Typical diet/calorie deficit/cut scenario:
You’re 1 week into your weight loss phase, you’ve been consistent with your nutrition and exercise, you step on the scale, and you’ve lost weight! Most people can find themselves down 3-4 lbs after their first week in a calorie deficit. You’re ecstatic! You’ve stuck with it for a full week and the results on the scale are showing! You think, “If I stick to this then I’ll lose 3-4 lbs a week and be at my goal in no time!” You’re consistent for the next week and you excitedly step on the scale two weeks into your weight loss journey and you see it’s only gone down maybe a lb. You may ask yourself, “WTH? I did everything the same as before? Why hasn’t it moved more???” You find yourself frustrated and questioning what you did wrong. You decide that you need to just get more aggressive so you either eat less or exercise more to help the scale budge more quickly, but eventually find that eating that little or doing that much exercise is just not sustainable. You burn yourself out and think that if this is what it takes to lose weight then it just isn’t for you and you give up completely.
How do I know this scenario so well? Because besides hearing it from clients, family, and friends, it was a scenario that I myself was constantly in before I became educated in nutrition and exercise. But through my education through the National Academy of Sports Medicine and experience with myself and clients, I’ve learned what is actually happening during the first week to the weeks after being in a calorie deficit and what actual FAT loss (not just WEIGHT loss) looks like. So let me break it down.
Weight Loss vs Fat Loss
First of all, I think it’s important to note that I think no matter the person, when someone says that they want to lose “weight” they mean that they want to lose “fat”. Our body’s weight is made up of bone, muscle, fat, water, and all of our organs/blood/etc., and just looking at these I think it’s easy to point out which one can most easily fluctuate. Have you ever weighed yourself before or after using the bathroom? You may see the scale drop! Why? Because water plays a big role in our “weight”. So what’s the point in bringing this up? When we are eating more we, by default, are going to be consuming more calories and more sodium. Consuming both of these causes us to retain a certain amount of water. When we go in a calorie deficit (meaning eating less than we were previously, which is what needs to happen to initiate fat loss) we are by default consuming LESS calories and sodium, which causes us to retain LESS water than previously. Retaining less water means less water weight which means less weight on the scale, this is why the first week of a weight loss phase can have a drastic drop on the scale. So while the scale may go down 3-4 lbs the first week, in reality only .5-2 lbs (depending on the deficit) may be from fat. This can be confirmed if over the next weeks of your weight loss phase you are losing on average .5-2 lbs per week, and I want to state that that is AMAZING progress! This is what healthy and sustainable weight loss looks like! And let me explain why!
What does healthy weight loss look like?
No matter if you’re looking to lose 10 lbs or 100, you need to seriously ask yourself how you got in a position that you want to lose weight in the first place. And what I mean by that, is that for most the reality is that you did not gain 10 lbs in a week, so why does it seem to some that losing 10 lbs in a week is realistic? True weight/fat gain has been shown to be something that gradually happens over time, so true weight/fat loss also needs to be something that gradually happens over time. Healthy weight loss is typically losing 1% of overall body weight per week on average, which typically looks like .5-2 lbs lost per week for most. This is the reality in how to lose weight without putting your health at risk from eating too low calorie which can mean not getting in enough nutrients. This means needing to make a calorie deficit one that is sustainable and manageable for longer periods of time so that you can reach your weight/fat loss goal.
How to know if you’re actually losing fat?
As I’ve discussed, water can play an important role in determining what the scale will say. When weighing yourself to check for progress I suggest doing it in the morning when you wake up, after using the bathroom, and before eating anything; this set up is one that can be consistent in actually measuring progress because all other factors are the same. As soon as we start eating or drinking anything, then we will obviously have more inside of us so the scale weight can go up quite a bit later in the day compared to when we weighed ourselves in the morning on an empty stomach. So using the scale with a consistent set up to measure weight is one way to see if you’re actually losing weight. But to check if you’re losing fat there are quite a few other ways: measurements with measuring tape, body fat devices/tests (calipers, handheld devices, BF scales, bodpod, dexa, inbody test, etc.), and (my favorite!) the way clothes fit and also progress photos! Seeing changes in the mirror and in how clothes fit can 1000% outweigh (pun intended?) whatever the scale says! Your weight on the scale is a number; it’s a measurement of data. How you feel when you look in the mirror and in your clothes and the confidence you can exude from that should be the number one goal in any fitness phase!
