On Sunday, Hubby and I went to a friend's cookout and I was very careful with my food. One plate - low-carb, on plan, and food not crowding the plate. So I was very surprised to see a sudden 5 lb gain on the scale the next morning.
The meat marinade had been a little salty, but not enough to account for 5 lbs, especially as I had been drinking a lot of zero calorie fluids (water and flavored vitamin water which did contain stevia and xylitol) which usually flushes extra water out.
I also got a fairly severe sunburn, mostly to my face and arms. I would never have connected the sunburn to the water retention, except that my face (the worst burnt) was very obviously swollen - so puffy that the pores looked like deep craters and my nose and cheeks were really enlarged. My face looked like a bright red, lumpy orange. It was bad enough that I probably would have gone to prompt care clinic (for situations that are less-than-emergencies, but too urgent to wait for a doctor's appointment) had been open.
I noticed that my wrists and ankles were also puffy (even though I didn't get any sunburn to my legs).
Out of curiosity, I googled to see if sunburn could case water retention, and sure enough, it's actually fairly common.
Also the sun burn or the sweating clogged my pores, and caused half a dozen huge pimples.
Another good reason to be careful in the sun.
It ticks me off though, because not only do I look terrible, and my face and arms hurt, but the weight isn't going to come off before my TOPS weigh-in tonight, and I was really looking forward to a significant loss this week.