How can I possibly weigh 2 lbs. heavier overnight???

jim bob murphy wrote:

A. Hipster wrote:

There's no real point in the multiple weighings though. Just weight yourself at the same time every day (probably right before you go to bed or right after you wake up) and watch the trend. There's no real reason not to weight yourself 3 times per day, except that it is slightly obsessive, but there really is no benefit to doing so.

Yes, totally agree (and I'm the one that does it). I admit it is a bit obsessive and has no benefit, but it demonstrates the variability.

Yes, but it only demonstrates the variability of your obsessive weight measurements. Just like if you were to weigh yourself every week, your weight might be 155+/-8 lbs, whereas if you did it once a day it would be 155+/-2 lbs. Are you really gaining any further accuracy in your variability by weighing yourself 3 times per day? Probably not, and in fact, you could argue that by doing it immediately after a run and dinner, your variability will actually increase because of all the factors which could influence your weight loss during a run or after dinner (heat, humidity, length and intensity of the run, dehydrated, what you ate for dinner, how much, etc, etc).

By weighing yourself once in the morning upon rising, on the same scale, you eliminate a lot of confounding factors. As mentioned already, in the AM, your largest confounding factors are dehydration and bowel movement, so your variability in weight should be a lot less than if you weighed yourself 10 times per day with many confounding factors playing a role.

I was discussing with a friend a couple of days ago about in high school (a long long time ago) when I weighed the most I'd weighed at that time, 150 lbs in 11th grade, so that summer I was determined to lose weight.

My idea that time was to eat only (or primarily) when my body needed the fuel, and then to overcompensate, so I would finish with plenty of fuel in my system, and not be in need for the rest of the day. This worked astoundingly well. I lost weight very quickly and got down to 130 lbs. At this time I was taking the scale to the porch, running hard around the block a few times, coming back weighing myself, perspiring profusely, and drinking milk (yuck) to replenish. I hated milk but had been to a school the previous year where it was the primary food that they gave us to eat. But that didn't matter, it just happened to be what I used. Then I would run more and keep repeating this, running hard, though people didn't run as far in those days.

So from doing this, weighing before, during, after each run, and especially drinking and eating right then at the same time, I kept losing and got to 122 pounds, which is the lowest I've ever been at this height 5'9". Then I had some traumatic accident which too me a couple months to recover from physically, not due to the diet, but changed my plan to be stronger and help to protect myself. I went to around 140 lbs and stayed there from then.

Now I just weigh the first thing every morning when on a diet, sometimes keeping track of the 5 day average and calories, but the foods are the same so the calories are the same, and drink plenty of water, 1 gallon a day at the minimum.

Hey man, thanks a lot for that reply! Lots of food for thought in there.

Just to answer the first part of your post: usually the same foods. Breakfast is usually 2 cups of GoLean cereal with almond milk and bluberries, with a banana and almond butter. Lunch is usually a smoothie with protein. And supper is usually a few piece of lean meat with sweet potato, broccoli, spinach, green peas, corn, etc.

I THINK what might have caused the spike was the BBQ sauce I had on the chicken I ate. My father prepared the meal last night, and quite often he bloody smothers the food in sauce, so that could very well be the sodium culprit.

2nd. And oh yes, I drink about 4 litres of water, BUT mostly later in the day. So I'll definitely take your advice on that one.

'Sounds like water retention'

More like cake retention

DocLove wrote:

'Sounds like water retention'

More like cake retention

more like SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

afsfasfasfasf wrote:

Hey man, thanks a lot for that reply! Lots of food for thought in there.

A couple more thoughts. The almond milk, almond butter, and maybe the bbq sauce are high in fat and harder to digest. Personally, anything like that would mess up my digestion and take at least a few days to neutralize. The bbq sauce might contain transfat, which is difficult to break down in the body. So, besides the calories, those foods would be hard to digest. Otherwise, the diet looks good to me.

guarantee is simply random variation of your scale.

get a better scale.

The first thing I thought was water retention. I fasted for two whole days once to drop 4 pounds and was shocked after an agonizing sleepless night to see I GAINED 2 pounds. Talk about crazy frustration.

Somebody pointed out the scale issue though too. Whenever I weighed myself on a generic bathroom electric scale I was always lighter then on a medical scale like you have at your doctor's or typical gym.