Originally Posted by Meg (Post 3627115)

If the scale is up six pounds, you've definitely put on six pounds of something. It could be water weight or fat gain -- only time will tell.

If you ate more carbs and/or salt than you're used to, you could be retaining water. Alcohol seems to affect weight for a lot of people too. If it's water weight, you should see the scale go back down over the next few days. :)

Or your body may be telling you that your maintenance calories are less than you estimated and you may have gained some fat. Remember that calculators are only a very broad guesstimate about calorie needs and that we have to figure out, through trial and error, what our own unique calorie needs are for weight loss and maintenance. For some of us, it's a lot less than what a calculator would say.

All you can do is hop right back on plan, drink lots of water, exercise, and see what the scale does over the next week to ten days. Hopefully you'll see the six pounds disappear and take some friends with them. :)

Originally Posted by Shmead (Post 3627339)

I would also add that "goodies" are the easiest thing to undercount significantly because they are so calorie dense. Unless you weighed everything and used that to calculate calories, I'd expect you to be under by 20% or so. This isn't a reflection on you at all--it's just the difference between a 200 calorie cookie and a 250 calorie cookie is difficult to see with the naked eye--if I handed you both, you really couldn't tell which was which.

ETA: Did a little research. According to Fitday, each gram of cookie has 5 calories, so the difference between a 200 calorie cookie and a 250 calorie cookie is the weight of four pennies. Truly undetectable without a scale.