Can anyone explain this rapid weight/waist gain?

[Graham]

Greetings. I really want to make sense of this: from Saturday morning to Monday morning I gained 5 1/4lbs and nearly an inch around my waist. Can anyone tell me what that gain consists of?

If you need more details to make sense of it, see my daily check-in: http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic ... 3989#83989

I want to understand, to adjust my strategy - I want to learn rather than just feel discouraged. Any of you seen this sort of rapid weight-gain and understand it?

[sheepish]

I would guess that it's a combination of things:

Some salt retention

Are you, umm, sorry, no polite way of asking this.. a bit constipated? I eat very healthily most of the time and find that when I don't for a day or two, I have this issue.

And, yes, that was a lot of food so you likely have gained some actual weight from it - I think it's ok at this stage to be going wild on S days but hopefully it will calm down for you soon.

[Graham]

Are you, umm, sorry, no polite way of asking this.. a bit constipated?

No problem, good question, but no, that's not it, no issues of that sort for me.

[wosnes]

Well, I think some of it could be due to water retention from high sodium intake, but not all of it. Some of it could also be the weight of the food you ate. As it's digested and eliminated, the weight would disappear. Some of it could be actual weight gain, but it takes more than 24-48 hours for calories consumed to become body weight. You'd have to go back to before July 30 for that.

[ironsickel]

Greetings. I really want to make sense of this: from Saturday morning to Monday morning I gained 5 1/4lbs and nearly an inch around my waist. Can anyone tell me what that gain consists of?

For what it's worth, i'm having the EXACT same problem.
I'll put on anywhere from 5 to 6 LBS at my Monday weigh in compared to my Saturday weigh in (for giggles and grins I weigh every day and chart it).

I find that i eventually lose all that weight throughout the week and so far have managed to show a loss each week, but it feels like I'm spending Monday thru Friday shedding that extra weight from the weekend.

I too would like to figure out what i'm doing "wrong" and adjust my strategy. Even though I'm still losing, psychologically it would be nice to not see that massive yo-yo effect every week.

[kccc]

Give it a week - during which you stick to habits religously! - and see where you are.

The prior reading may have been artificially low if you were fasting... all the stuff normally in your digestive tract not there. Salt is very likely, given your menu on your thread. Scales have some "play" in them as well. You may be seeing nothing more than an aggregate of small things.

Just don't let it derail you. If the weight is still there in a week, yes, take a hard look and figure out what to do. But fretting at this stage is simply not productive.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

[kccc]

Double post, sorry.

[talk at ya]

I think that weighing yourself is an accurate measure of progress only if you do it like every 2 weeks. I mean I know one night I weighed myself and I was 136, and the next morning when I woke up I was 148, and I hadn't eaten anything b/t the weigh ins, I just slept, I hadn't eaten anything wierd the day before, etc. and that kind of thing happens to me all the time, it's not uncommon for my weight to fluctuate about 10lbs every day. Idn, I think there is just too much going on in your body to really attribute slight weight changes to only the food you're eating. So I guess my advice is, weigh yourself, but don't take what you weigh too seriously, judge your progress on how you're looking/feeling/clothes are fitting, etc.

[wosnes]

I think that weighing yourself is an accurate measure of progress only if you do it like every 2 weeks. I mean I know one night I weighed myself and I was 136, and the next morning when I woke up I was 148, and I hadn't eaten anything b/t the weigh ins, I just slept, I hadn't eaten anything wierd the day before, etc. and that kind of thing happens to me all the time, it's not uncommon for my weight to fluctuate about 10lbs every day. Idn, I think there is just too much going on in your body to really attribute slight weight changes to only the food you're eating. So I guess my advice is, weigh yourself, but don't take what you weigh too seriously, judge your progress on how you're looking/feeling/clothes are fitting, etc.

