Tommy Canuck

I started in early December really paying attention to what I eat. I am a super good eater, very consistent exerciser but since about 45 years old, I have found that I have added about 10 lbs extra. I was always around 155-160 lbs and when I hit 170 I started to feel like hell. Anyway, I got myself onto fitday.com to register my daily calories and monitor my fat intake versus carb/protein intake. I took myself down from 171 to 162.5 lbs (biked like crazy in dam cold Canadian air all month) to get to this point.
Here is what I find disturbing. I weight myself every morning when I get up and if I go out and have any type of an "off night", like 2 glasses of wine and maybe desert after dinner, I will be like 3 lbs heavier the next morning? Knowing that 1 lb is roughly 3,500 calories, how can this be? I am not talking Big Mac with fries and a shake here,it could be a nice chicken breast with no skin eaten with a side of pasta with a salad. The one item that simply throws my body into mayhem is alcohol. If I drink it, I feel bad the next day and can feel the extra weight in my stomach right away. So, I have learned that totally staying away from booze is critical for me, but still not sure how my weight could fluctuate that much when there is no way I could have posiibly taken in the equivalent amount of calories?
Your thoughts?

Enthalpic

Water retention... drink more water and you will retain less.

lillypad

Your weight can easily fluctuate that much from one day to another due to water retention. One big thing that has an effect on this is the amount of sodium that you consume. The more salt that you consume the more water your body will retain. Try this: If you do want to weigh yourself every morning, write down your weight somewhere and keep track of it. Take your three lowest weights for the entire week, add them up and divide by three to get your average weight for the week. Keep working out and tracking your weight. Figure out a "goal weight" and keep working out until your average weight for the week is equal to this figure. Even weighing yourself three times per week on nonconsecutive days and averaging them will give you a figure that you can compare to the following week and so on.

Phatman

odd, the morning after a lot of drinking, I'm lighter, usually due to dehydration. As soon as the hangover is over, the weight is back.

wingnut

So if I eat foods in a given day that are high in sodium I may weigh a bit more the next day. What effect does drinking water have on this? If I drink a good amount of water is the sodium reduced? Or is it just reduced over time.

Seems like drinking water would help, wouldn't it?

kuan

Man I can put on three pounds overnight just by eating Restaurant Chinese food for dinner.

Palsdude

if you do not get enough water, your body will not give up what it has and will horde up the little it gets.... to have it flush or release the retention, you need to INCREASE your intake.

I wish Fat worked that way.

lillypad

One of the primary functions of the kidneys is to regulate the amount of important elecrolytes such as sodium, potassium, chloride, and calcium in the body. This is achieved by variations in the amount of these substances that are excreted through the urine. As the amount of sodium in the body increases, in order to maintain this homeostasis, the percentage of sodium released through the urine also increases. Drinking plenty of water will help the body to remove the excess sodium and maintain this balance. As the amount of sodium in the body decreases, so will its concentration in the urine.

Homeostasis cannot be as easily maintained when you are sweating and losing copious amounts of fluid such as during vigorous exercise. The amount of sodium and potassium lost through perspiration cannot be controlled to the extent that it can be in the urine. This is why you need to continue to consume substances that contain sodium and potassium, such as Gatorade and other electrolyte-replacement fluids both during and after these activities.

ed073

Funny.

DannoXYZ 

Yeah, and you can become an even gooder eater!

These normal daily fluctuations are why I only weigh my self once a week on the same day at the same time, Tuesday mornings at 7am. This usually is my most stable weight as I've had a long endurance day on Sunday to go through a couple gallons of water as well as eating a tonne. Then a rest day on Monday lets my body recover from that and stabilize. Tuesday morning should be close to my "real" weight on average.

Wulfheir

RE: Water retention

I know I don't get enough water. How long does it take your body to un-learn hording water after you've begun to water it?

lillypad

Not very long. Start to drink 8-10 cups of water daily (or more if you are exercising) and you should notice an increase in urine output within 24 hours.

cyclezen

This will sound really stoopid, but here goes anyway.

