Originally Posted by kaplods
You can do everything right and still see normal fluctuation weight gains. I truly believe that as long as I was drinking water, even if I ate nothing at all, I would still gain weight during PMS/TOM.
There are so many things that can affect the scale:
Hormonal issues - some women gain the week of their period, the week before their period, or even during ovulation. Some even see gains for more than one of these.
Carbohydrate intake - the body needs more water to process carbohydrates, so if you're eating significantly fewer carbs than you normally do, your body will let go of some of the water it's used to carrying because it doesn't need it. Likewise if you increase your carb level, you're going to see a gain on the scale because of the extra water your body is needing to process the carbs.
Sodium intake - sodium and potassium and other electrolytes affect the water balance. You can drive yourself nuts trying to control them all, or you can accept that fluctations are normal.
Illness and injury - both can result in water retention. The body uses water in the healing process. I actually learned that this summer, when I gained a few pounds unexpectedly after a significant sunburn. I wondered if the sunburn was responsible (as it was the only change) and in searching some reputable medical websites I learned that any illness or injury can result in water weight gain, because water is used in the inflammation and healing process.
The weight of your food and beverages - when you eat or drink anything, the weight of the food will show up on the scale until (and there's no delicate way to say this) you use the bathroom. If you ate three pounds of cabbage, you'd see a 3 lb gain on the scale, but you'd only be taking in 312 calories.
(Actually you'd only be taking in 240 calories, because 72 of the 312 come from fiber, and humans can'd digest fiber so we can't access those calories. As a result, three pounds of cabbage would have 312 calories for a cow, but only 240 for a human. It really bugs me that so many of the calorie counters don't subtract the fiber calories, because it makes some healthy foods seem to have far more calories than they actually do. If humans can't get to those calories, they shouldn't appear on the calorie counting websites in my opinion (unless it's a calorie counting site for species who can digest fiber. If you were putting Bessy the cow on a diet you would have to count those fiber calories).
At any rate, the weight of your food is going to be your weight until it comes out the other end. Digestion (mouth to toilet travel), can take up to 3 days (and even longer if constipation is an issue), so what you see on the scale can include what you've eaten for the past three days or more. I've read that a normal, healthy person can hold up to 15 lbs of poo in their digestive tract (and the medical record is disturbingly, much higher).
There are so many things that can affect your weight, that it's extremely important not to see minor weight fluctations as tragedy. You need to know that for absolutely normal reasons, you can see fairly significant fluctations.
If you expect a loss every single week, you're very likely going to be disappointed, and if you let that become frustration because you believe it "should" be different, you're going to put yourself at risk for failure. I'm convinced that frustration is the number one enemy of weight loss. We don't quit because we're failing, we quit because we feel like we're failing. And we feel like we're failing, because we don't understand what's normal.
Normal is NOT losing 2 lbs every week. Losing 2 lbs every week is freakish. Yes some people manage it. Some people even manage it consistently, but most people don't. As my doctor pointed out to me, most people don't lose anything (at least not anything that they don't gain back because they give up when they think they're failing). Even losing 1 lb a month is not "normal," it's extraordinary.
Know that, and you won't be disapponted by a no loss week, or a teeny loss week, or even by a gain week - because it's normal and most people experience it. If you think everyone else is doing better, you're going to feel discouraged, perhaps even discouraged enough to quit.
Since my doctor told me that even a 1 lb per month loss was extraordinary, I haven't even been slightly tempted to quit. I've stopped beating myself up for extrordinarily great results, because I wasn't satisfied with extraordinary (because I didn't know it was extraordinary - I thought it was poor).
In my TOPS group (a group that won state recognition for best weight loss results, so we're not a bunch of slackers) we have a monthly contest in which the people who have not had a gain during any of their weigh-ins that month, split a $10 prize. Most months (at most), one or two people split the $10. This past month no one did (so this month the prize will be $20). That means that only 1 or 2 people (and nobody this month) out of 25, manage to go a whole month without gaining (and more than half of our group is made up of men and post-menopausal women, so PMS/TOM weight gain isn't an issue for those members).
In the long run, I think it's a lot easier to learn to accept that small gains are going to happen once in a while, than to try to control everything that could cause them (because it's impossible). You have to know what normal is to know that you're actually doing much better than normal.
|
Thanks for the info. makes total sense!
