Weight Fluctuations: Why Do They Happen?
What's going on?
If you weren't dieting and weighed yourself every day, you'd still find that your weight wasn't steady: it might fluctuate by as much as several pounds. These fluctuations in body weight are commonly due to:
- Water retention
- Glycogen stores
- The amount you've eaten
Water Retention
Water retention is caused by drinking too little water, or eating too much salt. If you don't drink enough water, your body will cling onto its water supplies; make sure you're drinking enough. And if you eat too much salt, your kidneys hold onto water instead of excreting it.
Women commonly retain water during the few days of the month just before their period. This "phantom" few pounds will drop off as quickly as it went on. Some medications can also cause water retention.
Glycogen Stores
Glycogen - sugar - is carbohydrate stored in the liver and muscles; usually more than a pound in total, along with three or four pounds of water. This is your body's energy reserve, and gets used up during the day if you're not taking in enough carbohydrates to supply your energy needs.
When you eat, your body replaces the glycogen store and the water that goes with it - leading to a weight gain on the scales, even if you've only eaten a moderately-sized meal. This is absolutely normal and should not put you off eating carbohydrates!
The Amount You've Eaten
Don't think about the meal you've just eaten in terms of calories - think in terms of weight. You could stuff yourself with pounds of fruit or salad for under a few hundred calories - but these pounds will show up if you stand on the scales straight after a meal. (Just imagine weighing yourself with all that food in your hands.) Once your body's had a chance to digest it, that food will disappear. The same applies with water - which has 0 calories, but definitely weighs something!
So how can you figure out whether you're losing weight or not, if your body's so prone to fluctuations? Try:
- Only weighing yourself once a week, not every day
- Always weighing first thing in the morning, before eating/drinking
- Looking at the pattern of weight loss over time, rather than worrying if you've stayed the same or gone up in one particular week
- Judging your success by the fit of your clothes, your energy and the good habits you're forming - not just by the number on the scales.
Do you find that your weight fluctuates? How do you deal with this in your weigh-ins?
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"omen commonly retain water during the few days of the month just before their period. This "phantom" few pounds will drop off as quickly as it went on."
Try phantom 6-10 lb. Like clockwork, on and off again!
ReplyThis sheds some light as why sometimes it seems like you worked your butt off but didnt lose anything.
ReplyWater retention due to salt intake is what causes the 'miracle' weight loss that often seems to happen at the beginning of a diet. Since most diets advocate some form of healthy eating, the chances are that the diet will contain much less salt than the food a person has been eating until then.
I keep meaning to try an experiment where I eat my normal (healthy) diet for 7 days then stay on the same diet but add a teaspoon of salt to one meal for a further 7 days. Then a final 7 days without the salt again. Would be really interesting to see just how much my weight fluctuates as a result. Will post the results to my blog when I get round to trying it!
Replywell, i freak out when my weight fluctuates and i do not weigh myself daily. i'm a shorter person, and so i can feel the difference in size; my pants do not fit as well. what i do is increase my water and fibre intake, and believe it or not, i ease up on the weights at the gym. sometimes just extending your cardio workout helps you to sweat off a lot of excess water. but, it is impossible to gain 5 solid pounds of fat over night- and that is something you just have to believe, and that little bit of fluctuation does not mean you will wake up morbidly obese next week. you know you are a fitness minded person, and therefore, you wont let yourself get that way. 3-5 pounds... the only person who will notice is you!
ReplyWeighing yourself once a week is WORSE than daily weighing because then you have no way of knowing if the weight you see on the scale is an aberration from the norm.
If you weigh yourself daily, as you should be when you are trying to lose fat, then you can recognize when your weight "gain" is just water weight, because it won't fit the pattern of the overall trend.
Weekly weigh ins don't allow you to see the trend at all.
Additionally there's evidence that daily weigh ins increase adherence to a diet.
On the other end of the spectrum if you don't wish to weigh yourself daily is to weigh yourself monthly. A monthly weigh in is far enough away from the last weigh in that the actual weight loss is greater than the weight fluctuations that might arise from the aforementioned reasons.
ReplyI totally, 100% agree with this. Weighing myself once a week was detrimental to my progress. I now see the daily trends and have been on a smooth, downward fat/upward muscle growth trend for the last eight months.
The key is keeping a healthy attitude about minor fluctuations, and of course remember that fluctuations of MULTIPLE pounds can happen in a day. A million factors can contribute.
Smarter advice about weighing yourself, IMHO, would be to track the daily numbers and take a weekly average. If your average loss per week is not on a downward trend, then you are eating too many Twinkies. ;) Don't freak out if you don't lose every single week. Just keep a long-term outlook and try to keep the trend going downward over time.
ReplyI totally disagree with this... weighing myself every day did nothing to help my weight loss - it just made me obsessive and miserable. I learnt it was better to trust in the process - to eat healthy, to exercise, and to keep a weekly (and then fortnightly) progress check. Now I hardly weigh myself at all, but rely on knowing that my diet and lifestyle are generally healthy, that my energy and health is excellent - & that my clothes fit well.
