How much can your weight fluctuate in an hour?

fitnessqueen91
fitnessqueen91 Posts: 166 Member
edited April 2019 in Health and Weight Loss
I weighed in this morning at 76.7 kg. For breakfast I only had coffee and two chocolate covered rice cakes for 150 kcals and a cup of coffee. I weighed an hour and a half later and my weight was up by 77.4 kg! Can your weight go up by that much in an hour and a half especially when I had a very light breakfast and cup of coffee? I didn't drink any water either. Is my scale off. By the way I have another scale. On the other scale I was 76.6 kg in the morning and then 77.3 kg. Both are digital and only vary by an ounce. I weighed myself at my local chemist and I'm 77 kg on the chemist scales. This was an hour after breakfast too. So that's 1.5 pounds gained in an hour and a half.

Replies

  • MikePTY
    MikePTY Posts: 3,814 Member
    Sure. I am not exactly sure the weight of everything you ate and drank, but the coffee combined with the food could certainly weigh close to a pound and a half. Add in normal fluctuations from scale measurements margin of error, and it's quite easy.

    I can go up 2-3 pounds after a normal meal, depending on what I eat or drink. It's not about calories, but the weight of your food and fluid intake.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,254 Member
    edited April 2019
    What is the size of your coffee cup?

    Why are you weighing yourself every few hours?

    Are you using a weight trend app or web site with a single daily data point?
  • Johnd2000
    Johnd2000 Posts: 198 Member
    I don’t do hourly weigh-ins but I’m usually at least 2-3kg heavier in the evening than I am in the morning.
  • SCoil123
    SCoil123 Posts: 2,111 Member
    My weight fluctuates around 4lb depending on the time of day I step on the scale. I’ve seen it go up in a few hours eating and drinking nothing in between. I personally like seeing those fluctuations because it helps me not take the scale so seriously
  • tess5036
    tess5036 Posts: 942 Member
    If you weigh yourself, eat or drink, and then weigh yourself soon after, you will be heavier due to the weight of food and drink, including water or zero calorie drink weight.
  • Lounmoun
    Lounmoun Posts: 8,423 Member
    edited April 2019
    I don't weigh myself more than once a day but saw this early this morning right after I woke up so thought I would try.
    I used the bathroom and peed. I weighed myself. I set a timer for 1 hour and poured a glass of plain water. The water weighed 292 g. I took one small pill and drank the glass of water. During the hour, I walked around my house for about 1600 steps. I used the bathroom once and peed a very small amount. I did not eat anything or change my clothing. When the timer went off I stepped on the scale again and it read 1 lb heavier. I used the same scale that had not been moved.

    Weight fluctuates over the course of the day. Weighing 1.5 lbs after an hour and a half is not abnormal.

    https://www.womenshealthmag.com/weight-loss/g19990871/weight-fluctuation-experiment/
  • dsboohead
    dsboohead Posts: 1,899 Member
    Please do not let obsessive scale behavior allow you to spend the best parts of your day on that scale!
    Let it go...keep a healthy perspective and live life!
  • missysippy930
    missysippy930 Posts: 2,577 Member
    fitnessqueen91 wrote: »
    I weighed in this morning at 76.7 kg. For breakfast I only had coffee and two chocolate covered rice cakes for 150 kcals and a cup of coffee. I weighed an hour and a half later and my weight was up by 77.4 kg! Can your weight go up by that much in an hour and a half especially when I had a very light breakfast and cup of coffee? I didn't drink any water either. Is my scale off. By the way I have another scale. On the other scale I was 76.6 kg in the morning and then 77.3 kg. Both are digital and only vary by an ounce. I weighed myself at my local chemist and I'm 77 kg on the chemist scales. This was an hour after breakfast too. So that's 1.5 pounds gained in an hour and a half.

    Why would you do that to yourself? Sounds like a type of torture. I weigh myself once, first thing in the morning before I eat or drink anything, cuz I know the scale will fluctuate during the day. Some say weighing daily is even too often, but it helps me stay on track.
  • kenyonhaff
    kenyonhaff Posts: 1,377 Member
    If you eat a pound's weight of water, your scale is going to show at least a pound increase in your weight. The inside of you is not a black hole...what's inside your digestive system is part of what gets weighed.

    Weighing yourself throughout the day CAN be useful as a one time exercise just to see that your weight is not a static number. It is typically the lowest after using the bathroom in the morning, and typically highest after your largest meal - usually dinner. It can also vary with liquid intake and exercise and so on.

    However, doing it like you are - measuring yourself to the ounce hourly - is not useful data. You want to measure yourself about the same time for each data point. Many like first thing in the morning, but just as long as it's fairly consistent that's comparing "apples to apples".

    Even then, the oft-repeated "losing weight is not usually linear" is key here. Blips up and down and plateaus are to be expected but the general trend is what's key.
  • 1BlueAurora
    1BlueAurora Posts: 439 Member
    And by the way, of course your weight readings are going to be different on every scale.
  • riffraff2112
    riffraff2112 Posts: 1,756 Member
    1 litre of water weighs a kilogram. So even a cup or two of coffee will show up on the scale as a pound. Hourly fluctuations of up to a few lbs are common and no cause for celebration or sorrow. My advice for someone who cant handle these fluctuations is to not weigh as often :smile:
  • sdewey415
    sdewey415 Posts: 93 Member
    I weighed myself 5 times in a row. 3 of those time I weighed the same the other 2 times I weighed 8oz more.🤷🏼‍♀️

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