to wonder why it takes days and days of dieting to lose even a POUND or 2 then just one day of indulging you put it back on again?

[MoodyDidIt]

i am, like many others, trying to shed a few post xmas pounds

have lost about 2 - 3lbs so far, with calorie counting, and got about 5lbs to go, but i need a day off god dammit

but i know if i do i will put on at least a pound by tomorrow and it will really dishearten and depress me. and by having a day off i dont mean guzzling like 6000 calories or something. i mean,. just having what i want just for one day.

so if it takes a deficit of 3500 calories to lose a pound (i believe?) it must mean that if you consume an additional 3500 OVER what you are meant to eat, you will gain a pound?

so surely that means i would have to eat about 5500 calories in just one day, which even i would struggle with, in fact i doubt i would eat even half that even on a really big blowout.

so can any clever types please explain this annoying phenomena? :(

I think it's called sods law!!!

I am dieting but although I would love a day off calorie counting I'm not going to yet. But when I do it will be on weigh in day so I have a week to repair the damage before the next weigh in.

As far as I know, animal bodies are designed to hang on to fat. It's a survival mechanism, essential in the wild where food can be plentiful in one season and all but impossible to find in another. So if you drop your calorie intake by quite a lot the body goes into survival mode, which means that a sudden influx of calories causes the body to store as much as possible. It's better to change your calorie intake permanently and stay at a stable level rather than going up and down. Diets don't really work for that reason - you need to change your habits permanently for weight loss to be long term.

It'll be water weight. If it is TOM/you have sore muscles/have been eating salty food your body will be holding onto water.

If you are losing weight your weight ins will show a general downward trend, but will be up and down a lot within that trend.

If you eat what you want - or if I did - it would generally be something for tastebud delight, ie. higher in salt, fat and sugar than I would normally eat. We'd would gain 'water weight'. If you can stay off the scales for a day or two whilst your body rallies back to its normal healthy eating, the water weight and bloating would go.

Have a day off if you want - stay off the scales for a few days - and return to your plan straight after your ONE day off.

yep, dieting is a waste of time and life. Eat properly, do some exercise, continue for life.

never dieted, not skinny, not fat.

That's easy to say special, but it's not so easy to do for a lot of people. I've never had to diet either, and maintaining a healthy weight seems very easy for me, but I know it's not the same for others who struggle with eating the right things for a lot of reasons.

I don't know why Moody but have to agree with you. I'm not in a dieting mood today.

Sometimes I think it is just eating more and your body holding onto extra water and waste material not that you are gaining fat. If I weigh myself before and after a weekend I will gain a few pounds but after a couple of days of eating sensibly I will loose it. (And that is not from overeating thousands of calories to gain a couple of pounds and then going without thousands again to loose it.) That is why it is best to only weigh yourself once a week at the same time and same day of the week to get a realistic picture since your weigh fluctuates over time.

Could you go for a run as well as eating what you like for a day? Won't counteract more than a few 100 calories at the time but will help long term.

thats really good though happy remember if you are exercising you may have increased your mucle mass and muscle is heavier than fat

it sucks though never having a break, and i am not going TOO low, i am going to about 1400 - 1500 cals a day as, for me, i think any less would be too low. plus it wouldnt be sustainable

i have heard contrasting arguments re having blowout days, some people think it kick starts your metabolism as it kind of "shocks" your body as its been used to less calories. i like the sound of that....

i really, really, envy some lucky bitches women who can eat whatever the Fook they like and still be dead skinny. some people are just born that way. i used to be like it when i was young and pre dcs , god, the shit i used to eat it was great :(

LIG1979 If I only weighed myself once a week I wouldn't get an accurate picture of how my weight fluctuates though, because there's pretty a clearly a ~10 day cycle of weight changes (I'm male, I believe there can be even bigger fluctuations in females) So some of those once a week weigh ins I'd be be at a heavy point, others at a light point, others somewhere in between.

By weighing myself daily I can see those fluctuations and how they also react to the exercise I do, the sleep I get etc. I'm not attempting to diet - my weight is very stable despite eating what I want and exercising what I want, I just track for information - I actually know how I could add or lose 2kg in a day on the scales, it wouldn't change my body shape though and no fat is actually involved in that.

However I do agree if you're trying to lose weight it may well be more useful to weigh yourself less regularly to avoid motivational changes as you see it go up or down unrelated to fat loss.

When I diet I weigh once a week in the morning after I get up. Being an anal so and so I also plot it on an excel chart. Even at that granularity there is a step loss with plateaux every 5 weeks on a long term loss program. If you are exercising you will see a stall or gain potentially as you build heavier muscle mass but that will pay off later as this is a calorie burning engine and will speed the loss.

hate it when this happens!! also dont understand the whole muscle weighs more than fat??

surely muscle and fat weigh the same? a pound of fat will weigh the sane as a pound of muscle in the same way a tonne of feathers will weigh the same as a tonne of bricks..

just a thought...

Muscle is denser than fat I think, which means the same volume will weigh more. So you will be smaller in size, but can be heavier (in very simple terms).

It's denser. So the same volume will weigh more.

Following on from your example, a tonne of feathers will weigh the same as a tonne of bricks but will be MUCH bigger as feather are far less dens than brick. Does that make it clearer?

Excuse bad typing....

ItsAllGoingToBeFine was right. It's fluid, not fat. Body-weight fluctuates by a few pounds up or down on a daily basis quite naturally due to retention of fluid. Salt, caffeine, alcohol and preservatives make fluid retention worse.... drinking more water and eating more natural/fresh foods makes it better. For that reason, don't weigh yourself every day because it's misleading. Judge your weight-loss progress on a week to week basis instead

What Cogito Said....

I weigh myself weekly on a Wednesday. If I fancy a blow-out (usually pizza - home-made but still calorific) I have it on a Friday night....by Wednesday I don't notice the difference, I've still lost weight usually,

I eat about 1200 calories a day but I can't exercise due to an injury. I neither gain nor lose at this intake so no way am I dropping any lower!!

Oh I don't really watch what I eat but I track It on my fitness pal

Your body. Stores glycogen in water, so if you eat high sugar food you will be temporarily a lot heavier.

thank-you for explaining that to me!!

Only 5lbs to go, lucky you! I'm trying to shift an excess 20lbs, have been sticking to a healthy diet and 3 x interval sessions at the gym, have lost zilch, but I do feel much better. I think it gets more difficult with age, plus the longer it's been on, the harder to get off. Good luck!

thanks - that has cleared it up a bit for me

axure thats so true about it being more difficult with age, when i was in my 20's i could shed pounds effortlessly (not that i really needed to as could eat anything and stay the same tbh) but now its really hard and i am only 33 ....god whats it gonna be like by the time i am in my 40's and beyond