I was 211 2 days ago. 213 yesterday. 216 today!!!!!!!!!!!!! How is this possible my diet has not changed in 2 months. I was 246 march 22nd lost 35 pounds in 2 months now i gain 5 pounds out of no where?? please someone help me rationalize this, i have changed nothing this can't happen.

A gallon of water is eight pounds. Water balance alone can explain it.

I hope so ugh, i had this happen when i cheated before but not when i've stuck strictly to induction.

Sounds like water weight to me, too.

Don’t Trust the Bathroom Scale With Your Mental Health

We humans are about 2/3 water. Each of us contains about 40 liters (or quarts) of the stuff, and each liter weighs a bit over 2 pounds. Our bodies effectively regulate fluid balance by adjusting urine output and sense of thirst, but this is done within a 2-liter range. Within this range, your body doesn’t really care if it is up to a liter above or below its ideal fluid level.

What this means is that we all live inside a 4-pound-wide grey zone, so that from day to day we fluctuate up or down (i.e., plus or minus) 2 pounds. This happens more or less at random, so with any one weight reading you don’t know where your body is within that fluid range. Your weight can be the same for 3 days in a row, and the next morning you wake up and the scale says you’ve ‘gained’ 3 pounds for no apparent reason.

For people who weigh themselves frequently, this can be maddening. There are two solutions to this problem. One, just don’t weigh yourself. Or two, defeat this variability by calculating average weights. You can weigh yourself every day, and then on one day per week, calculate your average for that week (i.e., the average or mean of 7 values). If you are really into math, you can weigh yourself every day and then each day calculate a new mean over the last 7 days. Each day you do this, you drop the oldest value and add the newest one to the calculation.

And of course, for [free] there’s an iPhone ‘App’ that will do this for you

Phinney, Stephen; Volek, Jeff (2011-07-08). The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living: An Expert Guide to Making the Life-Saving Benefits of Carbohydrate Restriction Sustainable and Enjoyable (pp. 241-242). Beyond Obesity LLC. Kindle Edition.

Coming here for a similar complaint. 293.4 for the last few days - and decided to restrict calories quite a bit for a couple days to break through that (which usually works)- and sure enough, after all that I step on and I'm 295.6. It's frustrating, but when you think about it, 3 pounds is such a tiny percentage of my total weight that it is virtually meaningless.

I have had days of staying the same or up after a
fasting day, but then going down in weight after an eating day. Really, what's up with that? It may be more salty broth on a fasting day, but whatever, it makes no sense. Best to ignore it. Long term it works great.

Ya know what's funny? That is OFTEN what happens with me - I had those two semi-fasting days with no apparent success, but then I ate pretty normally yesterday (well, low-carb normal) and I'm down to 292.3 today. I have a very un-scientific theory that my body holds on while I'm still fasting, but then lets it go once it realizes there IS food, LOL

This is my problem. I am 50 year old woman. Been on atkins since May 4 of this year, lost 11 pounds so far and then it stopped. I know that i weight every day, which is bad, but i also don't go crazy if it goes up 1 or 2 pounds knowing it is probably water weight or constipation.

but for 3 weeks now i have steadily been at 242's, today i was 245, trying to get out of this i have quit aspertam drinks, watching my calories which stay around 1000 to 1300. I stay withing 23 carbs a day, lately been more like 18 to 20.

i just don't know where to go from here to break this plateau. I am trying very hard not to get frustrated and get off, start eating my potatoes and bread, but so far have resisted that temptation. Well except last weekend i had one half of a hamburger bun and the real reason i did that as i read if you ate some bread you might break the plateau....guess what it didn't do anything.

Maybe i should go below 1000 calories to maybe 800 to 900. i am a sedentary person, trying to get my exercise in, but i'm not sure that would really help. Any ideas?

In addition to my post on your other thread, here's a thought.

STOP counting calories. This is a holdover from old thinking about weight management. And how many of us have been there, done that over and over and over?

Make sure you are following the Atkins plan--including lots of leafy vegetables, healthy fats like olive oil and butter, a reasonable amount of meat or other protein to suit your appetite. Some people find that eating "only when hungry" or "only until just full" works. Others of us have difficulty with appetite cues and have to think about portions a little more carefully. But DO NOT count calories. Especially, don't try to reduce calories to some arbitrary number.

