Weight Fluctuations? Why you're gaining weight when trying to lose weight.

In this article, I’m going to address a question about weight fluctuations: why do you gain weight when you’re actually trying to lose weight?

Why am I covering this?

Because I’ve gotten this question many times.

Clients want to know how NOT to be disappointed and why they shouldn’t just throw in the towel when they see their weight spike up when their expectation is that their weight is supposed to go down.

I know. I get it.

It can be frustrating.

It certainly was for me, until I learned what to expect.

So it is my hope that after this video you’ll be able to keep a level head as well.

But first, I’m Coach Rome, and I have one mission.

To teach you that building muscle and getting lean is easy, and that there’s only two steps to get there.

Step 1, put your body in a calorie deficit, and keep it there.

And Step 2, prioritize the 2 P’s, protein and progressive overload.

And that’s it.

But videos like these and my body transformation course, are meant to educate you on the finer details of these 2 steps.

So, let’s get to it.

Before we get into why your weight fluctuates, it’s important to realize the most important thing of all.

If you’re trying to lose weight, you must be certain that your body is in a calorie deficit.

You can’t know if your body is in a calorie deficit unless you have a good estimate of your maintenance calories and are diligent at tracking all the food you eat to ensure you are eating fewer calories than your maintenance calories.

If what I just said confused you, be sure to check out my video titled, “How to Get Rid of Belly Fat (The Truth).”

If you don’t have at least 2 weeks of good data to be certain you’re in a calorie deficit, that’s the first place you should start.

You won’t lose weight if you’re not in a calorie deficit.

The second important concept to realize is important is there’s a huge difference between gaining weight and gaining fat.

Fat is literal tissue.

Meaning, a physical manifestation of stuff in your body.

If you cut yourself open, you can touch fat.

If you’re confident that you’re in a calorie deficit you can be 100% confident that when your scale goes up, when you know it should be going down, you did not GAIN a pound or more of fat overnight.

1 pound of fat is mathematically about 454 grams.

It’s the amount of fat in about 4 sticks of cooking butter or the amount of liquid fat you’d need to fill up a 16 oz can of soda.

You’d have to eat 41 Krispy Kreme donuts to get that amount of fat in you in one day.

Even if you’re not in a calorie deficit, I’d argue that it’s hard to gain 1 pound of fat in a day. Fat is accumulated over a period of days because the dietary fat you eat must go through a few metabolic processes before eventually ending up in your fat cells.

So, you can rest assured knowing that you can ignore any idea that when your scale fluctuates overnight, it’s not the weight of added fat.

It’s your total body weight, which is just your total body’s mass multiplied by gravity.

You got it?

Great.

No more freaking out thinking you’ve gained 2 to 3 pounds of fat overnight. It’s not going to happen.

You’ll probably get sick in an attempt to eat 454 grams of fat, way before you can put that much in your body in one day.

454 grams of carbs? Now that’s easy. But fat, not so much.

But now that we’ve covered those two prerequisite concepts, that you must know you’re in a calorie deficit and therefore is unlikely to be gaining fat when your scale goes up, let’s cover why your weight fluctuates up even when you’re confident you’re in a calorie deficit.

There are three huge contributing factors why your weight fluctuates.

One of them should be a sort of a non-brainer, and the other two not so much.

What’s the no-brainer?

Food

Food has mass.

Any food that you add inside your body is going to add mass to your body.

And if the food that you add into your body weighs more than the amount of fat tissue that is lost on a daily basis, your weight is going to increase.

This is especially true if you don’t take a poo for a few days.

All your food will be sitting in your GI tract until your body processes what it needs before it eventually excretes the rest as waste.

So, the amount of food you consume is a huge culprit for weight gain.

Until your body gets rid of it, you’re going to have added mass.

And unless you eat the same literal mass of food every day, you’re always going to have some sort of weight fluctuation.

I hope this makes sense.

If you’re in a calorie deficit, just trust this process. It’s not added fat.

Eventually you’ll lose enough fat mass that will compensate for the food you eat, and it will reflect on the scale. Just not overnight.

Sweat

Another contributing factor to weight fluctuations is the amount of fluid you lose when you sweat or perspire. Sweat is made almost completely of water and your body begins to sweat as a response to it heating up.

Your body wants to maintain your body temperature around 98.6 degrees or 37 degrees Celsius. But when it gets hot your sweat glands produce sweat in an attempt to cool your body down.

The more you exercise, or the hotter a given day, the more you will sweat.

Some people sweat more than others, which means some people’s weight will fluctuate more than others.

It’s the reason why those stupid “sweat bags” or stupid sauna suits can claim they help you lose weight. They’re a giant scam and waste of money and can actually do more harm than good. They heat up your body and make you sweat more, and as a result will make you lose water, which brings down your weight. It’s not fat.

