weight loss day after binge - gain after perfect day? WTF?

[Jammylodger]

Can anyone explain this as it is doing my little head in

I am doing 1250 calories a day and have been losing steadily - not amazing but I am happy with progress. Friday I went out for dinner and went over calories by I estimate 700 or so - hard to be exact when eating out.. next day I weighed self and had lost usual daily 100g .. felt surprised but pleased..

Saturday was back on plan and ate usual 1250 calories with same macros - weighed on Sunday and had gained 1.5kg?!! Another good day yesterday and I am still 0.7kg up on Sunday?

Just do not understand how that happens? I would understand this sort of gain had I eaten 3500 calories and gained it in fat but definitely did not eat anything like that

I did not think my food even weighed 1.5kg so how can I gain so much eating so relatively little?

Bowel movements? Losing 100g… a big bowel movement

Gaining…. No bowel movement

I always find this OP - in the very short term, there is no clear link between calories and weight loss. But in the medium to long term there is. This is why some people advise against weighing daily.

The body naturally absorbs and excretes through urine , faeces, sweat so I think it's to be expected that exact measurements can be misleading

More accurate to weigh weekly or rely on a tape measure to assess progress ?

Fat cells hold a lot of water. The first thing to go when you start restricting is the water from those cells. When losing weight you never actually get rid of fat cells, you just empty them so when you eat more for a short time the fat cells fill back up with water in preparation for being used again.

It's water weight. It'll come off again as you get back into the swing of things.

thanks for your kind replies! I think some good points here - calorie counting is not a short term way to lose weight but is when you take long term view - guess I am very focused on the daily number and need to look more at trends .. just very frustrating when it takes a couple of weeks to lose a kilo and then (what feels like) a couple of cocktails and piece of mackerel to gain it all back!

Had not know that about fat cells and water .. could explain a lot of gain being water as I drank pints of it on Saturday as felt a little "fragile" after first drinks in a long time!

and who knew bowel movements weighed so littel! I always feel about a stone lighter !!

Honestly I try to weigh myself regularly rather than weekly and use an app that plots progress on a graph. It helps even out some of these frustrations for me.
I find that there's 101 things that impact my weight on a given day so seeing the general curve helps me not get frustrated when I see ive put on a pound in a day (and rationalise that I probably haven't!)