 4.5 lbs! I had several drinks plus a bunch of food. Logging wise I estimated I went over my cals by about 2500! Haha. It was a special occasion. No regrets. It was fun to go wild one night. Got back on track and was weighing normal again within about 5 days (water weight most likely)1 -
The most I’ve gained overnight was 12lb. I had a lot of Chinese takeout the day before, a heavy lifting session, and I was PMsing. In 3 days all but 4lb was gone and that last part was gone a week later.3
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You’ll be fine in three or four days! This was me last week! I’m still now 1 pound from a week ago!1
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5-7 ish lbs.1
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Christismylife wrote: »I am feeling a little frustrated and came here for some (hopefully) encouragement.
I have been diligent with sticking to my calorie goals for the last 3 weeks. I haven’t gone over by more than 100 calories any day (net)—until yesterday. I had a combination of feeling hungry much of the day plus a date night with my husband.
I made the conscious decision to go over on my calories for the day. I was over my net by almost 1,000. I counted my dinner at Chili’s: shared chips/salsa (it’s possible I may have not eaten exactly half the chips—could have been more, not sure, but I counted it as half), grilled chicken with rice and beans, and shared a dessert.
My weight is up this morning 2.6 lbs since yesterday! I so hope this is just mostly water weight. I expected a jump on the scale and have recently started using Happy Scale to watch the trend.
Please tell me, what’s the most you have seen the scale jump up in one day after a high calorie day? And how long does it usually take you to see the scale come back down somewhat after a high calorie/sodium meal?
Once you understand the math, you can remove your anxiety from the picture.
3500 calories = 1 pound (roughly)
You can't gain a pound by eating only 1000 over your TDEE, so you KNOW it must be a combination of water weight (fluctuations) and the weight of food still in your GI tract.
1 gallon of water = 8 pounds (roughly)
Changes to the amount of sodium in your system leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying. Changes to your exercise regime leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying. Stress leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying. Eating carb-heavy foods leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying.
Some combination of these factors can easily add up to a few pounds. This is why daily weight is USELESS. The error margin due to water weight fluctuation masks any real data that can be obtained.
Personally, I have seen 7lbs of water weight lost over 24 hours.
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InsertFunnyUsernameHere wrote: »Christismylife wrote: »I am feeling a little frustrated and came here for some (hopefully) encouragement.
I have been diligent with sticking to my calorie goals for the last 3 weeks. I haven’t gone over by more than 100 calories any day (net)—until yesterday. I had a combination of feeling hungry much of the day plus a date night with my husband.
I made the conscious decision to go over on my calories for the day. I was over my net by almost 1,000. I counted my dinner at Chili’s: shared chips/salsa (it’s possible I may have not eaten exactly half the chips—could have been more, not sure, but I counted it as half), grilled chicken with rice and beans, and shared a dessert.
My weight is up this morning 2.6 lbs since yesterday! I so hope this is just mostly water weight. I expected a jump on the scale and have recently started using Happy Scale to watch the trend.
Please tell me, what’s the most you have seen the scale jump up in one day after a high calorie day? And how long does it usually take you to see the scale come back down somewhat after a high calorie/sodium meal?
Once you understand the math, you can remove your anxiety from the picture.
3500 calories = 1 pound (roughly)
You can't gain a pound by eating only 1000 over your TDEE, so you KNOW it must be a combination of water weight (fluctuations) and the weight of food still in your GI tract.
1 gallon of water = 8 pounds (roughly)
Changes to the amount of sodium in your system leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying. Changes to your exercise regime leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying. Stress leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying. Eating carb-heavy foods leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying.
Some combination of these factors can easily add up to a few pounds. This is why daily weight is USELESS. The error margin due to water weight fluctuation masks any real data that can be obtained.
Personally, I have seen 7lbs of water weight lost over 24 hours.
Spot on! Except for bolded. Daily weighing is essential for analyzing the overall trend in weight changes. Personally, I think that if everyone weighed daily we wouldn't see anywhere near as many of the, "help I gained 5 lbs overnight!" or, "I haven't lost weight in weeks!" type posts, because they'd know its completely normal. When people only weigh once a week or so, they may see the same or even higher number on the scale, not realizing that in the several days they didnt weight themselves, their weight went up and down.7 -
Teabythesea_ wrote: »InsertFunnyUsernameHere wrote: »Christismylife wrote: »I am feeling a little frustrated and came here for some (hopefully) encouragement.