Remembering the Water Weight Factor after a calorie deficit
When the diet/calorie deficit/cut is over because you’ve reached your goal or you want to take a break, you most likely want to relatively maintain the weight/fat you’ve lost. And I put the term “relatively” because like I talked about earlier, water plays a huge factor in if the scale fluctuates. And when you’re coming out of a calorie deficit that means you are bringing your calories back up to maintenance (meaning that you are taking in the same amount of calories that you’re burning), which means more food and sodium which means holding onto more water. This can freak some people out because they maybe have lost 10 lbs and then “gained back 2 lbs” after bringing their calories back up to maintainance. But this DOES NOT mean that 2 lbs of fat was gained! Again remember the scale is not everything! You can check with those other forms of measurements I mentioned earlier see what type of “weight gain” is happening. If your weight goes up 2 lbs but your measurements are pretty much the same, then it’s just water weight fluctuation and not necessarily fat gain.
Special Note: Other times the scale could be fluctuating that doesn’t mean fat gain
Even if you keep your weigh-in set up the same (meaning weighing yourself in the morning after using the bathroom and before eating or drinking anything) there are other factors that can contribute to your weight fluctuating on the scale.
Eating In vs Eating Out: One of them comes back to sodium intake which can cary day to day even if your macros are still the same. If you’re hitting your calorie and macro goal from eating whole foods you cooked at home vs foods that are maybe processed or eating meals at restaurants the salt/sodium level in foods that are processed or used at restaurants is just typically a lot higher than what the average person uses at home. This means holding onto more water weight which can affect the scale the following day.
Irregular Eating and/or Sleeping Patterns: Another factor that can affect the scale weight fluctuating has to do with if you have less sleep then normal and/or your last meal of the day is later than usual. If you’re typically weighing in after 8 hours of sleep and your last meal being 2 hours before you slept, then you are normally weighing yourself after fasting for 10 hours. If you end up only sleeping 5 hours one night and then you weigh yourself you may see that the scale has gone up. This can be due to that shorter fasting time which also has given your body less time to metabolize and digest the food from the previous day. This leads into the next factor..
You Need to Poop: Depending on how you relieve yourself each morning before you weigh in, this can have a big factor on weight fluctuation. And if you’re having issues regularly going #2 then you can read about the benefits of fiber here.
That Time of the Month: If you’re a female, then your menstrual cycle can have a big impact on water retention also. If you’re a female who measures themselves regularly then you will see that during your period it is most noticeably your hips and waist that are bloated and holding onto water, which can show on the scale and in measurements. This can lead to a few days of the scale being up and dropping off by the end of the period
What do I want you to take away from this?
When going into any diet/calorie deficit/cut/weight loss phase, know that the first week will probably have a big drop in weight but that the drop is mostly water weight so it won’t be like that every week. Healthy weight loss is losing .5-2 lbs or 1% of overall weight depending on how much weight needs to be lost. True weight/fat gain has been shown to be something that gradually happens over time, so true weight/fat loss also needs to be something that gradually happens over time.This is the reality in how to lose weight without putting your health at risk from eating too low calorie which can mean not getting in enough nutrients. This means needing to make a calorie deficit one that is sustainable and manageable for longer periods of time so that you can reach your weight/fat loss goal.
Need guidance in how to set up your calories/macros and/or workouts to support fat loss? Want to have a coach to keep you accountable and make adjustments that will keep fat loss progressing? Check out my coaching services or contact me about your goals! I want to help you be your strongest, healthiest, and fittest self!