Water Weight During Ovulation?

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JustaNoob
JustaNoob Posts: 147 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Is this a thing? If so, I feel like I need a little bit of hand holding until this water subsides. :D

I am 1000% positive that I am in a calorie deficit-- weighing everything I eat. For January, I gave myself 1200 calories daily so that I'd know for certain I was in a deficit. Then I planned to track my weight trends and increase my calories based on what the trends show.

I have never been this consistent... so I don't know my own weight loss trends or what my body does at different parts during the month. Can women who have tracked their trends for a while speak to this?

Replies

  • sbelletti
    sbelletti Posts: 213 Member
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    Your weight will likely fluctuate dramatically once a month. Stick with your plan and you'll be fine. It's not unusual to see an increase of several pounds. Weigh daily, keep logging. Once you've tracked your trends for several months, it'll be easier to see how your body handles it and the scale won't be so scary.
  • cttrgirl1997
    cttrgirl1997 Posts: 6 Member
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    100%, yes. My highest weight of the month will be the week of ovulation. It falls off really fast a few days later. Weigh daily and you’ll see your trends after a month or so.
  • penguinmama87
    penguinmama87 Posts: 1,158 Member
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    Yes, this can happen and that describes my pattern when I am cycling. I learned how to track my cycle before I began tracking calories but both can give you a lot of useful health information!
  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 13,605 Member
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    There's a number of weight-trend calculating sites. One in particular may be of interest to you: WeighGrapher.

    Not only does this site calculate your weight trend based on the past several daily weigh-ins, but it provides the trend from 28 days ago. That way if you see the trend line going up, you can look and see that 28 days ago it went up at a similar slope. Ideally, if you're trying to lose weight, it will go up at a similar slope again this month, top out, then come down at a similar slope, but still be lower than last month.

    Check it out.
  • JLG1986
    JLG1986 Posts: 212 Member
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    Yeah, it’s a thing! For me it’s more my period that makes me bloated, but ovulation can be a cause too. I like the app Happy Scale because it does the math on your weigh ins and helps “smooth out” those fluctuations and show your actual weight trend more clearly. It keeps me sane when I’m trying to lose weight because it seems like there’s always something making my weight fluctuate…hormones, too much salt, or that one day of overeating that makes your morning weight bounce up unreasonably high… :#
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,939 Member
    edited January 2023
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    mtaratoot wrote: »
    There's a number of weight-trend calculating sites. One in particular may be of interest to you: WeighGrapher.
    .... it provides the trend from 28 days ago.

    User definable time period that defaults to 28 days :smiley:

    As an aside when I was playing with it, must be now a good seven years ago, I remember getting annoyed at the advice on how to reach my goals! I shut down the chatter at the time by setting my goal to maintain.
  • refactored
    refactored Posts: 399 Member
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    I have only been tracking my cycles relative to my weight for 3 months so far. My weight usually goes up by 1 or 2 pounds around ovulation. When I start my period, my weight usually drops but this cycle it has increased even though I have been within my calorie budget. So I guess for me it can even vary from cycle to cycle.

    I also recommend using a trending app. I use Libra on Android. It can smooth your weight over a configurable number of days to give you a trend weight. It then graphs your current weight relative to your trend weight. You can then see if you are still on a downward trend even though your weight fluctuates from day to day. It also allows you to add a note against each day so you can record where you are in your cycle. I wish we could create arbitrary markers on the graph to record special events but currently it cannot do that.
  • claireychn074
    claireychn074 Posts: 1,442 Member
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    Yep, I put on water weight at ovulation and hugely when I’m about to have my period. I always have a rounded lower belly - it’s just my shape - but when I’m on my period I look live I’ve swallowed a rugby ball. And I feel like it.
  • bettercallsue
    bettercallsue Posts: 2 Member
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    Am there right now. Weighed everything that went into my mouth and went with a more aggressive deficit to ensure I was definitely eating less than I burned. Scale is stuck and am ovulating at the moment. Crossing my fingers and toes for a loss over the next few days.
  • JustaNoob
    JustaNoob Posts: 147 Member
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    shannabcollier wrote: »
    100%, yes. My highest weight of the month will be the week of ovulation. It falls off really fast a few days later. Weigh daily and you’ll see your trends after a month or so.