I agree. While there are medical reasons for weighing daily, when it comes to weight loss, the less often the better. I'm supposed to weigh daily due to my CHF and adjust medication if I gain over 2 lbs in a day. After 5 years, I almost don't need to because I can tell if I'm retaining fluids. But, if I were weighing for weight loss alone, I probably wouldn't weigh more than once a month.

[sheepish]

I think that weighing yourself is an accurate measure of progress only if you do it like every 2 weeks. I mean I know one night I weighed myself and I was 136, and the next morning when I woke up I was 148, and I hadn't eaten anything b/t the weigh ins, I just slept, I hadn't eaten anything wierd the day before, etc. and that kind of thing happens to me all the time, it's not uncommon for my weight to fluctuate about 10lbs every day. Idn, I think there is just too much going on in your body to really attribute slight weight changes to only the food you're eating. So I guess my advice is, weigh yourself, but don't take what you weigh too seriously, judge your progress on how you're looking/feeling/clothes are fitting, etc.

I don't weigh myself and just go on clothing, etc, and I vastly prefer that to getting too hung up on the scale. But, I think if you really do want to weigh yourself, you're almost better off doing it every single day because then you notice absurdities like weighing more when you haven't eaten anything and, also, you can chart it so that you can see what the overall trend is.

[wosnes]

I think that weighing yourself is an accurate measure of progress only if you do it like every 2 weeks. I mean I know one night I weighed myself and I was 136, and the next morning when I woke up I was 148, and I hadn't eaten anything b/t the weigh ins, I just slept, I hadn't eaten anything wierd the day before, etc. and that kind of thing happens to me all the time, it's not uncommon for my weight to fluctuate about 10lbs every day. Idn, I think there is just too much going on in your body to really attribute slight weight changes to only the food you're eating. So I guess my advice is, weigh yourself, but don't take what you weigh too seriously, judge your progress on how you're looking/feeling/clothes are fitting, etc.

I don't weigh myself and just go on clothing, etc, and I vastly prefer that to getting too hung up on the scale. But, I think if you really do want to weigh yourself, you're almost better off doing it every single day because then you notice absurdities like weighing more when you haven't eaten anything and, also, you can chart it so that you can see what the overall trend is.

I disagree. The variations seen on a daily basis generally have nothing to do with actual body weight. It's more reflective of fluid retention and the status of elimination. If you must weigh, weekly is probably the most often one should weigh to get an accurate picture of weight loss/gain.

[sheepish]

I think that weighing yourself is an accurate measure of progress only if you do it like every 2 weeks. I mean I know one night I weighed myself and I was 136, and the next morning when I woke up I was 148, and I hadn't eaten anything b/t the weigh ins, I just slept, I hadn't eaten anything wierd the day before, etc. and that kind of thing happens to me all the time, it's not uncommon for my weight to fluctuate about 10lbs every day. Idn, I think there is just too much going on in your body to really attribute slight weight changes to only the food you're eating. So I guess my advice is, weigh yourself, but don't take what you weigh too seriously, judge your progress on how you're looking/feeling/clothes are fitting, etc.

I don't weigh myself and just go on clothing, etc, and I vastly prefer that to getting too hung up on the scale. But, I think if you really do want to weigh yourself, you're almost better off doing it every single day because then you notice absurdities like weighing more when you haven't eaten anything and, also, you can chart it so that you can see what the overall trend is.

I disagree. The variations seen on a daily basis generally have nothing to do with actual body weight. It's more reflective of fluid retention and the status of elimination. If you must weigh, weekly is probably the most often one should weigh to get an accurate picture of weight loss/gain.

But that's my point - that you can see that the variations have nothing to do with actual weight if you monitor them really closely and then you can chart the overal trend. But that's if you really want to weigh - I prefer not to.

[kccc]

It does seem that people fall into two schools of thought about weighing...

