trigger

So I lost 4.5 pounds in about 8 days, and have now (according to my scale) gained back two of those!

I've been keeping my caloric intake under 1300 per day, don't eat meat, don't eat processed foods much, don't eat junk food, gave up booze. I'm also cycling everyday for errands, and 20 miles every other day. What gives!!? This is kind of disheartening ... unless it's all muscle, ... it is all muscle, right?

But seriously, is this "normal"? I'd not be comfortable cutting too many more calories at this stage (not sure where I'd cut them from), and it'll be a little while before I can cycle 20 miles every day ...

Advice? Encouragement? Help.

WalterMitty

I'll swing that much weight in a day. If you want to track progress try to weigh the same time of day and in the same clothes (for me, it's morning in my shower clothes).

But I'll still see swings of that magnitude between a morning after a day off and the morning after a weekend charity ride. It's mostly water variables.

In my opinion, weighing every day is a waste of time. Just follow your diet as you have it posted and increase your mileage and/or speed as it becomes possible. How much you weigh on any given day isn't very important. Certainly, +/- 5 pounds could come from scale error alone.

If you're doing the right things, the right things will take care of themselves.

Caincando1

My weight can fluctuate 2 plus pounds daily. I alway weight myself in the morning before breakfast, on the same scale wearing close to the same clothes. I shoot for a weekly loss of about 2 lbs and don't worry so much about the daily weight. Weighing daily can drive you nuts, everytime you eat, drink of go potty your weight will change.

2manybikes

Exactly!

dannys1981

Advice- Yea your talking about 8 days man. You have to give it time. I would suggest weighing yourself say this coming monday, write it down in a journal, and then DO NOT step on the scale again for two weeks. Weighing yourself everyday has fluctuations. This way every two weeks you will know its not because of fluctuations (ie fluid loss, etc..) So give it time man. Continue to eat good and good things will happen.. BTW how much do you weigh? 1300 and cycling everyday seems way too low for a clyde and to be losing a healthy ONE pound a week.....

Nightcap

This, to me, is the problem with the assertion that you should "cut your intake by 500 calories a day and you'll lose a pound a week." It's true, but only in general. There's no way to accurately measure either your intake or your burn rate over the short term. Weight varies. Next week you may find you've lost four pounds.

Two weeks ago, I went confidently to my Weight Watchers meeting. My diet had been solid, and I'd doubled my Activity Points from the previous week, thanks to the addition of cycling. I hopped up on the scale, and found ... I'd lost two-tenths of a pound. Hardly seems worth it, doesn't it?

Here's the thing, though. I've been on diets before. I lost over 100 pounds just four years ago, steadily losing at the rate of two or three pounds a week. I lost so regularly, people thought I'd had a gastric bypass. But I found them all again, in what seems like no time. This time, there are two differences. First, my unindicted co-conspirator has joined me, and second, there is no diet. I'm not giving up carbs or meat or even ice cream. I'm just eating healthy foods and enjoying healthy activities, like I hope to be doing ten or twenty years from now.

Who knows - I may not make it to my goal weight. Inertia is a powerful force. This may be just another enthusiasm like Mr. Toad's infatuation with motorcars. $DEITY knows I've had enthusiams and infatuations before and will have them again. (Specialized Roubaix. Poop-poop!) I may chuck it all and spend my few remaining years in a reinforced La-Z-Boy watching America's Most Puerile Popstars and speed-dialing Domino's.

But not today.

trigger

Ok - some of this makes me feel better.

First off, for those of you who missed my first few posts, I am an "athena", not a "clyde", but that hardly matters for much of what is dicussed here.

I thought I was starting out at 6'0 and 198, but my fancy new scale tells me I started out at 212.5. Ouch! I'd made it down to 208, and today I'm back up to 210.

I will perhaps stop stepping on the scale everyday, and will try instead weighing just once a week.

