So I was dreadfully sick for about four days, and only ended up keeping down about 400 calories per day during that time. I also haven't been as hungry the three days afterwards, and was only eating between 700-1000 calories of soft stuff to protect my stomach. Well, I'm feeling better now, except for how obnoxious my weight has been!

Before being sick: solidly 234
During: low of about 232
Just after (still eating less) 237.5

I know that not eating enough didn't cause me to gain 3.5lbs, but it still sucks that this is happening. Part of me wonders about the idea that when you're starving, your body makes fat out of every possible calorie, but I can't imagine that actually happening. I also can' figure out why/how I would be retaining water after losing so much (shouldn't I be dehydrated if anything? I did try to drink a lot). I also wasn't eating anything too high in salt, and it's not TOM.

Thoughts?

So weird, I had something similar a few weeks ago, but i stuck to my program and had a bumper loss the following week.

so dont loose faith in yourself. Just keep at it.
Maybe someone can give a scientific answer...

hmmm I'm stumped on this one myself

I believe while you were not eating enough, your body might have lowered it's BMR and went into starvation mode which will not burn as many calories. instead it will try it's best to save every gram of food you intake.
this might take a while to correct. Please keep your exercise and try to intake at least your BMR required calories so your body doesn't think you are starving.

How discouraging! I don't have any scientific evidence or anything, but if it were I, I would go on the assumption that I was still dehydrated and retaining water from the illness and that I needed to drink lots of water, and pretty soon my body would let go of all of it. If that didn't happen pretty soon, I would be unhappy. Sorry to hear that you were ill.

I see that between me and masterptr, we have you starving and dehydrated! You are a mess. LOL!

It's definitely not "starvation mode". If this ever kicks in, it's certainly not after a few days of being sick.

Seriously, my advice about such things is: don't bother about it, don't even try to understand, just go on being on plan, and weigh in again after a few "normal" days have passed again. Sometimes the human body reacts in very, very odd ways. If we let those discourage us (and we all know that too often, being discouraged can cause us to overeat out of frustration!), they hold too many risks of sabotaging our efforts. :|

You know it's not fat. There are only 2 other logical explainations: Water, or a broken scale.

Someday perhaps we can put this "starvation mode" myth to rest....

How the heck does anyone thing it is is possible for the body to turn nothing into energy and then store it as fat? Because you're sick ... suddenly your body can create energy from sunshine or water?

The scale does not measure body fat.

Even scales that proclaim to measure body fat do so so inaccurately they are almost completely useless.

Energy people. Energy.

water or broken scale it is!!!
tomorrow will be another day as today is.... we march on...

I have experienced temporary weight gains after being ill. I attribute it to water retention due the meds and probably not getting enough fluids overall. Usually, I drop the weight fairly quickly (48-72 hours) once I return to normal eating and activites.

You could be dehydrated. When I'm dehydrated, I usually see a loss on the scale after the first day or couple of days. Then the next few days, I really start to retain water and it takes another few days of proper hydration for things to get back in sync.

Thanks everyone! Today is my first day back to eating enough to be on plan, and I've been back working out for a couple of days. I won't let it discourage me and will up the liquids in case I'm dehydrated.

I know what you are talking about. My husband and I were talking about this just the other day. I've noticed, for some reason, when you're sick, your body holds onto weight. No idea how or why.

Definitely keep hydrated again! I had food poisoning one day a few weeks ago and lost 1.5lb like that due to not eating. I then gained it back and then some, and it took awhile for my body to lose the weight again.

Now, after about 2 weeks of seeing a similar number, things are headed in the right direction. Of course, this includes the forced amount of water/tea I now drink...

It's probably just water weight (that's my explanation for every higher weigh-in lol).

I still can't figure out how starvation mode works. Is it even real or is it just something made up by people to prevent people from not eating too little?