I have been diligent with sticking to my calorie goals for the last 3 weeks. I haven’t gone over by more than 100 calories any day (net)—until yesterday. I had a combination of feeling hungry much of the day plus a date night with my husband.
I made the conscious decision to go over on my calories for the day. I was over my net by almost 1,000. I counted my dinner at Chili’s: shared chips/salsa (it’s possible I may have not eaten exactly half the chips—could have been more, not sure, but I counted it as half), grilled chicken with rice and beans, and shared a dessert.
My weight is up this morning 2.6 lbs since yesterday! I so hope this is just mostly water weight. I expected a jump on the scale and have recently started using Happy Scale to watch the trend.
Please tell me, what’s the most you have seen the scale jump up in one day after a high calorie day? And how long does it usually take you to see the scale come back down somewhat after a high calorie/sodium meal?
Once you understand the math, you can remove your anxiety from the picture.
3500 calories = 1 pound (roughly)
You can't gain a pound by eating only 1000 over your TDEE, so you KNOW it must be a combination of water weight (fluctuations) and the weight of food still in your GI tract.
1 gallon of water = 8 pounds (roughly)
Changes to the amount of sodium in your system leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying. Changes to your exercise regime leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying. Stress leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying. Eating carb-heavy foods leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying.
Some combination of these factors can easily add up to a few pounds. This is why daily weight is USELESS. The error margin due to water weight fluctuation masks any real data that can be obtained.
Personally, I have seen 7lbs of water weight lost over 24 hours.
Spot on! Except for bolded. Daily weighing is essential for analyzing the overall trend in weight changes. Personally, I think that if everyone weighed daily we wouldn't see anywhere near as many of the, "help I gained 5 lbs overnight!" or, "I haven't lost weight in weeks!" type posts, because they'd know its completely normal. When people only weigh once a week or so, they may see the same or even higher number on the scale, not realizing that in the several days they didnt weight themselves, their weight went up and down.
Daily? Nope. It's a fool's errand.
Weekly? Sure.
Monthly? Definitely.
There is no useful data point when you have margins of error +/- 5lbs or 6lbs. This is simple math. If you are trying to see 1/7th or 1/4th of a lb of daily fat loss, it's indiscernible within the error margin. What's more, your body doesn't operate in a linear fashion anyway. If you have a 500 cal deficit per day, you don't lose 1/7th of a pound of fat per day... it comes off as some combination of glycogen stores and fat reserves that you cannot predict from day to day. Basically, the human body as machine is too complicated and you cannot get good data points using a scale on a daily basis. If you understand that, then weighing daily won't make you go crazy. However, a lot of people don't understand that and they let the scale mess with their minds. In fact, some people let the scale run their lives, to the point they are weighing multiple times per day. My advice is DON'T DO THAT.
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Actually, I weigh every day and because of that, it's easier to see the overall trends (weight going down) with the little fluctuations. I agree if you are someone who has a really hard time understanding these fluctuations and why they happen, it's not the best idea, but once you get used to your own patterns, it's nice to see that data.
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InsertFunnyUsernameHere wrote: »Teabythesea_ wrote: »InsertFunnyUsernameHere wrote: »Christismylife wrote: »I am feeling a little frustrated and came here for some (hopefully) encouragement.
I have been diligent with sticking to my calorie goals for the last 3 weeks. I haven’t gone over by more than 100 calories any day (net)—until yesterday. I had a combination of feeling hungry much of the day plus a date night with my husband.
I made the conscious decision to go over on my calories for the day. I was over my net by almost 1,000. I counted my dinner at Chili’s: shared chips/salsa (it’s possible I may have not eaten exactly half the chips—could have been more, not sure, but I counted it as half), grilled chicken with rice and beans, and shared a dessert.
My weight is up this morning 2.6 lbs since yesterday! I so hope this is just mostly water weight. I expected a jump on the scale and have recently started using Happy Scale to watch the trend.
Please tell me, what’s the most you have seen the scale jump up in one day after a high calorie day? And how long does it usually take you to see the scale come back down somewhat after a high calorie/sodium meal?