If you lose too much water, you can risk dehydration.

So why force your body to lose more of its cooling protection than necessary. Anyway, the sauna suit is a story for another video.

The bottom line with sweat is, if you don’t replenish fluids you lose after sweating, you’ll see a fluctuation in your weight on the scale.

Water Retention

Now, the next huge contribution to weight fluctuations, and by far the biggest contributor of fluctuations is “retained water.”

What do I mean?

When your body “retains water” it means your body is holding extra water and the extra water is hanging around in your tissue cells.

And when I say water, I literally mean the water that comes from the liquids you drink and the water that is extracted from the different foods you eat.

All foods have varying amounts of water.

And what does water have?

Yep, water has mass, which is reflected on your scale as added weight.

But wait?

What are the reasons your body would want to hold on to or release varying amounts of water, thereby causing your weight to fluctuate?

Here’s a few causes of water retention:

Carbohydrates

Generally, the more carbs you eat, the more water your body will retain. A spike in weight isn’t a huge issue for someone who eats about the same relative amount of carbohydrates daily, but a spike will be significant if you go from eating a day of low carbs and follow it by a day of high carbs.

This is what I mean.

Every 1 gram of carb you eat requires about up to about 4 grams of water to process and store it.

Let’s say you eat a potato that contains 40 grams of carbs.

That’s 160 grams of water that can be potentially stored and retained by your body.

160 grams of water is about 5.5 ounces, or just under a half of a pound.

Now imagine going from one day of low carb to the next day of high carb, because of a birthday party or just a diet break.

If you consume 200 grams of additional carbohydrates from what you normally eat, that can make your body retain about 800 grams of water, which is 21 to 28 ounces of water, or almost 1.5 pounds.

And, yep, that’ll be reflected on the scale.

Salt

Water retention from salt depends on how much salt you normally consume.

If you normally eat home-cooked meals with very minimum salt added but follow one of these days with a day of take-out or microwave-ready meals, you’ll add a significant amount of salt from one day to another.

And studies have shown variations in salt meals from low to high can add up to 2 pounds of retained water.

If you add the mass of the water retained by salt and a high carb day, with the added amount of mass from food, you could easily gain 5 pounds from day to day.

But it’s important to keep in mind that it won’t be fat.

It’ll subside over time.

If you’re in a calorie deficit, just trust the process is working.

Sex Hormones

The next cause of water retention, comes from variations in sex hormones.

This is especially true for women.

Studies have shown that 92% of women experience water retention the week before their period starts.

And although the amount varies, this water retention can add about 5 – 10 pounds of retained water, which doesn’t begin to go away until menstrual bleeding begins.

Pregnancy and hormonal birth control can also affect water retention in women.

Cortisol

Last is cortisol, which is a hormone that mainly helps your body regulate its response to stress. All sorts of things can cause cortisol levels to rise and fall throughout the day, but chronically elevated cortisol may also lead to an increase in water retention.

Cortisol levels can rise and be chronically elevated because of sleep deprivation, psychological stress, restricting calories or even strenuous exercise.

It’s not exactly known how much water will be retained, but it happens.

If you’re trying to lose weight, you need to be in a calorie deficit so it’s not like you can stop restricting calories or exercising, so the only thing you can attempt is to get better rest and minimize the stress in your life.

Other causes of weight fluctuations:

There are other temporary events that may cause your body to retain water, too, such flying in airplanes, standing or sitting too long, or even certain medications like OTC pain relievers or blood pressure medications.

The point is, you can easily gain 5 – 10 pounds in weight fluctuations from one day to another, especially if you’re a woman.

Anytime I have a fried catfish, hush puppies, and French fries’ as a meal from the local Kajun restaurant, I just come to expect a jump in weight the next day.

Here’s a great example:

So, how do you deal with these weight fluctuations?

Well, if you’re confident you’re in a calorie deficit, just know that weight fluctuations are part of the game.

Make peace with the fact that it’s not “fat” you’re gaining.

What you see on the scale is the added mass from your daily variations in the different masses of food you’re consuming, the sweat you’ve lost, or the amount of water you’re retaining.

All of these factors can make your weight go up, and after subsiding, will make your weight go down again.

So, just stick with what you can control.

Do everything you can to ensure you’re in a calorie deficit so you can lose the fat you want to lose.

This means consistently weighing your foods and burning around the same number of calories each day.

And if you are so inclined you can also try to keep the number of carbs that you eat each day fixed.

But these are really the only things you can do.

If you’re in a calorie deficit, again, just trust your weight loss process.

Hopefully you can now be at peace knowing that weight is just going to do its thing. It’s not fat. So don’t go off the deep end and ruin your diet because of some stupid number.

Food

Sweat