1) Weigh infrequently, so trends are obvious and you aren't distracted by normal variations
2) Weigh frequently, so you learn to ignore the normal variations that often seem to have nothing to do with recent events

In either case, it's crucial to ignore day-to-day variation and focus on overall trends. Which works best for individuals seems to be a matter of temperament... the second seems fraught for people with a diet history, because they tend to over-react to meaningless variations ("I'm down! I can eat" or "I'm up! I give up - I'll have what I want").

And it's important to recognize that weight loss isn't linear - there's often "lag time" between doing the right things and seeing results. So, best to keep the focus on the habits as much as possible.

[wosnes]

I think that weighing yourself is an accurate measure of progress only if you do it like every 2 weeks. I mean I know one night I weighed myself and I was 136, and the next morning when I woke up I was 148, and I hadn't eaten anything b/t the weigh ins, I just slept, I hadn't eaten anything wierd the day before, etc. and that kind of thing happens to me all the time, it's not uncommon for my weight to fluctuate about 10lbs every day. Idn, I think there is just too much going on in your body to really attribute slight weight changes to only the food you're eating. So I guess my advice is, weigh yourself, but don't take what you weigh too seriously, judge your progress on how you're looking/feeling/clothes are fitting, etc.

I don't weigh myself and just go on clothing, etc, and I vastly prefer that to getting too hung up on the scale. But, I think if you really do want to weigh yourself, you're almost better off doing it every single day because then you notice absurdities like weighing more when you haven't eaten anything and, also, you can chart it so that you can see what the overall trend is.

I disagree. The variations seen on a daily basis generally have nothing to do with actual body weight. It's more reflective of fluid retention and the status of elimination. If you must weigh, weekly is probably the most often one should weigh to get an accurate picture of weight loss/gain.

But that's my point - that you can see that the variations have nothing to do with actual weight if you monitor them really closely and then you can chart the overal trend. But that's if you really want to weigh - I prefer not to.

Sorry, I misunderstood. But I think that most people who weigh daily are seeing those fluctuations as actual body weight and agonizing over them -- and they'll probably be gone within a day or two anyway.

[Graham]

Well, there are plenty of interesting things being said here, some of which I'd like to comment on as the instigator of this thread:

@ironsickel: If I was having this problem every weekend, I'd be looking hard at them. I'm not saying you should, time alone may fix your weekend excesses, but I wrote about this because my behaviour didn't seem that different from other weekends when this level of gain didn't happen. You could always post some indication of what you're eating on the weekends and seek comments if you're mystified by where you're going wrong.

@KCCC - thing is, I'm not doing that much different from what I have done on previous weeks - I've been fasting twice a week in conjunction with No S for 2 1/2 months now, and I've never seen this level of weekend weight/waist gain before. I do agree, panic would't help.

@talk at ya: Reading your history of mystery weight-gain, if I was you, I'd be checking my scales - do they need a new battery, do you use them in exactly the same location, under the same conditions, at each weighing? If you are absolutely strict about duplicating conditions of weighing, your scales have to be faulty to give the readings you've been getting. Prior to adding fasting to No S, my weight and waist were very consistent over a whole month, varying by only the odd pound up and down now and then, that was why I introduced the fasting.

@wosnes: as I fast twice a week, there is weight/waist change going on from day to day sometimes, so I measure as I like to see the effect of what I'm doing, it is motivation to keep on when my resolve is faltering.

@sheepish: yes, with daily weighing/measuring overall trends can be observed through the up and down of points on a graph (and I do keep a graph - it helps me deal with my impatience, helps me feel like something is happening) I also agree, in the end, how you look matters more than what the scales say, but I think what your waistline measures matters more than how you look.

I still don't feel I'm certain why I gained so much this weekend, maybe a combination of an excessive calorie deficit on thursday/friday leading to some rebound eating on Saturday and Sunday? I found it helped me to deal with how I felt to describe it here and get feedback from other members of the No S community.

I will keep on with the intermittent fasting/No S combination for the time being. I will treat this as a learning experience and thank all on this forum who have taught me such a lot.

