Weight spiking up while cutting seems scary? Try ignoring it

You wake up after being extremely strict with your diet and fast.

You’ve gone a bit further than needed and feeling proud of your motivation to stick with it.

Your weight has gone drastically down by couple kilos for the past couple days.

For sure, your weight has gone down again today as well.

You step on the scale and…

The weight has jumped (?!) almost back to what it was previous week before you started fasting.

Now you’re thinking "All this suffering just to go back to square one?!"

Why do you keep gaining weight back that you already lost?

Changes in body weight include more than just changes in fat or muscle. The changes include, for example, gut content, bladder content, hydration status, and water retention in your muscles.

Meanwhile, losing fat is a slow process that sustainably happens at a rate of 0.5-1% of body weight per week. E.g. for 80kg person, that’s 400-800g per week.

That means all those many kilos of "fat" you thought you lost was mostly less water and food in your body…

How do you keep the weight off that you lost by drastic measures during the past week?

First, you need to stop focusing on the short-term changes of day-to-day weight.

Then, measure your body weight and waist every day, log it to a spreadsheet like Google Sheets / Excel or app like MyFitnessPal, and forget about the daily number after that.

Finally, compare the weekly averages between 3-4 weeks to see how your body weight has trended.

This removes the most typical fluctuations from eating salty foods which retain more water, drinking alcohol which remove water, or overeating on holidays and travels.

Now, you’re left with the actual progress towards your goal body.