I've gone thru the weight 'fluctuation' thing I don't know how many times in my life. To show how bad it is for me, I have 3 different wardrobe size groups. I freekin hate it.
Anyway, I went from 195-200 down to 175-180ish in 04 and last year finally got back to 160-162ish by June; and experienced the same things you speak of, above.
Over the years I've determined that my body seems to have some 'memory' of what it most recently was, weight -wise. Not sure how else to say it.
After going thru a losing phase, I have to be real careful to not exceed daily calories for at least a month or 5 wks. If I do, I immediately will put weight back on, regardless of the food quality. This is reflected on a daily basis. Something makes my body think it needs to retain EVERYTHING I put in, including water to get 'back' to that prior 'normal' weight. And late in the evening eating of anything assures weight put back on that I then have to suffer to take off again.
After that month 'acclimatization' period or so I can eat 'normal' again and even go on potatoe chip, cookie or other binges and not show any weight gain.
So some nutrition physiologist needs to explain this to me...
Water is retained, but its still important for my weight loss process when I'm in it cause water helps 'fill' me up. I get hungry, I drink some water and the hunger is staved off. Otherwise it does all things it does to facilitate digestion, clean out waste and toxins, stabilize body pH and a zillion other things.
Once at weight for some weeks the daily fluctuations really seem to level off and either don't happen as much or are easily brought back in line the next day.
Its a weird thing

A glass of wine a day is a health thing learned from my Grandfather, i can recommend you get back to it when you can

lillypad

You don't mention any type of exercise program that you are trying to follow while you are losing weight. Your body always tries to return back to the same weight that it was before. This is referred to as stasis (not wanting to move).

Exercise is what is important in helping to lower the weight that your body wants to return to.

cyclezen

you're referring to my 'reply'?
if so - 125 to 150 miles/wk within a loosely structured 'retraining' program for reentry into bike racing, + reffing 2 adult league soccer matches a weekend in the fall and spring (approx 3 hours of midlevel running) + recreational stuff like hiking, surfin whenever the conditions allow.

So if it is 'time at weight' that overcomes prior 'stasis', then what allows the body to gradually put on weight, like thru a weight lifting program and not have it resist by burning whatever it can to stay at the lower weight? Or does stasis just work (or is experienced) when trying to reduce weight? seems like it would work both ways - or not?

lillypad

When you are engaged in a weight lifting program (higher weights with lower reps) and really stressing your muscles to the point that you cannot continue anymore and doing several sets of this with different muscle groups, you are trying to build muscle mass. This involves continually tearing the muscles down and then rebuilding to a point where they are stronger than they were before during rest periods. This is why people that are into serious weight training usually alternate days working different muscle groups. In this situation you are trying to add weight, but lean muscle mass.
If the weightlifter stops his program, he will lose the muscle mass and his strength and tend to return to somewhere near the point that he was before.

Doing this is not really the goal of people that are into aerobic activities especially those that require the person to continue the activity for extended periods of time. A 225 pound running back in the NFL would not do very well competing in the Tour de France. (Look at Lance Armstrong, he weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 140).

So it is not only 'time at weight' but exercising continually and making sure that you do not lose weight too quickly that helps to train your body to stay at a lower weight.

When you are trying to lose weight (and a considerable amount of it) it is good to take breaks in your weight loss program and just try to "maintain" for a few weeks then try to lose some more and then maintain again.

Also, it is a long-lived theory that your body has a "set point" that you can lower through exercise similar to the way that you lower the thermostat on your furnace. This "set point" is the weight that your body wants to maintain. There is an interesting article on this subject at members.aol.com/starkreal/bodyfat.htm

As you mentioned, water is a good "fill-me-up" to take place of what you may have eaten instead and helps to remove the by-products of fat breakdown.

rthomse

One thing with alcohol is that the liver processes it as fat and does it first before any food.So I you imbibe the more you drink ,the longer it takes to metabilize solid food. But then again I could be completly wrong!

SoonerBent

This is exactly why all the weight loss/maintenance programs I know of tell you not to weigh every day. Now, I admit that I do it too but I only pay attention to one day a week. From one day to another I can fluctuate 2 to 3 pounds up or down. But if I look at a log I keep of the same day each week my weight is pretty steady over time.

SS

ed073

No...that's true. Alcohol is metabolised before anything.