Thread: up 4 pounds on Mondays

If you're going from carb-heavy to low/no carb intake (e.g. similar to a keto diet or a carb rotation), it generally takes around 36-48 hrs to fill you out, so if you're carb loading on a Friday, and then dropping your intake on Saturday, your body is still filling out (i.e. holding water as part of response to the carb intake) for the next day or two, before it begins to respond to the drop in carbs or the use of stored glycogen, and thus a drop in water weight.

Basically it takes a delay of a day or two for the body to respond to the presence of carbs - either to hold water or drop water as part if its response.

As a great illustration, for competition prep during the dial-in to a show date - typically there is a carb depletion phase from 7 days to 3 days out from a show date to deplete all glycogen /dump as much water as possible. Then starts what can be an obscene carb up at 3-2 days out from a show so you've reached your optimal fullness by show day. If you start too early, it can start to look squishy ("spill over") and you missed the window. Start too late and you won't have filled out enough and might end up looking flat on stage.

so the drop in carbs is causing me to hold water?

Originally Posted by porky

so the drop in carbs is causing me to hold water?

No - this is a broad generalization because you aren't speaking to what you are actually eating from Friday to the weekend - but given you indicate a switch from a big meal schedule to only a couple over the weekend, we assume a corresponding drop in your carb intake. You're expecting that you should LOSE weight on the same day your total cal (and subsequent assumed corresponding carb intake) drops, but the opposite is happening. I'm telling you that in fact, the expected drop in weight, corresponding to the drop in intake on Saturday, won't really show itself until a day or two later because of the speed with which the body typically responds to carbs.

Maybe its too specific and not exactly the complete picture, but I'm just saying that the body takes time to respond to a change in your intake, and sometimes will also hold onto or increase weight (usually just water weight) over a short term, even if you did suddenly drop intake or up your calorie expenditure. (An example of this is when people begin a dramatic increase in cardio to lose weight on a short-term schedule but don't see results as immediately as they expected.)

Right got you now thanx

Originally Posted by porky

Right got you now thanx

For things like that where the weight changes are sorta big, but transient, its always water weight (as opposed to fat - I've always operated on the estimate that you can gain 1/2 lb of bodyfat per week. Anything additional is water weight, or some small % lean muscle mass). Carbs tend to affect water weight the most and also have that 2-ish days delay in effect. Sodium might also be a factor depending on what you're actually eating.

I usually gain 2 to 4 lbs over a weekend depending on what I eat. As Sassy said, it's all water.