Once you understand the math, you can remove your anxiety from the picture.
3500 calories = 1 pound (roughly)
You can't gain a pound by eating only 1000 over your TDEE, so you KNOW it must be a combination of water weight (fluctuations) and the weight of food still in your GI tract.
1 gallon of water = 8 pounds (roughly)
Changes to the amount of sodium in your system leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying. Changes to your exercise regime leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying. Stress leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying. Eating carb-heavy foods leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying.
Some combination of these factors can easily add up to a few pounds. This is why daily weight is USELESS. The error margin due to water weight fluctuation masks any real data that can be obtained.
Personally, I have seen 7lbs of water weight lost over 24 hours.
Spot on! Except for bolded. Daily weighing is essential for analyzing the overall trend in weight changes. Personally, I think that if everyone weighed daily we wouldn't see anywhere near as many of the, "help I gained 5 lbs overnight!" or, "I haven't lost weight in weeks!" type posts, because they'd know its completely normal. When people only weigh once a week or so, they may see the same or even higher number on the scale, not realizing that in the several days they didnt weight themselves, their weight went up and down.
Daily? Nope. It's a fool's errand.
Weekly? Sure.
Monthly? Definitely.
There is no useful data point when you have margins of error +/- 5lbs or 6lbs. This is simple math. If you are trying to see 1/7th or 1/4th of a lb of daily fat loss, it's indiscernible within the error margin. What's more, your body doesn't operate in a linear fashion anyway. If you have a 500 cal deficit per day, you don't lose 1/7th of a pound of fat per day... it comes off as some combination of glycogen stores and fat reserves that you cannot predict from day to day. Basically, the human body as machine is too complicated and you cannot get good data points using a scale on a daily basis. If you understand that, then weighing daily won't make you go crazy. However, a lot of people don't understand that and they let the scale mess with their minds. In fact, some people let the scale run their lives, to the point they are weighing multiple times per day. My advice is DON'T DO THAT.
So very very correct in understanding what is happening, and so very very very wrong in your remedy and conclusion.
You absolutely CAN discern a trend and pattern. In fact the MORE data points you have (albeit I will agree with you in terms of limiting the data points to one per day to avoid unnecessary angst)... the better you can figure out the overall trend.
The answer is called a weight trend app (or averaging/smoothing/some sort of trend analysis if you can math it yourself)
Your once a month weigh in is a recipe for disaster for someone who is losing slowly and can still easily hit a 4 or 5lb fluctuation that obscures a 3 to 5lb underlying fat loss. <-- in fact this is almost guaranteed to happen to people losing 0.5 to 1lb a week... which is where the vast majority of people who are not obese and have TDEEs in the sub 2500 Cal per day range SHOULD be.
As to the OP, 8lbs and it took a week. Included recovery from unusual exercise, air travel, and buffet.9 -
InsertFunnyUsernameHere wrote: »Teabythesea_ wrote: »InsertFunnyUsernameHere wrote: »Christismylife wrote: »I am feeling a little frustrated and came here for some (hopefully) encouragement.
I have been diligent with sticking to my calorie goals for the last 3 weeks. I haven’t gone over by more than 100 calories any day (net)—until yesterday. I had a combination of feeling hungry much of the day plus a date night with my husband.
I made the conscious decision to go over on my calories for the day. I was over my net by almost 1,000. I counted my dinner at Chili’s: shared chips/salsa (it’s possible I may have not eaten exactly half the chips—could have been more, not sure, but I counted it as half), grilled chicken with rice and beans, and shared a dessert.
My weight is up this morning 2.6 lbs since yesterday! I so hope this is just mostly water weight. I expected a jump on the scale and have recently started using Happy Scale to watch the trend.
Please tell me, what’s the most you have seen the scale jump up in one day after a high calorie day? And how long does it usually take you to see the scale come back down somewhat after a high calorie/sodium meal?
Once you understand the math, you can remove your anxiety from the picture.
3500 calories = 1 pound (roughly)
You can't gain a pound by eating only 1000 over your TDEE, so you KNOW it must be a combination of water weight (fluctuations) and the weight of food still in your GI tract.
