Weekend weight gain

[Chile Pepper]

I've been thinking about this a lot since it came up in another thread. This past weekend I weighed 120 on Saturday morning and 123 on Monday morning. Yikes! On the other hand, while I did eat more than during the week, I'm sure I burned more calories than I ate, based on a conservative estimate of calories burned versus a generous estimate of calories consumed. Even if my estimates are off, there is no way I consumed the 10,000 calories it would take to gain three pounds of fat. So what's going on?

A little Internet research turned up a very interesting explanation:

Any increase in carbohydrate or sodium intake will cause your body to hold on to water. For example, lets say your normal diet is moderate in carbs. Then you overindulge on the weekend on bagels, dessert, and maybe some pasta. Your body does several things with these carbs:
1. some is used for immediate energy
2. some is stored as fat
3. much of it goes into energy stores in the liver and muscles.
These stores are called glycogen and will provide your body with energy as time goes on. Runners try to fill up their glycogen stores by eating pasta on the night before the marathon. They want to stuff their energy stores full of stored carbs to be used as energy during the race. Now here is the catch – in order to hold the carbohydrate in storage, your body needs to hold onto water. For each gram of carbohydrate, your body needs to hold onto 3 grams of water.

aha! I tend to eat a low-carb diet during the week and then indulge a bit more on the weekends. My calorie intake is still reasonable, so this seems like a very plausible explanation for why I'm gaining weight—and then losing it—so quickly. I'll have to try moderating my carbs a bit more on the weekends to see if that helps improve the cycle.

Any thoughts?

[Crankin]

Yep, this is the story of my life.

[Chile Pepper]

I was thinking of you, Crankin! I feel your pain.

[Anelia]

I notice it, too but besides eating more carbs on the weekend, I tend to ride a bike longer and my muscles become full of water. After strenuous training or race, I always weigh 2 or 3 pounds more. I can feel it even in my hands: I can't fold my fingers properly because they are bloated. Even I have special pants which are wider in the legs for these Mondays.

[Eden]

I wouldn't try to do anything about it....... As with most of you I know hard workouts cause my body to retain a bit of extra fluid. It's normal - even necessary for my muscles to recover and repair themselves. I don't think it's necessarily wise to disrupt the process.

[emily_in_nc]

This is exactly why I think it's probably best to only weigh once a week. Friday morning seems a perfect day for it. It's really easy to stress out over minor fluctuations each day, but if you weigh weekly, the trends will show themselves. I weigh every couple of days but am trying to wean myself off the scale other than on Fridays -- it makes me crazy and is really not worth it. If you're gaining, your weekly weigh-ins will show it, and as long as you don't start skipping those, it won't creep up on you.

Just my thoughts...although I eat exactly the same on weekends as during the week since I'm retired!

[tulip]

Most likely it's water gain, not fat. I'm always up a few pounds a day or two after I eat sushi. It must be the rice and sodium? Many people weigh themselves once a week on the same day to get a more accurate picture of trends. I weigh myself whenever I remember to, and I'm not consistent, but as long as I'm in a certain range, I don't sweat it.

[azfiddle]

I'm always up on Monday - Wednesday if I did long or hard rides on the weekend. Friday / Sat am are usually lowest (we don't usually go out to eat or have anything special on Friday nights).

[Pax]

Just a heads up, this thread is over a year old, new person resurrected it this morning.

[Eden]

yeah… a new spammer….

[sookiesue]

Spam or no spam, I'm with Tulip on the sushi. It always gets me up 1-3 pounds overnight, even if my overall eating that day was low! I attribute it to the sodium and the rice as well. Glad to hear I'm not alone on that one. Not going to give up sushi...