For a bit of background on myself, I spent about a year dropping weight, going from 250 down to 185. I’m about 6’2", so when I hit 185 I started “maintaining”, which basically meant “slowly gaining a lot back”. At 215, I decided to restart dieting.
This coincided perfectly with a company sponsored weight loss competition at work. As such, I’m using the scale a little more seriously than I did before. When I lost weight at first, I weighed myself rarely but mostly relied on how my clothes fit to dictate how well I was doing.
Anyway, so it’s been about 3 weeks of steady decline of about 3-4 pounds a week. This weekend I worked out more than usual, taking longer runs/walks than usual. On Sunday it was so beautiful I threw a small barbeque where I drank about 10 beers, ate 3 or 4 brats, and a couple slices of pizza. All told, I’m guessing that’s in the 6000 calorie range. A lot for 1 meal, but I was shocked when I got on the scale today to see I had gained 4 pounds over the weekend!
What happened here? That was the only meal this week that I pigged out on.
And more importantly, how do I drop these 4 pounds quickly before my next weigh in? Myself and my team mates in this competition eagerly await your “lost 5 pounds quick” ideas.
You didn’t gain 4 pounds over a weekend, no matter how much you ate. Pizza and brats? Sounds like a lot of salt to me. You’re probably retaining water. Not much you can do other than wait for it to go away.
What Athena said. Your body carries from 0-9 pounds of excess water over the course of a typical day; if you’re retaining water – or just drinking more than usual – a “big” weight gain is not unusual.
I don’t take seriously any weight gain or loss under 10lbs. This may be a little outside the margin of error but I say 10lbs just to stay on the safe side.
Factors that could shift you a few pounds:
-Clothes: Especially if you’re big. Watching Celebrity Fit Club with my girlfriend I was thinking “Ralphie May’s suit alone has got to weigh at least 10lbs.” A shoe could also potentially weigh a pound and a half, resulting in a 3lb gain or loss depending on if you wear them.
-Urine: Remember, 16 ounces is a pound. It’s not hard to pee 16 ounces, and some people may even pee upwards of 32oz, resulting in a 2lb loss (or gain if you’re holding it, depending on how you look at it.)
-Feces: Never weighed the stuff but I could see a, ummm, “healthy” one weighing considerably more than a pound.
-The scale. If it’s 1% out of calibration that’s going to be 1lb for every 100lbs you weigh, and scales are not pinnacles of acuracy. Don’t be surprised to stand on two different scales and see two different weights.
I’ve been fluctuating between 155-170 for about 6 years now and I’ve never really looked or felt different. I think these factors have a lot more to do with it than my diet and excersize.
A 4lb gain or loss wouldn’t even cross my mind as being meaningful at all.
I can regularly drop a couple of pounds a day. There is no magic to it. Calories in minus calories out.
If you belong to a gym, with a pool: Swim 30min, bike 1hr, run 30 min. No pool? Run longer or row.
Repeat above every day.
Skip breakfast and lunch. Eat ONE powerbar to replace each meal. Drink 2-4 coffee’s to get metabolic boost from caffein.
Drink water to satisfy thirst/avoid dehydration but don’t drink to sink.
Every night, drink a cup of prune juice. You know why.
You will not starve, die or suffer any health damage unless you already have some health issues that are affected by sudden changes in diet. Given the beer and bratworst binge… I highly doubt it’s an issue for you.
IANANutritionist, but it seems counterintuitive to me to drink water to shed water. Sweat and urin are the best ways to shed water, in my experience. Plus too much water in your gut will give you bad cramps when running and biking. But then again, I never bought into that 8 bottles of water per day thing either. Drink when you’re thirsty is my phylosophy.
I hate artificial sweeteners. But I like sweet coffee (and hot tea) so my reward for skipping all my daily meals is a nice sweet coffee with cream. NOT a zillion calorie giant Starbucks mocha choca carmel latte with whipcream mind you - just a regular coffee with sugar and cream.
Why would you starve yourself? I thought abstaining from food just forces your metabolism to slow down, and was self-defeating in the end. (Always been a grazer myself, but admittedly have a naturally overactive metabolism)
Doesn’t it just make your body want to produce more fat because it thinks there’s a shortage of food?
From everything I’ve ever heard, skipping meals is awful diet advice, but I’m certainly no nutrtionist or expert on the subject. shrug
I’m not suggesting he skip eating altogether, just replace meals with lighter, more energy packed meals with relatively low fat/carb content. Also, working out more/harder will increase your metabolism, as will a little more caffein.
The body does tend to conserve fat when less food is available but it doesn’t adjust over night. It takes a while to boot it into high conservation mode. Plus, he did ask how to loose a relatively large amount of weight pretty quickly.
I’m with Cisco - I would definitely not count it as real weight. I myself am coming off of a weekend of excess - and if you took the scales number as real, I would have gained 3+ pounds in 2 days. Those pounds won’t stick - basically, if I go to excess one day, I just go back to my regular eating patterns the next day, and by the end of the week most (if not all) of the “gain” will be gone.
