Like many, I have a love-hate relationship with the scales and with weighing. I sometimes weigh weekly, have gone longer, successfully, and am currently on daily weighing. I decided to do this when I decided to try calorie shifting. It was part of my plan of being able to observe the scales and learn from the numbers as to what affects my body how.
So here are some numbers. Weights and calories consumed
2/25 210.4 after eating 1969 calories. This was Shrove Tuesday and I tried to give up weighing for Lent, tho changed my mind, so:
3/14 203.5 I was happy with that. Though I've just today averaged the calories and it was average 1339 a day. I thought it was more than that.
Now the daily:
3/15 203.2 after eating 1162
3/16 204.4 after eating 1938
3/17 202.6 after eating 993 and getting food poisoning
3/18 201.4 after eating 834 and getting over food poisoning
3/19 201.0 after eating 1149 and getting better
3/20 201.3 after eating 1333 - eating normally
I expected the bounce on the 16th after eating the 1938 the day before, and was planning to observe how it went after going back to a lower calorie level but the poisoning got in the way.
I know it's silly and obsessional but I am going to have to work really hard today to eat up to the 1300 I'd budgeted (more coming at the weekend) because I'm now really scared that the scale is going to carry on going up.
So all hints and tips and experience to set my mind at rest will be most appreciated. Thankyou.
Your weight is going to naturally fluctuate through out the day and every day. Seeing small increases and decreases like that is most probably water retention (like if you pee 5 mins later and get back on the weight will be different lol). I would not sweat the small gains. You seem to be on a steady spiky decline.....if I would enter my weight every day you'd see the same thing.
Plus remember you just got over food poisoning so your body might want to hold onto some stuff to help recover from that.
Your scale is a guide and you need to remember that It's easy to become obsessed over it though so try to make an effort to get to know your body and you won't worry as much (like I've said before your body is a fascinating machine!)
Last edited by TJFitnessDiva; 03-20-2009 at 06:41 AM.
Well... You cannot plan your intake around what the scale says on any given day. The reading you get does not correlate with what you ate the day before. You could eat the exact same thing for three days in a row and get different readings every day. The body is much more complicated than that.
If you are going to weigh daily, pick a time, such as first thing in the morning after you pee but before you drink water, and always weigh at that time. Don't try to switch your plan around to match--just stay with what your target is. After two weeks you should be able to see a trend in where your weight is going.
As for your recent illness, you can naturally expect your weight to come back up a little simply because you were dehydrated and now you're better. Don't fret over this. Who cares what water weighs?
That's a loss of 9.1 lbs in 23 days! I personally would be thrilled with that. If you are going to weigh yourself every day, you will just have to accept that the scale is going to go up some days. Especially if you are calorie cycling. When I did that (for about 8 weeks to break a plateau), my weight was like a roller coaster... still a downward trend, but all over the place on any given day. Let me show you my last two weeks....(official weigh ins are bolded)
So, scale fluctuations are normal. I know that my weight will go up or down on any given day... however, the overall trend is down. I have lost 62 lbs and I have never had a period where I lost weight every day... except maybe the first week! So, if you are so discouraged by a 0.3lb fluctuation, it may be time to reconsider weighing yourself daily. It's not worth getting upset and engaging in unhealthy behavior over 4.8 ounces.
Thanks a lot for the replies.
These things I know, well, most of them, in my head, but I'm deliberately weighing daily at the moment so that I can get used to the fluctuations and, if I can't understand them, learn to live with them.
I do know I've lost really well at the moment, and I am pleased! I'm not really miffed by 4.8oz ( ) it's just I know where my head can go (outer space) and it's that bit of weightloss I'm working on today.
Quote:
Well... You cannot plan your intake around what the scale says on any given day. The reading you get does not correlate with what you ate the day before. You could eat the exact same thing for three days in a row and get different readings every day. The body is much more complicated than that.
This may just qualify me for planet dork but I didn't know that. Sure, I know that What I eat also counts, so eating a 'good' number of calories from processed junk will definitely give me water weight but in the context of everything being pretty healthy, I thought calories in minus calories out = scale reading.
Hm. I'm starting to get interested in my internal workings, I would like to more.
BTW, I do weigh at the same time every day, after breakfast, cos (TMI alert) it kind of takes breakfast to shove things along a bit.
The body's workings definitely are more complicated than calories in, calories out, especially because there's no practical way, and no inpractical way outside a complex laboratory to measure "calories out"). The calories you burn cannot be measured easily. It not only includes the calories you burn in exercise, but every body process including sleep, breathing, temperature regulation, digestion, immune system response..... and there's absolutely no evidence that these processes are predictable, or even consistent.
For example, one of the obvious reasons that eating too few calories, tends to lower metabolism is fatigue. If you eat too few calories, your body could "save" calories by making you tired. The difference may be so subtle, you don't even realize that you're moving less than you did the day before. Maybe you sleep an extra 20 minutes, maybe you walk half a mile less in a day than you normally do, maybe you fidget less while watching tv.
There's also water retention (which isn't always tied only to menstral cycle and high sodium foods, being ill or injured, or even strenuous exercise can also cause increased fluid needs, so the body retains "extra" to be able to do so).
There's also the weight of undigested food in the stomach and the weight of food wastes in the intestines. I once read that an average weight person can have up to 20 lbs of food/food waste in their digestive system. I can only imagine what that number is for someone my size.
Weighing daily will help you (eventually) understand some trends, but they're definitely much larger than any one meal, any one day, or even any one month. It's all much bigger picture than that. It's hard to reconcile with the way most of us learned to "diet."
Remember, the number on the scale is only a tool...it is not a real measure of what you are doing good for your body. You could eat gummi bears and diet soda for weeks and the scale will move, but it wouldn't help your health a darn bit.
Please help me not to be scared of the scale
It's easy to become obsessed over it though so try to make an effort to get to know your body and you won't worry as much (like I've said before your body is a fascinating machine!)
Hope you figure out what works for you. 
) it's just I know where my head can go (outer space) and it's that bit of weightloss I'm working on today. 