    This is crazy because I feel like I don't gain that much weight during my periods. It will be interesting to see if this is a monthly pattern during my ovulation and if I've just given up too soon in the past because I was discouraged.
  • JustaNoob
    JustaNoob Posts: 147 Member
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    mtaratoot wrote: »
    There's a number of weight-trend calculating sites. One in particular may be of interest to you: WeighGrapher.

    Not only does this site calculate your weight trend based on the past several daily weigh-ins, but it provides the trend from 28 days ago. That way if you see the trend line going up, you can look and see that 28 days ago it went up at a similar slope. Ideally, if you're trying to lose weight, it will go up at a similar slope again this month, top out, then come down at a similar slope, but still be lower than last month.

    Check it out.

    Oooo this looks really interesting. I'll check it out... thanks!
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,996 Member
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    Before I got happy scale I charted in excel. Here you will see when I ovulated or was premenstrual :lol: and a big water weight spike in late October when I started lifting weights:

    p5ywl6e2y3p2.png
  • JustaNoob
    JustaNoob Posts: 147 Member
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    kshama2001 wrote: »
    Before I got happy scale I charted in excel. Here you will see when I ovulated or was premenstrual :lol: and a big water weight spike in late October when I started lifting weights:

    p5ywl6e2y3p2.png

    This is the kind of visual I can't wait to establish! This is awesome!
  • cttrgirl1997
    cttrgirl1997 Posts: 6 Member
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    @kshama2001, can I ask how long your weigh spike lasted after you started lifting? I started lifting this month, and the weight spike has been discouraging. I’ve been consistent with my nutrition, in a moderate deficit, and the scale jumps after workout.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,853 Member
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    shannabcollier wrote: »
    @kshama2001, can I ask how long your weigh spike lasted after you started lifting? I started lifting this month, and the weight spike has been discouraging. I’ve been consistent with my nutrition, in a moderate deficit, and the scale jumps after workout.

    I'm not kshama, but I've seen various people here have different experiences, so I'll chime in with mine: I lift seasonally, typically, in my rowing off season. When I start strength training, I usually see a couple/few pounds of otherwise unexplained weight gain, and as long as I keep up regular progressive strength workouts, that weight hangs around. Come next on-water season, when I stop strength training again, I drop a couple/few otherwise unexplained pounds.

    Certainly, if you're losing fat alongside exercise-related water retention, the water retention will top out at some point: It doesn't just keep increasing and increasing until we become a human water balloon, y'know?

    If fat loss is happening, hiding behind the water retention, it will eventually stop playing peek-a-boo on the scales with the water, and the fat loss trend will start showing up in longer-term averages (multi week, multi menstrual period). The water gain stops, the fat loss keeps adding up.

    How long that will take depends in part on how fast the fat is actually depleting.

    There was a time when I was losing super slowly (on purpose), maybe less than half a pound a week on average, started strength training, and even my weight trending app thought I was maintaining or even gaining for a month or a bit more . . . let alone what it would've looked like to me if I'd only had the individual daily scale weights (let alone less frequent weigh-ins!) to judge from.

    At that point, I was several years into calorie counting, mostly maintaining, so I had a solid handle on my calorie needs and my logging habits. I was pretty sure I was really losing fat (slowly!), and sure enough somewhere around 5-6 weeks out, the scale took a bigger dip, and I was right on schedule, on average.

    As someone newer to calorie counting, you're probably still working out your true calorie needs. MFP or some other calculator just gives you a starting estimate. It's close for most people, but it can be a little high or low for some, and surprisingly high or low for a rare few. That's the nature of statistical estimates.

    On top of that, you're probably relatively new to the ins and outs of counting. It can be a surprisingly subtle skill, IME. Most of us who have been doing for a while have had forehead-smacking moments when we realized we had some piece(s) of it that had been kind of far off, and we needed to correct. You may be luckier, but it's a thing to consider.

    You'll figure it all out, and you can make it work. Part of it is learning your personal patterns, part of it is learning the skills, part of it is learning at gut level that there will be weird ups and downs but that once you have the right process in place, you can trust that process to deliver the results . . . on average, over a period of time, with patience and persistence required.

    Odds are good things are fine with what you're doing . . . but if they're not, you can figure it out. Keep going: Only giving up leads no where. Persisting, learning and adjusting will lead to results. Hang in there!

