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Up Six Pounds, OVERNIGHT!

I started this whole Fitbit "Journey" on July 15th.

I have lost a total of 19 lbs exercising and eating very well. I burn 2500 on average, and eat about 1800 on average. I have days where I burn as much as 2800. I haven't had a day over 2200 calories since starting the plan.  

I have had some little ups and downs around the way, but suddenly, I'm up 6 lbs from my lowest weight, so I'm actually only down 13 lbs from where I started. It's very discouraging. It's not very incentivising. 

I might be retaining water, but it's not that TOM. I haven't changed my diet or eating habits.  I do measure everything and I have a scale in the kitchen that I count to the GRAM. Please don't conclude the obvious, I'm a pretty sharp cookie (which I have cut down on considerably.)

Maybe this is normal?  Is it normal? 

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8 REPLIES 8

6 lbs overnight is likely salt and water retention.  If you've done any heavy weight lifting it can also be water retained to repair micro muscle tears.  Changing from a high protein to high carb diet can do this as well.  Also, from previous posts I feel like I should ask the last time you had a bowel movement.  If you haven't gone back to semi-regular you should probably see someone about that.  I was travelling a couple of weeks ago and I was up more than 6 lbs when I got back.  Except for one night my eating was good, and my exercise was higher than normal that day.  It took more than half the week for it to come back to where it should have been.  I use trendweight to track my daily weighing.  If you look below that one high weight slid the trend up briefly, but then it started back on its downward trend.

 

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Anne | Rural Ontario, Canada

Ionic (gifted), Alta HR (gifted), Charge 2, Flex 2, Charge HR, One, Blaze (retired), Trendweight.com,

Down 150 pounds from my top weight (and still going), sharing my experiences here to try and help others.

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If you literally mean overnight then it's what you ate. It's not possible to gain 6 pounds of fat or muscle overnight. Check the amount of sodium you are eating in each item you eat/drink. Generally, 1500-2000 mg is the recomended daily intake for sodium. Drinking enough water will help flush it out, but will take a few days for the weight to go back down. If you can match the amount of sodium in miligrams with potassium that will help flush out the sodium in your system and prevent the water retention, but that doesn't mean you can binge of sodium filled foods and think potassium will fix it. Keep the sodium intake at a normal level. If you have to take potassium suppliments.

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One thing you should also consider (as a woman) is your cycle. My understanding is you should compare the same weeks of your cycle (like 2nd week of current cycle to 2nd week of previous cycle). You may want to consider using TrendWeight, which is where @A_Lurker got her graph from. It’s very handy if you happen to have a supported "smart" scale (Fitbit Aria or Withings), but it also works if you’re manually inputing your weigh-ins in your Fitbit account. The good thing about it is it takes the focus out of the daily fluctuations (which are normal) and let you see trends (which is what really matters).

Dominique | Finland

Ionic, Aria, Flyer, TrendWeight | Windows 7, OS X 10.13.5 | Motorola Moto G6 (Android 9), iPad Air (iOS 12.4.4)

Take a look at the Fitbit help site for further assistance and information.

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I eat way too much salt
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**ahem** it! I'm up 2 more pounds since last night!
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Depends on how active you were during the weekends and what foods are consumed. A lot of people take the 2 days off as no activity whatsoever. Then there's where you were during the weekends to consume more sodium than is allowed in a diet.

 

Such as out with your friends at Chipotle (2,360 MGs of sodium) or eating at a restaurant (2,000 to 4,000 MGs of sodium). And the normal diet calls for under 1,500 MGs of sodium.

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It is very normal for me to fluctuate weight over a few days by a rather large amount, the more extreme jumps for my size can be around 9-10lbs (food in stomach, extra salt and increased water retention from a hard workout all make the weight spike for 2-3 days while excess food passes through your system and your muscles are recovering) I believe my weight is open to public feel free to check out my trends as i have weighed in almost daily for the last few months to watch the trends, I woudn't worry about it too much unles it is still that way in a week or two,

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@galaga6846 wrote:
**ahem** it! I'm up 2 more pounds since last night!

Water; no other possible explanation.

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