You are not actually in a "plateau." A plateau is much longer than a couple of weeks. Might be a couple of years, or more. But taking specific steps like tweaking your calories seldom produces long-term answers.

Remember that the achievement of low-carb eating is to transform your body from a carb-burning machine to a fat-burning machine. Any introduction of carbohydrates like bread, potatoes, and especially sugar completely obliterates that transformation for a many, many days. Don't do it.

FYI, exercise is good for you. But it won't speed up weight loss.

This is exactly why I still don't have a scale. For me, those little fluctuations were discouraging and counter-productive if I weighed myself every day. It's like driving a car looking only in front of you for six feet. You are going to try to overcorrect all the time.

Some people chart their every day or week's numbers and are happy with a downward trend. Some people find weighing every day keeps things from heading in the wrong direction for too long.

So if you are going to stress about it, choose measuring instead. We can be up on the scale and down on the tape!

I was not thinking about posting here cause I was such a big fellow and it seems water is obvious but then thought it might be helpful to show some data. One note too that affected my fluctuation was that I was on diuretic at the time. Same dosage every day so take that shouldn't matter so much as far as the fluctuations.

I could change 7-8 lbs in a DAY. My scale is very accurate too (Mettler Toledo WSI-600 Medical Scale, 600 x 0.2 lb

http://downhaul.com/lowcarb/daily.txt

astonishing excerpt (month had fasting in it too - water flies on and off)

Year 2016 (NC is net carbs 00 would mean a complete fast that day)

Date - LBS.X - NC - ActivityLevel
0101 - 305.0 - 12 - Low
0102 - 300.4 - 04 - High
0103 - 296.4 - 24 - High
0104 - 296.6 - 00 - High
0105 - 295.6 - 02 - High
0106 - 290.6 - 12 - High
0107 - 295.4 - 20 - Med
0108 - 296.4 - 00 - Med
0109 - 289.6 - 20 - High
0110 - 292.6 - 20 - High
0111 - 290.6 - 00 - High
0112 - 287.6 - 00 - High
0113 - 285.6 - 21 - Med
0114 - 289.4 - 23 - High
0115 - 290.4 - 02 - Med
0116 - 284.4 - 23 - High
0117 - 283.8 - 01 - Med
0118 - 282.4 - 23 - Med
0119 - 283.2 - 01 - Med
0120 - 281.2 - 01 - Med
0121 - 280.8 - 24 - Med
0122 - 286.6 - 00 - High
0123 - 279.2 - 25 - Med
0124 - 279.8 - 25 - Med
0125 - 285.8 - 01 - Med
0126 - 278.8 - 01 - Med
0127 - 279.0 - 01 - Med
0128 - 278.6 - 01 - Med
0129 - 277.6 - 01 - Med
0130 - 277.0 - 25 - High
0131 - 278.2 - 22 - Med

The reason our fluctuations of weight up and down appear to make no sense in the short term is because we are complex organisms rather than simple machines, with lots of different inputs, food being just one input, and lots or different outputs and many internal mechanisms with feedback loops that influence how any of the inputs are utilized and which regulate the outputs. So if all you are considering is how much you ate and what you ate you are not getting the whole picture. In fact probably no one understands the whole process in its complexity but just understanding that it is complex and that you control only a small amount of that complexity should go a long way to decrease any anxiety you may feel over minor day to day perturbations.

Jean

Thanks for that input Jean. Also, one last thing for me.. My experience was weight going up and down like crazy day to day. It was an odd coincidence if my weight was the same 2 days in a row. I was incredulous that people reported their weight the same, or so close to the same, ever day. I thought they were not being truthful but I didn't care too much. It was really none of my business.

Now that I am far lighter, off diuretics and have a fairly stable eating pattern my weight has been "almost" the same week to week for the last month.

I now believe those other people that reported no change day after day after day... I am biased. I was wrong

Werebear was right thankfully. Was 216 yesterday was 212 today phew, thats more like it Never seen it do that before:/