Weight Fluxuation and Diet

Blazing Trail Through Brambles

If I had maintained a modicum of self control over the weekend, I might have reached my goal of 180 lbs this coming weekend. However, three days averaging over 2500 calories resulted in a four pound bounce up this week. It peaked at 185.5 lbs yesterday and today subsided a pound.

Mathematically, an excess or deficit of 3,500 calories should result in a pound of gain or loss. However, as someone who has weighed myself daily for years, the math doesn't consistently add up in short term observations. Take this weekend for example. I consumed, for three days, around 2100 calories above my 1800-per-day goal. Yet I gained 4 lbs over those three days. What's up with that?!?

There are two things I've found  in my many years of weight watching that almost always results in a spurious weight gain. The first case occurs if I perform some work or exercise so strenuously that I have very sore muscles on the following day. Every time I've come away from physical exertion to the point of being sore, I see a two to three pound gain that lasts two to three days. I've done some research on this but found nothing conclusive that describes a mechanism whereby sore muscles creates weight gain.

The second observed way I gain more than expected from caloric intake is when I eat or drink something with a lot of sugar. During the weekend my brother offered, and I accepted, a bottle of Gatoraid to quench my thirst. I drank two of such, each of which contained 200 calories, and each of which contained 21 grams of sugar. Also, I drank six beers over the three days and each beer contains 13 grams of carbohydrates, which get processed to sugars by the body. Therefore, I consumed what I call, "a sugar bomb", over the weekend and as I have always observed, my weight jumped far out of proportion to the actual calories I consumed.

I have observed this effect when eating ice cream, cakes, chocolates, you name it! I haven't done more than a cursory search on this effect, but from a sample of one who tracks weight daily, there is no doubt in my personal experience that sugar bombs increase my weight far beyond strictly counting the calories consumed.

The Hacker's Diet explains the fluctuation as water gain or loss, which certainly has an impact. But the sugar and sore muscle fluxuation observations always occurs in my data.