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pinktulip528
pinktulip528 Posts: 4 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I was down to 156 on the weekend and now I weigh 161. I don't understand how I gain weight back so quickly. My issue is that I am eating most of my calories in the evening. My dietician says I can only eat green leafy vegetables and protein in the evenings but I have not been doing that. Today I plan on not eating all day but I get so hungry at night. I am also on medications that cause weight gain. Any advice?

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  • spiriteagle99
    spiriteagle99 Posts: 3,676 Member
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    If you are eating in the evenings, you probably have a lot of bulk in your system in the morning. Your body will also be retaining water to digest the food you have eaten. Big overnight jumps in weight are always temporary and not to be worried about.

    Don't starve yourself today, that will just make you more hungry when you do eat and less likely to make smart choices. It sounds like you are already over-restricted, which will backfire. Think long-term, slow and easy. Eat a varied diet that satisfies you. Don't try to lose weight too quickly. Focus on the trend of your weight, not day to day variation.
  • briscogun
    briscogun Posts: 1,135 Member
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    So a couple of thoughts from your post above:
    1. You can't gain 5 lbs of fat weight over a few days, it is probably just water weight. Sounds like your medication might be a factor?
    2. Not eating anything for the day is a horrible idea. It's not healthy and its not a sustainable way to create a lifestyle that is conducive to healthy eating and weight management.
    3. If you are seeing a dietician and a doctor for medication that is affecting your weight loss journey, you might want to consult them instead of random, uneducated, yahoos like us on an internet forum.

    There are some very experienced and knowledgeable folks here but if you have some experts that are working with you, I'd recommend not adding too many cooks to the kitchen, as it were.

    Good luck!
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,401 Member
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    Totally harmless waterweight not at all related to bodyfat, unless you've eaten 17500 calories over your maintenance calories.

    Your dietician sounds like a quak. Eat whatever and whenever it suits you. Yeah, if you eat a substantial meal late in the evening it might be less digested the next morning than a big meal in the middle of the day. But again it's not fat, and you will still lose weight if you're in a deficit.
  • BZAH10
    BZAH10 Posts: 5,709 Member
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    Yeah, not sure about eating leafy green vegetables in the evenings. I was going to say that suddenly adding these could cause gas and bloating, but you said you haven't yet, so what has changed in your daily eating recently?

    This is where logging food and a diary are important. You can refer back and maybe see what caused the phantom "gain".
  • feisty_bucket
    feisty_bucket Posts: 1,047 Member
    edited August 2023
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    I'd suggest logging your weight every day in a notebook, naked, right after you wake up and watch what happens over a few weeks. Mime will change by 3-5 pounds, up & down, from one day to the next. It's due to whatever my intestines are up to at the moment. Nothing to do with fat loss/gain.
    You'd have to be overeating by ~3500 calories to put on a pound of bodyfat.
  • tomcustombuilder
    tomcustombuilder Posts: 1,634 Member
    edited August 2023
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    1) It’s waterweight

    2) Fire your dietician

    Not eating all day is not a great idea plus it does nothing for fat loss since you’re ravenous at night
  • pinktulip528
    pinktulip528 Posts: 4 Member
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    I thought sometimes it was good not to eat all day. Isn't that called intermittent fasting? Today I feel severely bloated like I am still digesting what I ate last night.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,178 Member
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    pinktulip528 wrote: »
    I thought sometimes it was good not to eat all day. Isn't that called intermittent fasting? Today I feel severely bloated like I am still digesting what I ate last night.

    That (the bolded) is still pretty hotly debated.

    A jump that big, without eating 17,500 calories above maintenance calories (not just above calorie goal), or moving that much less (almost impossible to move that much less over a few days' time) . . . is not a change in body fat level.

    It's probably mostly a water retention change. Healthy bodies hold and release water as part of how they stay healthy. They know what they're doing: Don't try to defeat that. It'll drop off.

    I'd strongly, strongly suggest you read this, especially the article linked in the first post:

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10683010/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-fluctuations/p1

    Rough guide, assuming your eating/activity didn't change a lot:

    * A multi-pound gain/loss over a small number of days is some combination of water retention changes and the effect of digestive contents that are on their way to becoming waste (headed for the toilet).
    * Even fast fat changes are slow, a fraction of a pound per day at most. It plays peek-a-boo on the scale with the bigger water/waste shifts.
    * Muscle mass gains take many weeks to months and even years. Muscle gain won't outpace any meaningful, satisfying rate of fat loss. (People can get stronger pretty fast, but that's from better recruiting and utilizing existing muscle fibers, not from creating new muscle.)

    For fat loss - which is what most of us want, right? - when you eat your food has no important direct effect.

    As someone said, if I eat a big meal and weigh myself while that waste is still in my system, the scale will reflect those pounds of undigested food/fluid. It's not fat, so doesn't matter. Eating (timing or nutrition) can indirectly affect your weight management if it affects your energy level (making you move or rest more/less) or your appetite (making you eat more/less). The direct effect on fat is still from calories in the food, averaged over time.

    Unless you misunderstood your dietitian, or that "only leafy vegetables and protein in the evening" has some rationale in a health condition your doctor diagnosed, I'm with the others: Fire the dietitian. That's not universally necessary at all.

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