I know it's normal to bounce around a little, but I'm up .8 today, and yesterday I was within my calorie range and I drank about 55oz. of water (I usually try to get more water than that, but that should be close to enough, no?) I had three espresso shots yesterday and 1625mg of sodium, but it doesn't seem like that could have had enough of a dehydrating effect to cause a bounce.

Anyway, I'm not worried about it, but I was wondering if any of you regularly see small, seemingly inexplicable bounces.

Your weight fluctuates every day a little, sometimes even a couple pounds. I wouldn't worry too much about the everyday changes, but on the overall over time. You could keep a log of your daily weight (if you don't already) and sometimes you'll eventually see a pattern depending on the time of the month.

Edit: I just saw that you wrote your not worried about it..oops. So to answer your question, yes I fluctuate a little depending on the day

Well, I should say I'm not worried yet, so thanks for the tips. I'm weighing in daily on MyFitnessPal, so I'll make sure to take a look at the patterns.

Yes, I definitely notice small weight fluctuations that I can't explain based on food or fluid intake. Over time, however, the weight trend much more accurately reflects how I've been eating/drinking. I have never experienced a weight plateau that could not be attributed to eating more than before.

Freelance

Yes, I've experienced weight fluctuations, but really they're not all that inexplicable, if you realize all the variables that affect your weight on the scale. If you drink an extra two cups of water, that's going to show up on the scale as a one pound gain, until you pee it out. Which usually would be about an hour or less, unless you also ate a little more salt than usual.

Then there's the weight of the food you eat. If you eat a whole head of cauliflower, you're going to see a 2-3 lb gain on the scale until the cauliflower is completely digested.

It can take up to three days for food to be completely digested and passed, and the digestive system can hold up to 20 lbs (more in freakish cases) of undigested and digesting food.

Some body processes need more water. For example, high-carb eating requires more wsater to digest, so if you eat more carbs one day than your "normal" you're going to see a temporary water weight gain until you return to your "normal" eating style.

Water retention (which may not be the best term, because it makes it sounds like "retaining" is somehow undesireable or unwanted, when water-use by the body is a natural and even desireable process in some cases) is affected by many things - your carb intake, your sodium intake, your hormonal cycles, as well as illness, injury, and activity level).

The body needs extra water during healing and recovery, so during illness and after an injury or even after increasing your activity level or after exercising, you can temporarily see a weight gain, as your body uses the extra water from your fluid intake.

You also burn calories differently based on variables that you're not even conscious of - the temperature of your environment, what your immune system is dealing with, your stress level... all sorts of things that change every day.

Now consider that you probably don't eat exactly the same weight of food and liquids every day, that you probably don't pee and poo the same exact amounts every day - you don't burn the exact same number of calories per day ---- of course your weight and weight loss isn't going to be exactly the same every day, week, or month (our bodies don't work on a daily, weekly or probably even monthly schedule).

I'm not the OP, but very interesting information and I'm glad I opened this. I have fluctuated so much this past week and I was getting super frustrated. I was down to 216 lbs last Sat, then bounced up to 223 lbs by Mon . For me, I *think* it was my sodium intake...I had a can of Campbell's soup and I crave salt, so the saltier the better (bad, I know). I'm back down to 217 lbs today.

Thanks for all the info!

My weight fluctuates between 5 lbs in one day, and I can be up 1-2 lbs from one on-plan day to the next.

Like kaplods said, a major factor is the weight of the food. One person who eats 400 calories from peanut butter in the evening is going to weigh in less than if she had eaten 400 calories of broccoli in the evening She did not "gain" weight from the broccoli- the broccoli was far less calorie-dense than the peanut butter.

Just another reason it isn't helpful to pay attention to day-to-day fluctuations. I see almost every week on 3FC someone who said "I ate 3000 calories yesterday and LOST weight, how awesome is that!" They likely did not actually lose any weight (more likely, gained a bit if they ate over their maintenance calories), but are seeing a coincidental drop in the scale due to fluctuations of digestion, the weight of the food consumed the day before was less than their usual intake, etc.

Keep sticking with what you know is working, even if the scale doesn't always reflect it

You've received great advice from everyone, so I won't chime in with the same.

But yes, I DO fluctuate in a huge way. Doesn't seem to matter whether I was on plan or not, I bounce around up to 4 pounds a day. I don't know why it makes so much of a difference to me now, when I last lost weight in my early 30's (now in my early 40's) I didn't bounce around this much. Now I can always tell if I'm going to be up a few pounds in the morning - my rings are tight.

I've learned not to worry about the number on the scale though - I just keep doing my thing and it'll catch up with me sometime soon.

In addition to all the great info above, I'll just add that when we talk about "weight loss" we really mean "fat loss". But the scale measures ALL of us -- skin, water, bones, muscle and fat.

So when you think about it, it's a poor tool for the job. It's no wonder we see "random" fluctuations. We only want to know about "fat" loss and can't isolate that.