The 1300 calorie limit is not much of a hardship. Before I started this "diet" or "lifestyle change" seriously, I kept a food log where I tried to keep track of what I ate (caloric content) on a regular basis. I didn't "diet", I just recorded to get a sense of my habits, and where the calories were coming from.

Staying below 1300 (and often I am below 1200), for me simply involves no booze on a regular basis (I did budget for a glass of wine two nights ago), no crappy snack food, and fewer carbs found in dumb places like hot dog buns. Being a vegetarian makes this a bit easier perhaps. I've been eating lots and lots of fresh fruit & salads, and have been keeping an eye on portion size.

I'm doing some physical activity every day ... 20 miles + on the bike every other day, and either a light ride or a 4 - 5 mile brisk walk on "off" days. In the winter I'm going to join the Y for spin classes, the treadmill and some upper body / core strengthening.

Logic tells me that if I keep this up, it'll all work out ... but I want the numbers to drop of the scale NOW!!

Thanks for your encouragement all.

arrasmithf

I only weigh in monthly to add to Tom's tracker. Other than that, My favorite recommended weight indicator is belt loops. If you have to tighten your belt more and more, then your waist is getter smaller. I believe thats way better than a scale number. I honestly wouldn't care if my weight was the same as it is now, as long as I looked like "AHNOLD".

guybierhaus

You may want to kick that 20+ miles every other day up to a minimum of 100+ miles per week. I didn't have much lost till I put about 5 weeks of 100 miles plus together. Dropped below that for July and August due to heat and humidity, and I've been stuck at 240 lbs.

BeckyW

Hey Trigger - from one Athena to another, the numbers on the scale can be a roller coaster! I only "officially" weigh weekly, and can still see a gain/loss of up to eight pounds in either direction. The pattern is something like +6, -8, +3, -5, +4, -3, -2... and so on. You should also go by how your clothes fit. I've weighed about the same for the past 6 weeks, but in that time I've thrown away a pair of old jeans that were falling off, and another pair seems to have gotten a bit too loose.

Don't worry about the short-term numbers, just watch the trend. My weight-loss buddy and I have a rule that "three points make a line" and if either of us gains (or doesn't lose) for 3 weeks in a row, that's a problem. I've also started tracking my moving average, to flatten out that line a little and make it easier to see if I'm doing well or not. (each week, average your weight from the past 3 weeks). If you need to weigh daily, you might keep a moving average of 7-10 days. As long as your next weigh-in is under the average, you're doing well.

FWIW, I was stuck on a plateau, and started eating more, and the pounds seem to have begun dropping again. It's blowing my mind that I can (need to?) eat this much and lose weight - I'm 5'11, 380... was eating 2500 calories, now 3000. A personal trainer has confirmed that these numbers are reasonable, and it seems to be working.. but.. .wow.

bautieri

Not to continually repeat what everyone else has been saying, but stop weighing in so often. I personally don't care how much I weigh, I judge my progress by the way my pants fit. Yes biking is bound to add muscle to your quads, one of your largest muscle groups so it may be hard to see the changes at first. Muscle outweighs fat 8 to 1 by volume I think, someone will probably set me straight on that, but the point is that when muscle mass is spread out over a large muscle group you may not notice the gain in muscle bulk but you certainly will notice at the scale.

When I wrestled in high school I would weigh myself every morning before my shower. Doing so eliminates the weight of your clothing since your undressed and ready to get in the shower anyways. A tile floor also makes a great surface for a scale, carpet can throw your scale off due to uneven distribution.

Keep them cranks a spinning

joelpalmer

+1 to the bold (my bolding of WalterMitty). I always get a little concerned about daily weigh-ins. Your body is going to fluctuate a little up and down for reasons other people have mentioned (water in, water out, other things not out...) so I do a weekly weigh. As was stated earlier, same time of day, same outfit, and for me same day of the week (Sun morning). Track the general trend, up = bad, down = good, flat = bike more.

