On Saturday 9/24/2011 I crashed. I was knocked unconscious and took an involuntary ambulance ride to the emergency room. I escaped with a minor concussion and some road rash.

Prior to the crash I weighed 158 lbs. During the intervening days, I couldn't stop eating and my exercise stopped. At the time I thought it was just my body needing the calories to heal itself. This morning I finally step on the scale and it says 173 lbs! Somehow I gained 15 lbs in 3 days? That doesn't seem right; that would be an excess of about 15,000 calories per day (assuming 3000 calories per pound). I know I've been eating a lot, and not always the best stuff, but I don't think anywhere close to that much.

Today marks the start of losing the weight again. I had just got down to that weight after nearly 2 months of careful eating and exercise after the last weight gain.

Argh. It's just so frustrating. I needed a place to vent after seeing that number this morning. I'm hoping it's an anomaly due to the large dinner I ate last night and that tomorrow morning will be lower.

Anyone else have significant weight gain following a crash?

It part of it water weight gain? Salty stuff will cause your body to hold fluids. Salty doesn't just mean chips. Salty also means foods that are prepared/preserved using salt.
Drink plenty of water for a day or two to flush out your system and then weigh yourself.

Are you swollen anywhere where you crashed? Between a big meal, swelling, and daily fluctuations 15 lbs isn't too out of line.

Our trainer has "forbidden" us from checking the scale until Friday mornings (i.e. as long as possible after our weekend rides). Apparently the body compensates for the fluid exchanges and electrolyte activities in amazing ways after long workouts...sit tight and check again once your intake is stabilized.

Just means you are bad at evaluating your weight.
If you take your starting weight on a morning after having eaten nothing much for days and then take your next weight after binging for 3 days, the difference will be HUGE because you were under-evaluating by 1-2 pounds for the first and over by 5-10 for the second.

Just eat less for a couple days, take a big dump and then weigh yourself in the morning.

Use your head man : D

I'm sure part of it is water weight. The night before I had an extremely salty dinner. I don't know if that could cause ~15 lbs of gain or not. :?

A little swollen around the head area, but not too bad. I don't think more than 0.5 lb would be from that.

That's the plan. I'll get back to weighing myself nightly... and more importantly, getting back to working out and eating right again!

I had been tracking my weight for months every night immediately prior to bed. I was not under-evaluating that number. The number this morning was taken after breakfast and a couple cups of coffee, so it could be high. I'm used to seeing 3-4 pound daily swings depending on workouts/eating and I don't worry about them. This is the first time I've seen 15 pounds. The problem is I wasn't eating that well while not getting exercise. I was certainly putting on weight; I'd just like to know how much. And unfortunately, the only way to tell is time.

I was just hoping someone might have had a similar experience.

90% of that is water weight. It'll go back down of course. You are swollen, and they probably had an IV in you at the hospital.

I experienced the same. Mine was due to being in the habit of eating about 3000 cals a day and training hard, during season so I had no weight gain then. Then I crashed in the late fall and broke my hip. Between the habit of eating so much and the mental change from going all out to all stop, I gained 20 lbs during the winter. I did take most of it off, but it was a struggle. Good luck in loosing weight again and getting back in shape. New goals new challanges always around every corner.

90% of 15 lbs of water weight would be about 1.5 gallons of retained water. Seems high to me, but I'm no expert.

Not a crash, but when I had brain surgery the neurosurgeon put me on gluco steroids to reduce brain swelling. That stuff gives you a massive appetite and jacks with your blood sugar. Are you on any meds?

Last time I was sidelined from ALL exercise for two months (fractured elbow) I gained probably 15# very quickly
1- Drastic decrease in daily calorie expenditure
2- Replaced muscle glycogen, which is accompanied with added water weight gain
3- Was no longer dehydrating myself on long rides, back to normal status
4- Appetite increased, did not have the post-exercise too-tired-to-eat and had more cravings for junk food not healthy stuff
5- With low exercise levels, any, uh, "irregularity" with your bowels can add a few pounds as that stuff sits in your intestines.
6- Found a new coffee drink I added to my morning routine not realizing it was 1,200 kcal per serving! Had to do a lot of internet research to find the nutritional information, it was not labeled in the store.

The 15# gain took me a long time to take off. My first priority was healing the fracture and second was regaining basic fitness from 0. Running a calorie deficit had to wait, my body already had enough stress with priorities 1 & 2.

I have been eating like there's no tomorrow since taking a fall a bit over 20 mph and spraining my wrist last Wednesday. It is crazy, I have no control whatsoever.

+1 , figure about 2 lbs per quart

so maybe you weren't really 158 ????
had a real good BM lately ???

15 lbs in 3 days, seems remote...

although friends did tell me that they could hear me grow on my last trip to Italy... think I did put on about 15 lbs in 20 days... those sounds of a balloon stretchin wuz me... man, it was all so good!

it sounds like a lot of water weight...try not to eat that much salty stuff, especially if you're not exercising. We all know that salt is BAAAAAD!

So what's your weight now?

And yeah I did get similar things. For instance, I went to Vegas this summer and ate like a pig. Got up to maybe 162-163 pounds at the worst and then back down to 154 within a week.

Like I said, when you're losing weight, you don't eat a lot so your scale weight is always 1-3 pounds under your normal maintenance weight and when you pig out, it goes up by a LOT depending on what you ate / drank and it can stay around for a couple days. So from the under-evaluated weight to the over-evaluated one, there's a huge difference that is basically all due to food/water retention and not fat.

180.

I'm not as hungry now and I'm eating less, but I still can't exercise yet.

So that's 22 pounds in.. how long??
You must have been severely underestimating your starting weight man, or you're using a different scale or perhaps you bought a really heavy belt that you keep forgetting to take off.

When you weigh yourself everyday, it's not an estimate.

The next person that implies I'm not smart enough to weigh myself gets called a dumbass.

Check that, can't wait that long: poxpower is a dumbass.

Well like I said before, if you're on a diet, you don't eat a lot and as a result your day to day weight is lower than the weight you'd be at if you were eating enough just to maintain. Similarly, when you eat a lot of food in a short time span, your day to day weight will be higher than your maintenance weight.

With just that, with no scale error, there could easily be a 10 pound weight difference just from food and liquids.

But 22+ pounds? That's some epic discrepancy. I've never seen or heard of that, you must really have been eating a TON of food.

I was in the hospital back in May for ulcers...they kept me overnight and loaded me up with IV fluids. I gained 8 pounds by the time I left...I swear I felt like water balloon. I had the BEST training ride two days after getting out...My sweat was SUPER salty, but I felt like I was flat out turbo. Many raised brows wondering what "they really gave me"...What?.What?no...he didn't say EPO.

More than 10% in a few weeks? Check with your doc and get some blood work done.