How Much Can Your Weight Fluctuate in a Day and What is the Typical Daily Weight Fluctuation?
Many patients ask, “How much can my weight fluctuate”? For a lot of people, typical daily weight fluctuation is plus or minus two pounds, which is a range of four pounds. That’s a result of several things:
1. Water Intake. We ask our patients to drink 100 ounces of water each day – that’s the equivalent of six pounds of water going through your system each day.
2. Salt. Processed foods and restaurants give us a lot of salt. So if you went out to dinner the night before, you could easily retain a pound or two of water from that meal alone.
3. Menstrual Cycles. I’ve seen female patients retain eight or nine pounds of water in the week before their period, and I wouldn’t have believed it until I saw the scales
What is the Typical Daily Weight Fluctuation?
I often tell patients that their weight loss is not going to be a straight line sloping down. As well, once you reach your goal weight, it’s not going to remain a flat line until the day you pass away. There will be bumps, and we all have different reasons for those bumps. In the summertime, mothers have their kids home from school and they’re struggling to entertain them. So we often see their weight creep up during those vacation months.
Sometimes, we see executives who have to hit their sales targets at year end, and that’s when their stress and weight go up. Other times, bumps are caused by marital stress. For us, these bumps are to be expected. We just hope they get smaller and smaller as you learn how to deal with common stresses in your life.
How Do You Tell the Difference Between A Bump And Normal Daily Weight Fluctuation?
Everyone needs to be conscious of their weight for the rest of their entire lives. There’s no cure to obesity; this is a chronic challenge for all of us. So how do you tell the difference between a bump and normal daily weight fluctuation?
You want to watch the overall trend in your weight. First thing in the morning, go to the bathroom then get on the scale without any clothes on. Watch the average over a couple of weeks to know what your consistent weight is.
