Help! Why's My Weight Shot Up This Morning?!

Has your weight suddenly jumped up this morning and you’re freaking out?

“How have I suddenly put on 1 KG over night?!”

Relax! I promise you you haven’t. There are sooo many reasons why your weight can fluctuate day to day and in fact it is complelty normal. This is why my first bit of advice to anyone on a weight loss journey is that you start weighing yourself daily and looking at the average week to week. This stops the roller coaster of emotions day to day with every change up and down that happens ( which again as I said, is completely normal!).

That being said, I always think understanding why things are happening is a great way to calm anxiety or stress about anything. So here are 5 possible reasons why your weight may have jumped up.

1. Poo 💩! If you haven’t passed a stool before you weighed yourself and you normally do, then you are likely to weigh heavier simply due to the poo inside you. Likewise, if you haven’t been able to go for a few days this could show itself as your weight holding for a while or going up day by day until you do. The more consistent you can get your habits, such as water, food and movement, the more consistent your bowel movements will become and the less it will start to effect your daily scale weight readings.

2. Meal Timings. If you ate more of your food later in the day yesterday then there is likely more food still being digested inside of you and therefore your weight might be slightly higher! Again this doesn’t mean that ‘eating later in the day makes you fat’, it just means you will weigh a bit more first thing in the morning than a day that you ate your food earlier in the day.

3. Carbs. Did you eat more carbohydrates over the last few days?NOT because carbs make you fat, but because we retain more water when we eat them. For those of you that enjoy hearing about the science, when we eat carbs, the energy we don’t use straight away is stored in the body as glycogen. This is done so with 3 grams of water attached to every 1 g stored! So if we had 50 g more carbs ( 4 slices of bread) we would automatically hold on to 150g more water which will obviously make the scale weight appear higher!

4. Hydration. If your hydration is all over the place in terms of daily water intake, then this will have a knock on effect to your weight fluctuations. More hydrated means slightly heavier readings whist dehydration will make our scale weight lower. You can prove this to your self really easily by weighing yourself, then drinking a litre of water and seeing that your weight automatically jumps up a kilo when you step back on!

…

5. If you are due on your menstrual cycle. Due to changes in hormones (progesterone), you will hold on to more water when you are due on your cycle. Again for those of you that enjoy the science, more progesterone is present before you start to bleed to support an egg if it is fertilised. It also has the effect of activating the hormone progesterone, which causes the kidneys to retain water and salt and therefore your weight increases on there scales.

…

These are just a few possible explanations but I hope its given you a bit of insight into why it might have happened and more importantly, reduced the level of your morning freak out!

As I said above, a great way to avoid stressing about each day and the natural fluctuations that occur is to take your weekly average and compare this week to week, instead on focusing on day to day.

If you would like more information or help with your own fat loss journey please Click Here and I’d be really happy to help you :)