Is this normal?

  • Since the beginning of April, I thought I was on a plateau. It has been 3 weeks that my weight has gone between 207-211. Just like a yo-yo, up and down. My measurements even had gone up a bit the first week of April.

    I had went over everything I was/am doing and what I was/am eating. Everything is either on plan or I did even better than expected.

    Finally on Friday I took my measurements after a week -I lost 2 inches on my stomach, another inch or inch and a half on the rest of my body. But, I step on the scale? It had gone up a pound from Thursday!!

    Does anyone have any insight on this? I'm now 3 days in a row at 210 and my graph is going up and up rather than down.

    What is causing my yo-yo? What is causing my weight now to go up? I just want the scale to go down. I haven't seen 207 in what seems like forever.

    Before anyone makes conclusions:
    -I have been 100% on plan, this is confirmed
    -I have been working out 3-4 times every week, with light weight training (things I've been doing for a couple years now)
    -I drink 6-8 glasses of water a day to get rid of bloat

    Thanks for any help!
  • It's likely that you've been building some muscle and are either retaining water from working those muscles or from some other biorhythm of your body. If you measure and see a loss of inches, that speaks volumes more than what those little tricksters we call scales say. This is the reason I measure along with weigh. The only time I have seen a fluctuation on my measuring tape was when my spare tire started to blend into the rest of my tummy and it was a slight increase(and only for a few days) that decreased as things "slid into place". I have lost as many inches lately as pounds. I have seen the scale hold on for weeks as inches were dropping off and then as if magic I'd lose 5-7 pounds in like 10 days. We tend to call this a "WHOOSH" around here. (Just on the off chance you aren't familiar with that term.)

    Is it normal? I dunno but it's happened to me(recently too) so it's not unheard of. There's a lot for the body to do when we exercise and are losing fat and the numbers on the scale don't always reflect what's going on right away. If you keep things on track and give it time, the scale will eventually catch up and show you the loss.

    What's really a coincidence to me is that this happened for you at about the same weight it did for me. I wrestled with 212 for almost 3 weeks and then boom. I just looked at my own chart and now I am at almost 10 pounds gone in 2 weeks after almost a 3 week period of losing a pound or less. Hope this helps give you a little insight of the ebb and flow of this experience. Like people have told me, have faith in your plan and try to ride it out. You ARE achieving more than you know.
  • Yay for losing inches! That's what people see anyway. I'd say it's normal. It happened to me every 15-20 pounds. I usually switch something up, just to distract myself until the scale starts moving again. A couple of possibilities given what you reported:
    -add walking or other cardio to your non-workout days
    -experiment with higher protein and lower carb
  • I have another thought for you. I lost weight for a long time while eating about 1800-2000 calories, but eventually, I had to gradually reduce that, about 100 calories at a time. I'm now down to about 1400 calories. Since I wasn't willing to reduce the volume of what I was eating that much, at the same time I increased my vegetable consumption -- gradually working my way up to a giant salad at lunch and, many days, another at supper.

    So, two more things to experiment with:
    -lowering your calories by 100
    -increasing your vegetables
  • As long as you're losing inches, who cares about the scales?

    I'd rather be 300000000 lbs wearing a size 8 than 120 lbs wearing a size 20. KWIM?

    Hang in there. You're doing fine and it's normal.
  • Thanks everyone, feels good to hear.