1 gallon of water = 8 pounds (roughly)
Changes to the amount of sodium in your system leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying. Changes to your exercise regime leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying. Stress leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying. Eating carb-heavy foods leads to changes in the water weight you are carrying.
Some combination of these factors can easily add up to a few pounds. This is why daily weight is USELESS. The error margin due to water weight fluctuation masks any real data that can be obtained.
Personally, I have seen 7lbs of water weight lost over 24 hours.
Spot on! Except for bolded. Daily weighing is essential for analyzing the overall trend in weight changes. Personally, I think that if everyone weighed daily we wouldn't see anywhere near as many of the, "help I gained 5 lbs overnight!" or, "I haven't lost weight in weeks!" type posts, because they'd know its completely normal. When people only weigh once a week or so, they may see the same or even higher number on the scale, not realizing that in the several days they didnt weight themselves, their weight went up and down.
Daily? Nope. It's a fool's errand.
Weekly? Sure.
Monthly? Definitely.
There is no useful data point when you have margins of error +/- 5lbs or 6lbs. This is simple math. If you are trying to see 1/7th or 1/4th of a lb of daily fat loss, it's indiscernible within the error margin. What's more, your body doesn't operate in a linear fashion anyway. If you have a 500 cal deficit per day, you don't lose 1/7th of a pound of fat per day... it comes off as some combination of glycogen stores and fat reserves that you cannot predict from day to day. Basically, the human body as machine is too complicated and you cannot get good data points using a scale on a daily basis. If you understand that, then weighing daily won't make you go crazy. However, a lot of people don't understand that and they let the scale mess with their minds. In fact, some people let the scale run their lives, to the point they are weighing multiple times per day. My advice is DON'T DO THAT.
Nah, that's bad statistics. With a lot of noise in the data, more data points mean a better basis for analysis of the underlying trend, which - as others have said - is what weight trending apps are for.
But you're right, scales can mess with people's minds. Therefore, I'm not going to tell you or anyone else what to do.
But I certainly found that daily weighing helped me understand that my weight fluctuates for reasons that have nothing to do with fat loss/gain, but instead are mostly about fluctuating water weight (part of how a healthy body functions), and variation in digestive system contents. Neither of those things is fat, so why would I "go crazy" about them?
Over time, by weighing daily, I learned very well what kinds of circumstances caused water weight fluctuations, and even to be able to predict them fairly accurately. I don't stress much about the scale under any circumstances - it's just data, not the measure of my worth as a human being - but weighing daily made me even more relaxed about the fluctuations, because it helped me understand them.
And, of course, the daily weights improve the usefulness of my weight-trending app, because more data = better statistical analysis.
If you prefer to weigh weekly or monthly, that's fine. But it's not the strategy that works best for every human under all circumstances. (Any weighing schedule has pros and cons, and individuals have different interests and preferences. Makes sense if we explain the pros & cons, methinks.)7 -
I had a cheat meal once saw me gain about 15kilos, yes that's right, 15kilos. Cheat meal turned into cheat day turned into a cheat week turned into a cheat month, before I knew it a year was up and I had gained 15kilos. I am surprised I didn't gain more.
I know better now what works for me and what doesn't, and I just factor things I want to eat and drink into my daily menu and exercise.4 -
tiptoethruthetulips wrote: »I had a cheat meal once saw me gain about 15kilos, yes that's right, 15kilos.
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I track my weight on trending apps twice a day! Once right when I wake up and once when I go to bed! It’s done wonders for me. I totally know there are ups and downs. I don’t freak out. But it’s interesting to watch my trends based on certain meals I eat, alcohol impacts, etc. When I wasn’t doing this, I didn’t stay focused everyday and fell off the bandwagon. To each their own! I’ve lost 17 pounds since January 1. I have about 10-15 more to go. I’ll keep doing me!
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In my opinion, I feel that a "cheat meal or cheat day" is super lame. The weight you gained is probably water weight and that's all. If you look at it from a scientific approach you can't gain that many pounds after eating over your calorie count for one day. My suggestion is to put that day behind you, keep practicing consistency and move on. You will be great! Also and more importantly I hope you & the spouse had a great time!4
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I have gained 10lb in a day and then lost it the next day... 2lb is nothing.1
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I was really sick once and for three days ate nothing. Gained 0.5 pounds. Snot weight is nothing to be trifled with! 🙂3
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