Why You Should Stop Worrying About S-Day Gains (LONG)

[storm fox]

Skip to second paragraph if you want to skip the back story. This relates to my "planned ignoring" of the scale. I've noticed some people check the scales on Monday morning and start hating themselves for enjoying S-Days. In a lot of my diet research, S-Day-type strategies are recommended. Since Tim Ferriss' "Slow-Carb Diet" was my last go at micromanaging my eating, I'll only reference him. Ferriss recommends a single "binge day" per week, for the purposes of causing thyroid and other hormones to resist down-regulation (in other words, to keep you healthy during rapid weight loss, because rapid weight loss is a disruption to the body I guess). This is similar to other, similar diets that use loading days, carb-up days, cheat days, etc.

Anyway, a pretty standard caveat is that after an S-Day or two, your body will be heavier for the following reasons about which you should NOT be alarmed:
1. Increased salt intake will cause TEMPORARY water weight gain/retention in quite a lot of your tissues. Drinking water and exercising help this.
2. Increased intake of carbs and fat will result in increased glycogen stores in your muscles and liver. This healthy and is also temporary, but may take a couple of days to wear off (you can burn the "excess" glycogen faster by Urban Rangering and Shovelgloving).
3. More food means more undigested food and accompanying water in your intestines (sorry if that grosses you out). Water, fiber, coffee, and time work well to fix this.

All this combined means that you may see as much as a 12-pound jump on your scale and have absolutely nothing to worry about. Also keep in mind that these things can look like fat gain in a mirror or in how your clothes fit.

The remedy? Stop weighing yourself daily, and opt for once per week as a maximum. Basically, the best time to weigh yourself should be Saturday as soon as you get out of bed, and weigh yourself nude if possible so you don't have to factor in the weight of your clothes.

Personally, weighing-in even once per week was way too much. I think I'll stick with no more frequently than once per month, for the reasons Reinhard has discussed.

Sorry that was so long.

[amake616]

Reinhard's idea of only weighing yourself once a month and taking the average of three days is far and away the best "weighing yourself" idea I've ever heard of. Half a pound to two pounds a week are the numbers I've always heard recommended for sustainable weight loss and those numbers are too low for me to feel like anything is happening if I weigh myself every week. Plus, I always weigh around 3-5 pounds more a few days before and on my period and drop it overnight as soon as it's over so there's no point in getting down on myself for no reason.

[storm fox]

Yes, I'd totally forgotten about Reinhard's averaging of 3 monthly weigh-ins.

[Sienna]

The remedy? Stop weighing yourself daily, and opt for once per week as a maximum. Basically, the best time to weigh yourself should be Saturday as soon as you get out of bed, and weigh yourself nude if possible so you don't have to factor in the weight of your clothes.

It's interesting, because for me the remedy is to weigh myself daily (always first thing in the morning after using the bathroom and nude) and track the trends over time. I really think that this is a matter of "find whatever works best for *you* and do that".

But here are my thoughts on the subject:

There are all *sorts* of things that can cause a weight spike - not just S day behaviors. And if I weight Monday and I'm up 3 pounds from Sunday, then I know that most if not all of the gain is from "other factors" as opposed to being true weight gain (because I can know that there is no way that I consumed over 10,000 excess calories in a single day - even on an S day). But if I weigh myself on Saturday and I'm up 3 pounds from last Saturday, that could legitimately be weight gain (because an average of an excess 1500 calories per day over the week is something I could probably accomplish - especially with a couple of bad days).

I do think that monthly weighing is better than weekly weighing, but it can have the same flux issues - if you are weighing on a "heavy" day vs. a "light" day. If you are losing fairly steadily, it may be fairly unlikely to actually post a gain - but it would be fairly likely to post a much smaller than expected loss. Which I know can be almost as disappointing to some people.

To help this, if you are going to do monthly, I think Reinhard's method is the best - because taking averages should help reduce some of the variations. Although I would say for women, instead of exactly monthly, they may be better off weighing always on the same day(s) of their cycle. (Sorry if that's TMI). Because the cycle isn't necessarily monthly - and that can cause a LOT of variation for some women.

[storm fox]

I agree that consistency and tracking trends is more important than exactly when you weigh yourself. As far as women timing weigh-ins with their cycle, I think that's great advice. As a man, I completely missed that. I'd have to post a bunch of rolleyes if someone considered it TMI.