ReplyGreat and interesting points here -- I suspect the answer is to weigh daily if it makes you happier (since you can see the overall trend) and weekly if you tend to find that you've gone downwards over the course of seven days (minor fluctuations have hopefully balanced out). Just do what's best for you!
ReplySound advice Ali,
My wife hates the scale because if it does not show the progress she thinks she is making (judging by the fit of her clothes) she gets really depressed and will either start starving herself or just go off the diet to let up on the pressure. Neither approach works well so she goes by dress sizes.
I on the other hand found that when I was charting my weight-loss daily - I was obsessing and working out harder and such if I was having an overly high-variance. I dumped that approach a couple of months back (started dieting at the first of the year) and just focus on the behaviors that lead to my weight-loss. I weigh in every few weeks and chart is monthly. I've lost over 35 pounds since January 1, 2008 or just over a pound a week. I just blogged about this in a tongue in cheek post entitled, "The John Diet, What is that?" at: http://leananmean.com/http:/leananmean.com/the-john-diet-what-is-that/ you might be interested in reviewing.
Great dialog and I agree that different approaches will work for different people.
John W. Zimmer
ReplyLeanAnMean.com
I find that weighing daily and then averaging the last seven days presents a better picture. Doing this, you can see if the rolling average is dropping and this method levels out fluctuations from day to day, but still gives you very good insight on which direction your weight is trending.
Weight will always fluctuate, but the average should stay within a pound or so.
ReplyI agree with Barry about the daily weigh-ins. What I do is weigh daily and track my 5-day average. I plot these into an excel spreadsheet and it creates a chart of both daily weights and the average.
What you see is a jumpy little line that represents the daily weigh-ins, and a smooth downward line with the average. This gives you a much better sense of the overall trending of your weight loss.
Click on this comment to go to my blog, where you can download the spreadsheet I use if you like.
ReplyWhy weigh yourself at all? Going by the way your clothes fit will give you a pretty accurate idea of whether you're getting slimmer.
ReplyOr take pictures to track progress since clothing sizes change overtime for women(clothes get bigger number stays the same).
ReplyI've always tracked my measurements (bust, waist, hips, arms) more often than my weight. That's what I really care about, after all, right? I'm much more excited about losing half an inch on my waist than five pounds.
ReplyAn accurate bathroom scale runs about $50. I say, ditch the scale and buy 4 pairs of identical jeans instead. Sounds crazy and crazy expensive, but Old Navy always has pairs on sale for 12-20 bucks. Buy one in your current size and the other three in increasingly smaller sizes. They go up to a size 20. You're currently a 14? Buy a 14, 12, 10, and 8. If your goal is a 6 and those 8s are baggy on you, go buy yourself a REALLY great pair of jeans in a size 6! Then take the other three pair to a local charity like Good Will. I find the scale demotivating and as you mentioned, inaccurate because of weight fluctuations. There's nothing like fitting into a smaller pair of jeans to keep your motivation up and your spirits high.
ReplyWhat a great idea.
ReplyI LOVE this idea! I wish I had read this when I started getting in shape.
ReplyI like this idea too. Only problem with using jeans to gauge your progress is that denim stretches as you wear it and re-wear it. So you think "wow, my jeans are getting so much looser! I must be doing great!" Then you wash them and they're tight again. :p
I do like to keep a pair of jeans around in the next size I'm trying to get into as motivation. In fact, I need to get myself a pair of 6s soon...
ReplyI went from a 16 to an 8 but I didnt buy all my smaller jeans all at once. Through sheer necessity, as I lost the weight and my pants no longer fit, I would just buy them every couple of months. I'll never forget that feeling of putting on that size 8 in the dressing room. It took a lot for me to give up my bigger jeans as I have always gained back any weight I've lost in the past. But not this time. I'm not giving myself the option of having bigger clothes to fall back on.
ReplyKami-I agree! I am wearing a size 14 now but have always kept around my 12, 10 and 8 sizes for both motivation and to use as a "scale" if I feel like I've dropped some weight. There is nothing better, though, than grabbing the usual size off of a clothing rack and realizing that you actually need the next size down.
ReplyWhy is there no mention here of tracking your bodyfat percentage? After all, the only true "good" weight lost on a diet is fat weight - not lean muscle (which contributes to the metabolic rate) and the only way to truly track its loss is by tracking your bodyfat percentage.
It's not difficult; digital bodyfat calipers and online body composition charts make it a relatively simple process. For additional information, I invite you to review...
http://blog.ultimatefatburner.com/wordpress/its-your-bodyfat-percentage-not-what-the-scale-tells-you/
ReplyPaul -- I've always been cautioned that body fat percentage measurements are notoriously unreliable (eg. if you drink a lot of water, that can skew it). So I've tended to be wary of going by that figure alone.
