northernmusician's Journal, 24 February 2014

Inspired by Rob's long post the other day, I decided, after receiving a PM for clarification from MrsMole to explain what may be happening with my weight since my radical little 6 day diet and going onto maintenance calories.

If the formatting has disappeared for the post in the generic journal notification, please click this post and it will take you to another page restoring the formatting.

This is a discussion of the role I believe carbohydrates may be playing in the situation. It's also an argument for setting and maintaining an even macro balance over time. (I get requests often from MM for clarification of the PMs I send her. lol Don't get me wrong. It's me, not her.)

I hope you find this interesting.

The last day of the V-diet, I hit an all time low. My carbs were held, essentially, to 60 gr per day over that time period. Here is how it played out.


Actual weight from feb 18. Each weight after that is my morning weigh in. Up to the 164.2 weight in, 60 grams carb average for 6 days. From this date, carbs were increased to approximately 200 gr per day.)
164.2
166
168.2
167.2
167.4
166.4
166.2

As you can see, I gained 2 pounds per day over the two days immedately after my lowest weight, and then my weight dropped back to 167 to 166 on the following 4 days. Here's what I believe happened.

We've all heard of athletes (particularly endurance athletes) carb loading. It's the process where you restrict carbohydrate over a period before a competition, and then pushing carb intake above their normal intake. The reason they do that is because when the system has had a restriction of carbohydrates, eating large carb meals after it loads the muscles with water, and glycogen beyond the point that they normally would retain. That means more energy for a longer period of time is available for the comptition.

What I believe happened is that, at 200 gr per day carb intake, I had a sustained carb load over a two day period. Once my body was saturated beyond normal retention levels, the glycogen/water gains were shed to a stable weight. I know two days is hardly conclusive, but I believe it's also worth of consideration.

So. Conclusions in regards to macro monitoring.

If one day I take in in the neighbourhood of 60 grams of carbohydrate (50 being a recommendation for a lot of restricted carb diets) my weight will fall by a couple of pounds, or inversely, if I increase intake from 50 to 200 grams, I am likely to see a directly related water/glycogen gain of roughly two pounds.

Application. Setting and hitting even macro levels is much more likely to have you see fairly stable weights from day to day. Keep changing them, and you're more likely to see what look like significant swings in your weight, and experience the frustration that goes with it. Of course, regularity of waste elimination also enters into this.

By the way. If you're following what I'm logging as food, you're likely to wonder why I'm logging things like a half gram of cinnamon. I'm beginning to realize now the value of knowing exactly what I've eaten. Had I not been monitoring as tightly as FS has allowed me to, I wouldn't have this feedback, though I must say it's as much the community taking an interest and asking questions - making comments - that has brought this to my attention.

Okay, so. I've done one more thing that you may be interested in. Someone said they were annoyed at having FS say they were gaining 14 pounds a week when they posted a 2 pound increase. I decided to track the pounds on FS as normal, as it's really valuable, and to also keep a spreadsheet showing my averages over a 7 day period. This is new and so the averages have been shorter. Today is the first day I had enough data to have a seven day average post V-diet (which I'm not sure I'd go on again because it was so hard to do).

Weights during that seven day period.

164.2
166
168.2
167.2
167.4
166.4
166.2

Here is what happened when I averaged these. Beside each weight is also the # of days that were averaged. Obviously more days give me a much better picture of what's happening.

Feb 19 165.1 - 2 days data
Feb 20 166.1 - 3 days data
Feb 21 166.4 - 4 days data
Feb 22 166.6 - 5 days data
Feb 23 166.6 - 6 days data
Feb 24 166.5 - 7 days data

As you can see the average shows a far different picture than the daily weights.

Please don't use averaging as a reason to believe cheating a couple of days won't matter because it will average out. In fact it will average out over an extended period of time, but not in your favour.

And that's the journal for today. For those of you who stuck around to read the whole thing, thank you. Thoughs?

166.2 lb Lost so far: 5.8 lb.    Still to go: 0 lb.    Diet followed reasonably well.

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2304 kcal

Fat: 102.91g | Prot: 144.21g | Carb: 201.72g.   Breakfast: Imperial 75% Vegetable Oil Margarine, Oranges, Cinnamon, Brown Sugar, 1% Fat Milk, Quaker Steel Cut Oatmeal, Fuji Apples, Cheddar Cheese, Egg. Lunch: Butter, Rye Bread, Oranges, Carrots, Pink Salmon (Drained Solids, Canned). Dinner: French's Honey Mustard, Kraft Roasted Red Pepper Salad Dressing, Lettuce Salad with Cheese, Tomato and/or Carrots, Sliced Ham (Extra Lean), Butter, Baked Potato (Peel Not Eaten). Snacks/Other: Fried Egg, Butter, Sliced Ham (Extra Lean), Oranges, Oreo Chocolate Sandwich Cookies. more...