Restarting again

It's 100% normal to have ups and downs in scale weight, even when losing fat steadily - and body fat is what calories affect, right?

In particular, our bodies can be 60%+ water, and retained water weight can shift by up to several pounds from one day to the next. Holding onto or releasing water is a thing healthy bodies do to repair muscles after exercise, to digest certain nutritional components, to deal with some minor injury or allergy or illness, to balance out hormones in women with monthly cycles, to balance electrolyte levels in our blood, and more. It's not fat, so it's not worth worrying about.

On top of that, we have varying amounts of food/drink in our digestive system at different times, on its way to becoming waste. Eat a bunch more high-fiber food than one's norm, for example, and that's weight in the digestive tract until it's excreted. According to research, full digestive transit can take 50+ hours, so that can have multi-day effects on bodyweight. But this is also not fat, so not worth worrying about.

Given those multi-pound shifts (that aren't fat, but affect body weight), actual fat loss can play peek-a-boo on the scale with that random nonsense for up to several weeks, sometimes. Yup, that's frustrating, but realistic.

Here's another thing, though: Eating way-low net calories can be counter productive for weight loss.

Eating too little can increase water weight, basically through stress hormones (because calorie deficit is a physical stress). If the water retention further stresses you out from its effect on the scale . . . well, you see where that leads.

Besides that, and more worrisomely, eating too little can cause gradually increasing subtle fatigue, so we burn fewer calories than we might expect. This won't typically stop weight loss, but it can slow it down. Maybe we don't do as much spontaneous movement during the day (fidgeting and more). Maybe we rest more, put off high-effort home chores, don't feel like doing energy-requiring hobbies. Exercise intensity can suffer. We might even sit or sleep more. Our body may slow down some less essential body processes. Maybe internal body temperature drops a tiny bit, so we feel cold more often. Maybe hair growth slows (may thin later), or nails start to slowly become thin or brittle. Maybe the immune system down-regulates a little. And so forth.

That isn't productive, and it's not good, and it can make the scale results even harder to understand.

Undereating is not a great plan. Better plan: Eat to your recommended net calories for a sensible, sustainable weight loss rate: 0.5-1% of current body weight per week, with a bias toward the lower end of that unless severely obese. Follow that sensible plan for 4-6 weeks (full menstrual cycles for women to whom that applies). Then assess average weekly weight loss over the whole period, and adjust intake if needed to hit the sensible actual loss. That can work.

stuarta99 wrote: »

Great thanks and that's what I was thinking with ups and downs which as you say is to be expected.

I was surprised to see so much under but have to be honest been struggling to eat all my calories so need to get that balanced out.

Plan is eat all my net calories or as close to it as I can without the app shouting at me and not eat back the exercise ones from my Fitbit which is set to negative adjustments.

That's a better plan.

If you feel full but need more calories, consider calorie dense but less filling foods like nuts, nut butter, seeds, avocados, cheese, olive oil on veggies, dressings for salad, etc.

Treat foods (not very nutrient rich) are OK, too, especially if your day's nutrition is already in good shape. Cookie calories count the same, and don't cancel out the broccoli we ate earlier.

Getting enough calories is part of staying healthy.

Best wishes!

BrickFox wrote: »

Are you counting calories with a scale? If you're eyeballing it, it's possible to over-consume calories without realizing it. Cooking with oils or butter is something people forget to log, and that can be the difference of being in a deficit.

Are you exercising at all? You may be gaining muscle while you're losing fat. The scale will lie to you, which is why it's not the best idea to rely on it. Clothing is the real judge in my opinion.

Muscle mass gain is so slow that it's rarely going to mask any satisfying rate of fat loss on the bodyweight scale, realistically (unfortunately).

Under excellent conditions, a good result would be a pound a month mass gain for women or 2 pounds for men . . . and 'excellent conditions' includes a calorie surplus, not a deficit.

On the fat loss side, half a pound fat loss per week (2 pounds a month) is about the slowest rate most people might consider satisfying, and even that can take a month or more to show up on the scale amongst normal daily multi-pound water/waste fluctuations in body weight.

It's common for people to observe that bit of water weight gain for muscle repair, plus substantial strength gain from neuromuscular adaptation, plus a bit of definition (from a combination of losing overlying fat layer and a bit of pump) . . . and think they have mass gains, before anything substantial is really happening on that front.

That doesn't mean there can't ever be mass gains in a deficit (especially in strength-training beginners), but it would be expected to be even slower than under ideal conditions. Strength training is for sure worth doing in a calorie deficit: Even keeping existing muscle is worthwhile. Overweight people tend to have more muscle mass than thin people of similar demographics and activity level, just from carrying our weight through the world daily. Why not keep it, since it's slow to (re-)build?

Besides, strength and appearance improvements are useful in themselves.

I've never seen anyone here say they wish they'd waited to start strength training until after weight loss, and I've seen a lot of people here say they wish they'd started earlier.

Weight loss is not linear and it is not uncommon to see large swings as the body retains and sheds water. If you're weighing in once per week, you may have happened to measured on a day/time where you retained some water. Assuming you are logging accurately, follow the plan MFP has laid out for you. It's better to lose slowly and more consistently than trying to maintain an extreme calorie deficit over time. I'm at the tail end of a cut; and you can see from my chart that there are significant swings in weight - as much as 6 lbs over a few days. Net/net - log accurately, follow the plan, and consume as many calories as your plan allows. There is a lot of wisdom in the old adage 'slow and steady wins the race.'

stuarta99 wrote: »

Well back losing again this week with another 1lb gone

Congrats!