  • cttrgirl1997
    cttrgirl1997 Posts: 6 Member
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    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    shannabcollier wrote: »
    @kshama2001, can I ask how long your weigh spike lasted after you started lifting? I started lifting this month, and the weight spike has been discouraging. I’ve been consistent with my nutrition, in a moderate deficit, and the scale jumps after workout.

    I'm not kshama, but I've seen various people here have different experiences, so I'll chime in with mine: I lift seasonally, typically, in my rowing off season. When I start strength training, I usually see a couple/few pounds of otherwise unexplained weight gain, and as long as I keep up regular progressive strength workouts, that weight hangs around. Come next on-water season, when I stop strength training again, I drop a couple/few otherwise unexplained pounds.

    Certainly, if you're losing fat alongside exercise-related water retention, the water retention will top out at some point: It doesn't just keep increasing and increasing until we become a human water balloon, y'know?

    If fat loss is happening, hiding behind the water retention, it will eventually stop playing peek-a-boo on the scales with the water, and the fat loss trend will start showing up in longer-term averages (multi week, multi menstrual period). The water gain stops, the fat loss keeps adding up.

    How long that will take depends in part on how fast the fat is actually depleting.

    There was a time when I was losing super slowly (on purpose), maybe less than half a pound a week on average, started strength training, and even my weight trending app thought I was maintaining or even gaining for a month or a bit more . . . let alone what it would've looked like to me if I'd only had the individual daily scale weights (let alone less frequent weigh-ins!) to judge from.

    At that point, I was several years into calorie counting, mostly maintaining, so I had a solid handle on my calorie needs and my logging habits. I was pretty sure I was really losing fat (slowly!), and sure enough somewhere around 5-6 weeks out, the scale took a bigger dip, and I was right on schedule, on average.

    As someone newer to calorie counting, you're probably still working out your true calorie needs. MFP or some other calculator just gives you a starting estimate. It's close for most people, but it can be a little high or low for some, and surprisingly high or low for a rare few. That's the nature of statistical estimates.

    On top of that, you're probably relatively new to the ins and outs of counting. It can be a surprisingly subtle skill, IME. Most of us who have been doing for a while have had forehead-smacking moments when we realized we had some piece(s) of it that had been kind of far off, and we needed to correct. You may be luckier, but it's a thing to consider.

    You'll figure it all out, and you can make it work. Part of it is learning your personal patterns, part of it is learning the skills, part of it is learning at gut level that there will be weird ups and downs but that once you have the right process in place, you can trust that process to deliver the results . . . on average, over a period of time, with patience and persistence required.

    Odds are good things are fine with what you're doing . . . but if they're not, you can figure it out. Keep going: Only giving up leads no where. Persisting, learning and adjusting will lead to results. Hang in there!

    Thank you for your insight! I’m trying to lose slowly (.5 lbs a week), and I think the water retention from the weight lifting and hormonal shifts is masking the fat loss. I’ve danced the weight loss dance several times before, so I feel like my tracking/counting is fairly accurate. The lifting is totally new. I’ve done cardio for years, but strength training is a whole new world!

    Thanks for the encouragement!!

  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,996 Member
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    shannabcollier wrote: »
    @kshama2001, can I ask how long your weigh spike lasted after you started lifting? I started lifting this month, and the weight spike has been discouraging. I’ve been consistent with my nutrition, in a moderate deficit, and the scale jumps after workout.

    The big spike up plummeted back down within two weeks. But like Ann said, it is possible that for as long as you are lifting, you will keep a few pounds of water weight. As you can see from my chart, that does not inhibit weight loss.
  • nay0m3
    nay0m3 Posts: 178 Member
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    I completely, 100% feel you!!

    I gain weight both at ovulation AND my period, and also experience pretty strong urges to eat more at these times. I also did gain weight when I first started weight lifting but it was temporary. I would say it did last longer than I anticipated. This is an awesome article to provide some education about how you may get bigger before getting smaller--the comments are real life testaments to this experience https://strongfigure.com/women-youll-get-bigger-get-smaller/

    Weight lifting has definitely changed my body in the most incredible ways though (AND MIND!) and my weight continues to be higher than I am programmed to think it should be.

    Hope this helps a bit!

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