[paulawylma]

I noticed that I always weigh more on Monday but never considered it a mystery. Since there are no rules on S days, I eat more on weekends than during the week. Since it takes time for the food eaten to be broken down, processes and expelled, there is naturally more physical material in the digestive system on Monday than any other day of the week. In other words, on Mondays I am full of . . .

[DaveMc]

It does seem that people fall into two schools of thought about weighing...

1) Weigh infrequently, so trends are obvious and you aren't distracted by normal variations
2) Weigh frequently, so you learn to ignore the normal variations that often seem to have nothing to do with recent events

In either case, it's crucial to ignore day-to-day variation and focus on overall trends. Which works best for individuals seems to be a matter of temperament... the second seems fraught for people with a diet history, because they tend to over-react to meaningless variations ("I'm down! I can eat" or "I'm up! I give up - I'll have what I want").

KCCC, you may have achieved the seemingly impossible: detente between the Scalesians and the NoWeighers! I think we need to get you over to the Middle East, stat.

[kccc]

KCCC, you may have achieved the seemingly impossible: detente between the Scalesians and the NoWeighers! I think we need to get you over to the Middle East, stat.

Thanks, Dave! I appreciate the notice. There are times when being able to see both sides of something helps to identify commonalities that lead to dialog.

Alas, more often (in my experience), being a moderate on extreme issues just gets you stoned by both sides. So, I'll take a pass on the Middle East tour, thank you.

(One of my favorite quotes - paraphrasing from Neils Bohr, who said it several different ways himself - "There are two kinds of truth, little truths and Great Truths. Here's how you tell the difference: The opposite of a little truth is a lie. The opposite of a Great Truth is another Great Truth.")

[Strawberry Roan]

I weigh daily (actually twice daily, once at night and once in the morning). Always have - has it kept me at my ideal weight?
Uh, no Not always but it is a habit like brushing my teeth morning and night.

I do not let the daily fluctuations bother me if I know I am on track.

In other words, if I have been eating right and exercising and the scale said I had gained 5 lbs, I would assume that to be water retention or something as I had not eaten an excess 17,500 calories.

Weighing and recording it (here and on a graph at Calorie Count Plus) keeps me motivated.

[donnao]

it's the carbs-- you fasted, and then carb loaded for 2 days

i am telling you this from personal experience, as a recovering bulimic
i would restrict for a day or two ( which resulted in destroying my metabolism, by the way) then carb load and either restrict some more after that or purge

for every 1gm of carbs you ingest, your body holds on to 4gm of water

take a look at your hands and face- are they puffy and doughy ?
that's the way it was with me..
i can't remember exactly who told me that, but i'm pretty sure it was either an ED counselor or an RD
i too could easily gain 5 or 6 pounds in the course of 2 days

i highly discourage fasting- it always set me up to binge eat/ overeat

hope this helps, and hope you feel better

ps- drink lots of water with lemon for the bloat

[Graham]

donnao - thanks for your comments. I wish I was sufficiently self-observant to say whether I was puffy in hands or face - but I have no recollection of that, nor did I anyone tell me they had observed that.

I don't generally binge/overeat after fasting, as I use No S to govern my post-fast eating - but I had to change my fasting schedule a few weeks back, switching from a Thursday to a Friday fast - maybe fasting Friday, with 2 S days to follow, is more difficult to manage than having one day of N - day eating before the weekend comes. (I'll have to check my graphs to see how much of an issue that is)

It seems fasting is particularly problematic for some people - yet IF has many supporters too. I only resorted to it after a month of No S with my weight on a plateau and then beginning to gently rise, and that wasn't acceptable to me.

I adopted No S to lose weight (fat) & particularly waist inches and added IF to make it happen. Apart from some mysterious ups and downs, the general trend, over a period of 3 months, has been a loss of @ 1lb a week and, in the absence of any equally effective strategy, I will continue the twice weekly fasting till I get to my goal waist measurement (<32", perhaps @ 30"?)