ReplyI disagree with Barry and Billy ... Maybe daily weigh ins are good for muscle builders - or certain people, but they are not for everyone!
Yes, weigh fluctuates so by weighing yourself the same time each week or month your more likely to have an accurate record of your weight loss.
If you're really gaining weight/fat your clothes won't fit you the same - In my opnion that's a better gauge of your weight than weighing every day.
My husband Hates to weigh himself. It took me forever to even convince him to get on the scale. In 2007 Mike lost 100 pounds and has been sustaining it this year. He weighs his self on the 1st day of every month.
ReplyThis is good information to know. It's easy to get discouraged when you weigh in and it is not what you expect. Hopefully, by knowing these things it is easier to understand why you may not have dropped the weight you thought you should have based on eating and your physical activity.
ReplyMaybe weigh-ins are a psychological problem, whether you always or never want to use the scale.
ReplyI guess it's okay to weigh yourself once a day, even checking your body fat. Besides, I guess checking your stomach size is at least as important.
Anyway: As in much things, it is important to keep calm. Normally, it takes a very long time to loose weight, and it takes constant efforts to keep your weight on a healthy level.
Therefor: Even if you weigh yourself once a day, always see the greater picture, maybe of a month, to evaluate your success in becoming / staying in good shape.
I think it is ok to weigh yourself on a daily basis if you are aware of the reasons for daily fluctionations and focued on trends rather than the daily values. The shorter your intervals are, better analysis you can make. It is like the stock market.
ReplyAlso making a chart of your weight and seeing how .5 pounds lost a day is adding up to 10s of pounds in months is quite eye opening.
This is good information - weight fluctuations are always going to happen and it's important for people to realise how normal they are.
Replyi almost weighing every day. Lighter in the morning before breafast and heavy in the night after dinner.Ha^^
Regards
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I find water really makes my weight change. Going from being dehydrated to fully quenched typically adds at least 3-5 pounds. Pretty incredible!
ReplyI have pretty much chalked most of my weight fluctuations up to glycogen storage. When you work out a lot, your body starts to realize that it will need energy quickly, so it will store food preferrably as glycogen instead of fat. And since glycogen holds onto water along with it, it really can mess up your actual "weight". So I mainly go by how my clothes fit; I know that if my favorite jeans are getting too tight, I'm in trouble.
ReplyGood point Paul that was one of my first thoughts after reading this article. There is no focus on reducing actual body fat just water weight. I personally would rather know that my overall fat percentage was low and that I might be retaing a few pounds of fluid during that time of the month. Water weight will always flucuate. Good points though about how to reduce retention. Sodium is obviously very important to restrict because it's in just about every can, box,or bagged item. The safest bet is to just eat whole foods and use sea salt modestly. Sea salt is also good for pulling out impurities from the body, much healthier option over regular salt.
ReplyI was reading on www.celebrityupsanddowns.com about plateaus and how to get back on track.. this was great thank you for the post. combined it is a lot of really useful information
ReplyI weigh myself every morning, right after getting out of bed and I see those fluctuations too.
I keep note of the weight and once a month enter all data on the Hacker's Diet website. Here you get a chart with all data points and the trend. As long as the trend goes downward you're doing OK.
I don't worry about the fluctuations since over the last six months my trend is on the down slope.
ReplyThank you very much for the interesting information.
However, I have been really wondering where the numbers of this sentence,"usually more than a pound in total, along with three or four pounds of water" came from.
I really would like to know how the weigh of the glycogen and water were evaluated, so could somebody tell me which reference I should check...
Yuji from Japan
ReplyKeep in mind that a gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds. So, if you weighed yourself after drinking 2 eight ounce glasses, you'll weigh more than a pound heavier.
ReplyThe best time to weigh yourself is first thing in the morning before you drink or eat anything.
I prefer to weigh myself daily just so I can "adjust" just in case I gained too much for whatever reason.
Sorry guys but I think that you don't have the same problems as we do. I wonder if one can gain weight during ovulation. I am so confused! I have been working out, tracking calories and I still go up and down 3-4 pound during the month. Half the month I weight one thing and the other two weeks I gain an average of 3-4 pounds. However, even when my weight is up I've noticed that my stomach is flatter and my face is thinner but I can't figure out why this is not reflecting on the scale. Is it possible to gain water weight during ovulation as well? If so, is it fair to say my real weight is the one on the lower end?
ReplyI think everyone has a preferred strategy for weighing themselves. And I think that people should do what they feel is comfortable for them.
I prefer to weigh myslef first thing every morning, that way I can be more in tuned with minor fluctuations. My personality is also pretty grounded when it comes to my weight, so I don't get frustrated or obsessed about other things.
There's no one way to do it, but I believe that regular assessment can help people lose weight wether it's once a day, once a week or once a month.
ReplyHi,
I've been finding myself to stay at the same number for the past month now my scale says I weigh 172 but when I step on others it says I weigh 180 but either way.It says the same numbers all the time.Like I haven't lost anything or gain anything.What should I do.
Reply