Tom Stormcrowe

I also agree on avoid daily weigh ins. If you weigh too often,you see little bobbles in weight that are based off of fluid volume for the day, etc and can see discouraging results. With women in particular that can be an issue because of a particular 28 day cycle as well. Try to weigh in once a month on the same day/time and watch the trends rather than the daily stuff.

trigger

Thanks for the ideas and support .... off to ride now.

Terrierman

8 days is nothing. Give the same program 8 weeks and then 8 months and see where you stand. Sounds like you are on the right track to me.

rickyaustin

Remember - losing weight isn't as important as losing fat. You may have only lost water... or you may have put on muscle. You need a longer term time period to tell. ONly weigh yourself everyday if you can accept that each day wavers.

smyth

if you go to igoogle.com and search for "google 15" a weight tracking device comes up that you can add to your google homepage(you have to have a google account for it to stay on there though i think atleast i know it will go away if you clear your browser history/cookies if you don't have a sign in. if you need one let me know i'll send you a gmail invite to your email.) it encourages you to weigh yourself everyday(like others stated try to do it at the same time of day, same clothes, same scale, etc) but not to worry about the daily results of the scale too much, the program averages it out to smooth the graph so you see what you really lost not just the difference of adding a 1/4 lb of cereal or loosing 5 lbs on the john. You can also put your goal in there so you can see how your progressing compared to your expectation(there is no time limit to reach that goal or anything like that). Its kind of cool because it isn't a training thing, it's just a data logging gadget to make your life a bit easier. I also like it because you can plug information into it from any computer, in case you forget the journal or if you created an excel sheet to do the same thing.

heres a link to the "about" page, scroll down a bit and there is a link to add it to your igoogle, be sure to log in before adding it though, otherwise you'll just have to do it again anyway.
https://www.red-bean.com/fitz/ig/google15/faq.html

Dr_Robert

My weight fluctuates 2-3 pounds over the course of a day, easy. I just watch for a trend - as long as I'm generally getting lighter, I don't pay much attention to the numbers.

I weigh myself pretty much every day, but the only weigh-in that "counts" is Saturday morning: as soon as I wake up, after I've used the restroom, but before I get dressed or eat breakfast. The key to accurately tracking your weight is consistancy.

-DR

Stujoe

That is the exact same thing I do. I call it my naked, morning, dehydrated weight. I also measure my stomach for an inch measurement too. That one is really more important to me personally than weight because I know I am putting on some muscle. I like to see the pounds go down too though. lol

1300 calories sounds low to me as a couple of others have said but I didn't check sex, age, weight etc for the OP. Every nutrition thing I have ever been to said to be careful of going to low on calories because your metabolism can nosedive. I am no expert though.

Air

Careful of this - I just started a thread about that. Gained a pound a day without changing anything else - sometimes I think some of this stuff is our minds screwing with us.

Air

But yeah - once a week is good. And I think that your body is actually entering starvation mode, even if the weight starts coming off in droves I wouldn't be surprised to see it jump back up if you ever take in more than 1300 - even for an Athena. I would check in with a nutritionist ESPECIALLY since you are a vegetarian and may not be getting all the nutrients you think you should be.

Rollfast

YO-YOING is not 2 pounds. It's swinging at least 5-10 lbs +/- without a stable weight floor as far as I know and if it goes to extremes it can be stressful to the heart in the worst case. Given that, it is not realistic to dump a ton quickly, that too can hurt.

If you are on some medicines your weight can be affected, check with your doctor or pharmacist and read the monographs the pharmacy gives you. As far as questions, ask every one. Some inhibit fluid loss, others are flushed by diuretics and other medications, simply sounding herbals CAN cause problems.

Over time deeply serious heart disease crises such as congestive heart failure and numerous pains could develop, kidney function is very critical when diabetes and blood pressure are involved.

Rollfast

Hoo-boy, my luck! I can skip the weigh-in for a long time and be down 20 pounds, and grab it all back without changing anything I can fathom and without looking much again...

YEP> Psychosomatic, all psychosomatic...

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