Wednesday, February 1, 2012

AVAST! My old nemesis...water weight! Curse you for ruining my weightloss goals!

Well, here we are. February 1st. And I'm sad, but not TOO sad, to say that I did not reach my 10 pound weight loss goal for January. I did, however, lose 9 pounds. And that's fantastic.

I started January at 233 pounds and ended January at 224 pounds. For whatever reason, though, that very last 2/3 of a pound I needed to shed in the last few days just wouldn't go away no matter my calorie deficit or the exercise. From a very simple standpoint of 3500 calories being 1 pound of fat, I should have lost at leat a pound over ht past few days. But I didn't. In fact, my weight went a little bit up or stayed the same from day to day. Frustrating...which leads me to my weighloss topic du jour:

That freain' water weight, again, and inherant problem of weighing yourself every single day.

As it turns out, we're not just looking at a simple equation of fat loss = weight loss. Alas, we have so much other Stuff in our bodies that happens to have its own weight. The biggest one, of course, is water. 1 pint of water up of water is 1 pound, and you can easily down a pint of water. Just two cups. Cup of coffee from McDonalds, BAM... about 1 pound.

And if you've had more salt than usual, your body is going to hold onto that water. Another thing that holds onto the water...glycogen. There are two basic types of energy storage in your body: fat and glycogen. The glycogen is your body's rapid response energy boost. It's the first energy store your body taps when you're running low on energy. And holy smokes does it hold onto the water. So your day to day glycogen stores are going to fluctuate the amount of water your body is holding.

So, basically...just as part of the body's normal routine of, like, LIVING...it's going to see weight gain and weight loss from day to day. I just need to remind myself that it's normal and not get disouraged.

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