Well, yesterday I had a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, a bowl of soup for lunch, and a Lean Cuisine dinner. I ran 2 miles and rode my recumbant bike 10. This morning I had lost all 4 pounds of gain plus another half pound.
I guess I should pay attention to the scale a little less, but its really difficult when the competition (and a cash prize) revolves around that silly, and highly variable, number.
If you overeat salt, you might retain water. The trick to getting rid of that retained water is… drink water. What you want to do is to dilute the salt in your system so that your kidneys (I think it’s kidneys) stop freaking out that you might not have enough of a water supply. Drink lots of water and your kidneys say, “Hey! The water situation is good!” and then they dump the excess water to make sure the salt doesn’t get too dilute. Your body doesn’t want the salt levels too high or too low. Lots of water intake lets your kidneys decide.
Which just shows that the other scales you were using were off and, sadly, this one likely will be too in a few months/years/however long.
My brother worked in calibration for 7 years (5 years USMC, 2 years as a civillian) and you would be absolutely shocked at how inaccurate a $3,000,000 (or $30, for that matter) piece of equipment is if it’s not calibrated every so often.
If I was going to trust a scale it would probably be on of those metric balance-style ones that they use in doctor’s offices, but I wouldn’t even expect those to be perfect.
QuickSilver I certainly hope you are not a nutritionist because your “medical advice” is dangerous and unbalanced. Advocating replacing all meals with energy bars and limiting your water intake to only when you’re thirsty is definitely not healthy. Allowing one small dry salad a day and suggesting you reward yourself for forced starvation with one cup of coffee is simply foolish.
You would do better eating a bit less and increasing your water intake and calorie expenditure.
A weight gain of more than a couple of pounds in as many days is almost aways fluid retention. High sodium foods can cause that.
jsgoddess dead on with her advice. It is seems counterintuitive that more water will get rid of retained fluid but that is exactly how body chemistry works. Inversely when someone has a low sodium count the treatment is to restrict water intake.
I did not provide even an iota of “medical advice”. Never claimed anything remotely like it.
Nothing wrong with limiting your nutritional intake to quality energy bars for a short period of time. Trust me, almost nobody who is relatively healthy to start would starve under these conditions over a few brief days. Hungry, yes. Starve, no.
I didn’t say dry salad. I said don’t drown it in creamy dressing. There are alternatives you know… oil/vinegar/lemon juice. Though a dry salad won’t kill you either.
I said 2-4 cups of coffee. Sweet with a bit of cream if you like it that way.
You must have missed the part where I mentioned, Swim-30min, Cycle/Spin-1 hour, Run-30min. And this is not a pick one scenario. I mean, do all three, back to back. I burn about 2000 calories doing this kind of routine. Is that enough of an increase in calorie expenditure?
Drinking too much while exercising, I don’t mean a casual stroll around the block, will give you cramps and shorten your workout.
Replace lost water by drinking. You don’t have to replace the entire volume lost during exercise in one damn gulp. Drink through the day as your body demands. Thirst is a pretty good guide unless you are in extreme conditions and are suffering dramatic dehydration due to exposure.
BTW, coffee is liquid and counts. With 2-4 cups a day, you are also contributing to hydration.
It wasn’t how much you ate, it’s the salt. We are having a similiar contest at my office but it’s for cash. IANAD and IANAWeight Loss Specialist but you can just do what we did during wrestling season when we had to make weight and we were a couple of pounds over. Don’t eat during the 12-18 hours before weigh-in and take Exlax the evening before to empty the bowels. OR dehydrate yourself by working out in 3-4 layers of clothes (for a couple of hours) without drinking extra water. OR grab a big pack of gum and a cup. Chew the gum and spit out all the saliva that your mouth makes. I’ve had teammates lose a couple pounds in an afternoon using the above methods. Please don’t try all of these, just pick one. BTW if you decide to do anything I have told you, please make sure you are in decent shape to begin with, and that you rehydrate yourself IMMEDIATELY after weigh-in. What you are doing is denying your body of one or more of the things that it needs to function. Don’t do any of these things regularly, these are not meant to be done repeatedly. If you start not feeling well after starting any of these STOP immediately.
I, also, thought QS’s response was crazy, but s/he was responding to the question “how do I lose the weight FAST?” so I didn’t say anything.
QS might have prefaced his response with, “this isn’t necessarily good advice for long term health and weight loss, but . . .”
At least, I HOPE that’s what QS was getting at.
Certainly, the easiest way to lose considerable weight before this weigh in is massive dehydration. Shoot, boxers will dehydrate 15 pounds off a 150 pound IN SHAPE body sometimes. The amount that wasson could dehydrate would DWARF any real calories he’d burn by exercising 2 hours every day.
And, if he was going to do that much exercise, i’d recommend staying out of the pool. Put that 30 minutes into more time on the bike.
Of course if the next weigh-in for wasson is how much weight he lost from THIS weigh-in, then the dehydration is going to come back to get him unless he want’s to do it all over again, which would probably start being unhealthy.
and QS, at least IMO, nutritional and exercise advice IS medical advice.