Please help me wrap my head around this
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jenniferanderson3888
Posts: 53 Member
I have to pretty much be perfect for 7 days to lose weight. But my problem is let’s say I’m perfect for 5 days and then on the 6 day something unexpected like a higher calorie meal will ruin my entire weeks weight lose. And I’m talking only a few calories over for one meal. I will not even lose a half of a pound that week even if I’m perfect the 7th day. This really frustrates me because my whole week is blown. What does everyone do about this?
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Replies
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A few hundred extra calories over your weekly calorie budget deficit will not not make much of a difference.18
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That doesn't happen to me.
I guess you could lower your calorie goal by 100 or so per day to allow for that one day of overage. I have a way-over calories day at least once per week and I still have no problem with my weight, but I am set quite a few calories lower than I know I need. That way my errors and my treat moments work out.
You just have to take a couple months and dial in your calorie amount. Obviously you have too narrow a margin for error. Keep good records and make your adjustments. It's what we all have to do.7 -
You are confusing fat loss/gain with water loss/gain.
Your high calorie meal is presumably a restaurant meal so it's high in sodium, so you gain water weight.
If you haven't gone over your weekly maintenance calories then you have not gained fat.31 -
If your calorie counts are accurate, then going over by a few calories one day a week will not blow an entire week's worth of careful eating. You would have to eat 3500 or so extra on that day. Your weight may not show a loss the day after your extra eating, because you are retaining water, but over time you will continue to lose weight. Look at your calorie count over the entire week, not just one day. If you are truly eating 3500 calories less than you need to maintain your weight, then you will lose a pound. It doesn't matter whether that deficit is created in 3 days, 6 days or 7. If you aren't losing weight as expected, go back to weighing everything you eat. Only eat back half your exercise calories. Then give it time.
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jenniferanderson3888 wrote: »I have to pretty much be perfect for 7 days to lose weight. But my problem is let’s say I’m perfect for 5 days and then on the 6 day something unexpected like a higher calorie meal will ruin my entire weeks weight lose. And I’m talking only a few calories over for one meal. I will not even lose a half of a pound that week even if I’m perfect the 7th day. This really frustrates me because my whole week is blown. What does everyone do about this?
You need to find a way to wrap your head around realistic expectations. Your body does not react this morning exactly to what you did yesterday. Your weight will fluctuate naturally every day, due to water and digestive fluctuations. Weight loss is just math, calories in calories out, but the scale is not a perfect reflection of that because of these fluctuations. The pound you lose on Sunday will reflect choices you made yesterday, two days ago, and 10 days ago.
You need to just put your head down and do the work for 6 - 8 weeks. Pick a moderate deficit you can stick to. Log accurately and consistently. You need to stop expecting the scale to react immediately and exactly to what you just did and give this a chance to work!24 -
You also need to understand that even having a "perfect" week sometimes logging is off or your hormones are wacky and you just don't lose that week. Or maybe your sodium is way high because you ate out. Just keep logging and stay in your cals the best you can week after week and you'll lose weight. Yup some weeks you won't lose but other weeks you'll have a nice loss.11
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OP, have you tried using a weight trending app and weighing yourself more frequently than once a week? It’s often recommended here as a way to help you see the overall [hopefully downward] trend. I’ve been using Happy Scale since the first of the year, and find it to be quite helpful—especially when my weight goes up a bit.5
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Keep it simple - rapid changes in weight are not changes in fat.
Once you understand that you should understand that short term fluctuations in weight out of proportion to your calorie intake cannot be related to changes in fat.
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jenniferanderson3888 wrote: »I have to pretty much be perfect for 7 days to lose weight. But my problem is let’s say I’m perfect for 5 days and then on the 6 day something unexpected like a higher calorie meal will ruin my entire weeks weight lose. And I’m talking only a few calories over for one meal. I will not even lose a half of a pound that week even if I’m perfect the 7th day. This really frustrates me because my whole week is blown. What does everyone do about this?
