It completely amazes me when my body fluctuates in weight as much as it has been lately. I know many women battle weight fluctuation, however it’s completely normal! There are so many factors that go into your daily weight, that’s why it’s not good to weigh yourself every day. Weighing yourself daily will cause serious mind games if you do. I do admit to being guilty of this. I weigh myself just about every day, but I understand that my weight will fluctuate a LOT!
Every Sunday, I have an off day of training and I have my cheat meal (or meals..oops don’t tell). I usually don’t keep up with my 6 meals a day on Sundays and rarely consume my gallon of water either. I’m pretty much a different species on Sunday..nothing like my Monday-Friday routine. Note to self…work on that!
On Monday morning, I usually weigh myself before work. I always find myself to be a bit of a cow on that Monday morning. When I get back to my normal clean eating, drinking at least a gallon of water a day and training, my weight will drop significantly within 24 hours! On Tuesday morning (always weigh yourself at the same time every day, preferrably as soon as you wake up), I weighed myself again for fun and found that I lost 5 lbs just from being back on my routine!
It probably doesn’t help that I’m PMSing which totally adds to the mixture of weirdness. Sorry, TMI.
Now that is NUTS. Seriously? I lost 5 lbs in 1 day? My hats off to you, clean eating, exercise and water!
How did this happen? It’s not like I cut out 17,500 (3500 calories in a pound x 5) calories from my diet on Monday!!! The fluctuation was caused by other factors.
I wanted to dig a little deeper to find out why our weight can fluctuate so much, especially during the time of my cycle.
Here are a couple reasons why my weight shifted so much in just 24 hours:
- Water retention – When you don’t drink a LOT of water, your body will hold onto it. I always try to drink at least a gallon a day so my body doesn’t preserve the water and make me bloated! Since I didn’t drink much water on Sunday, my body probably held onto the water that I did consume.
- Salt – Salt retains water in the body. When I had my cheat meal(s) on Sunday, my sodium count was through the roof. When I didn’t drink enough water on top of that, it made me bloat even more. Another tie back to good ol’ H20!
- Carbs – Eating high carb meals (hello cheat day!) will cause water retention. I’m seeing a trend here…DRINK A LOT OF WATER!
- Exercise – Exercise can immediately boost your metabolism and kick it into a high calorie burning machine. On Sunday, I was pretty dang sedentary! The TV was my buddy and the gym was non-existent. This was another factor into my weight fluctuation.
- Pre Menstural Cycle – The presence of hormones from PMS will cause bloat and water retention.
As you can see, the biggest thing to learn from this is to chug down that water!! It can help with almost all of the reasons above (besides God’s great gift to women..PMS..although it will help it!).
It completely makes sense as to why I lost 5 lbs in 1 day. I didn’t drink enough water, had a crap load of cheats on Sunday which were mostly high carb, didn’t exercise and was approaching my cycle.
Do you fluctuate a lot in weight every day? Have you ever taken the time to think about WHY you fluctuated so much?
If you can take one thing from this, I’d like you to not get down on yourself if you see a sudden weight gain on the scale. Instead, just fill your water bottle up and chug a lug! Drink more water folks!
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What an amazing post! I have been thinking about weight fluctuation often in the last couple of months. I find that when I work out the night before and eat a clean diet that day, than when I wake up the next morning, the scale is often 3-4 lbs lighter than when I do not work out the night before and especially if I have a cheat meal on the same day.
Also, at the end of the night on a non work-out day, I find that I’m also 4lbs heavier than when I wake up after a night of working out. I love your points about drinking water. Your visual is great, but seems so hard to imagine. We must drink MORE water so we don’t RETAIN water and bloat? Although that’s tough to wrap my head around, I know it is true.
Question: I eat a high fiber diet and many complex carbs/lean protein. Am I the only one who notices that clean foods take about a day to process before you see or feel the effects?
Thanks, you’re so sweet 🙂 I usually see the effects of clean eating the next day. You’re right, the whole drinking more water to lose more is hard to grasp but it’s totally true. Once I wrapped my head around it, I follow the gallon a day rule religiously (except for some reason I suck at doing it on the weekends!).
I’m going to try to drink a gallon a day as well. I usually drink about 8-9 cups now, but I’m excited about the effects!
Get it girl!
I fluctuate a few pounds on the regular. Most of it would probably be due to if it’s a routine day or a rest day. Along with salt. Salt does a number on me if I overconsume!
When I do weigh myself, I give myself a 3-4 lb zone. Just enough to check in on myself, but not enough to overly obsess…
My weight fluctuates all the time. It is insane. I have started not caring about the scale, because I get too obsessed with numbers when they don’t really have much merit. I go with how I feel and how my clothes fit 🙂
Perfect!