The only thing I can think of is you’re not tracking correctly or weighing your food. A few extra calories won’t hurt a weeks budget. The least amount of calories you should ever have is 1,200. But that’s for a sedentary person.2 -
jenniferanderson3888 wrote: »I have to pretty much be perfect for 7 days to lose weight. But my problem is let’s say I’m perfect for 5 days and then on the 6 day something unexpected like a higher calorie meal will ruin my entire weeks weight lose. And I’m talking only a few calories over for one meal. I will not even lose a half of a pound that week even if I’m perfect the 7th day. This really frustrates me because my whole week is blown. What does everyone do about this?
Plus the different stuff that regulates your body like water retention and such. Focus on measurements and not just the scale. You could be losing inches but not losing much weight.1 -
jenniferanderson3888 wrote: »I have to pretty much be perfect for 7 days to lose weight. But my problem is let’s say I’m perfect for 5 days and then on the 6 day something unexpected like a higher calorie meal will ruin my entire weeks weight lose. And I’m talking only a few calories over for one meal. I will not even lose a half of a pound that week even if I’m perfect the 7th day. This really frustrates me because my whole week is blown. What does everyone do about this?
Let's say you have a 500 calorie deficit for 6 days. That's 6x500 = 3,000 calorie deficit. If on day 7 you eat at maintenance; you neither gained nor lost ground. You still have that 3,000 calorie deficit. If you resume your 500 calorie deficit on day 8 you should lose that 1 pound.
However, weight loss is not linear. Water weight fluctuations mess with the scale. Water weight fluctuations can mask true weight loss. Reasons for water weight - sore muscles, hormones, higher sodium, stress.
If water weight bugs you then you might look for a weight trend app such as Happy Scale to smooth out the bumps.9 -
I would suggest that the weeks you don't lose weight are only coincidentally associated with going over. You may be wrongly attributing a normal fluctuation to thay.1
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I've always felt like there are two ways of looking at it - daily calories and weekly calories.
Maybe having a map / idea of weekly calories on paper or in an app would help in terms of flexibility.
It has worked for me!1 -
I use happy scale, the weight trending app, because it gives me perspective on my weight loss rather than focusing on the immediate number You see on the scales on a given day. Its interesting to use because now I know that the week before my period I will always gain a bit of weight and then the week after my period I tend to have a big loss (if I’m eating to my calorie target). I’ve found that my body doesn’t follow a linear weight loss depending on what I eat the day before, it has other jobs to do and weight fluctuates around those jobs!
Also it’s totally fine to have a weekly calorie goal rather than a daily calorie goal. That way you can fit higher calorie meals into your week and account for them with a lower calorie day elsewhere. It might help to do that if you’re struggling with the ‘unexpected’ days.
This is what works for me :-) if you find what works for you you’ll find this whole process much easier!0 -
It is possible, given your example, that not just water but waste is throwing your weight number off.
If that day 6 meal is also larger in volume as well as calories then chances are at the end of day 7 when you're jumping on the scale you've probably still got that large meal making it's way though your body. That waste in your system will show up as weight on the scale even though you haven't actually gained "weight" (as in fat).1 -
jenniferanderson3888 wrote: »I have to pretty much be perfect for 7 days to lose weight. But my problem is let’s say I’m perfect for 5 days and then on the 6 day something unexpected like a higher calorie meal will ruin my entire weeks weight lose. And I’m talking only a few calories over for one meal. I will not even lose a half of a pound that week even if I’m perfect the 7th day. This really frustrates me because my whole week is blown. What does everyone do about this?
Weigh yourself on the morning of Day 6 rather than after that higher calorie meal
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TavistockToad wrote: »You are confusing fat loss/gain with water loss/gain.
Your high calorie meal is presumably a restaurant meal so it's high in sodium, so you gain water weight.
If you haven't gone over your weekly maintenance calories then you have not gained fat.
That's what I was going to come in to say. But it's been said, so I'll just simply agree with it. Small weight fluctuations may not be actual fat gain/loss.0
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