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> Hints > Past Newsletter Editions > Articles > Diet Disaster Recovery

Diet Disaster Recovery

OK, so you step on the scales and are dismayed to realize that your recent eating or drinking patterns have led you to gain far more weight than you ever imagined they would. What to do?

The first and most important thing to do is to remember that it's almost impossible to gain a significant amount of fat in just a few days.

Let's take Emily's example. Imagine that she really was "doing something very wrong" as she suggested in her e-mail, and that she really did overeat for five days solid.

In order to gain 2.5 kilos of fat in five days, and knowing that you need to consume approximately 29,300 more kilojoules (or 7,000 more calories) than your body needs in order to gain a kilo of fat, Emily would needed to have over-consumed 2.5 times that amount (73,250 kilojoules or 17,500 calories) over the course of five days.

This means that on top of everything she normally eats and drinks in order to maintain her weight, Emily would needed to have consumed an additional 14,650 kilojoules (or 3,500) calories per day for five days straight. That's equivalent to eating your normal meals plus 36 chocolate Tim Tam biscuits...or 10 McDonald's Hot Fudge Sundaes...or 14 packets of Cheezels...every single day for five days in a row. Can you see that even to gain just one kilo of fat, Emily would needed to have eaten an enormous amount of excess food? Knowing Emily's recent eating patterns from her Success Diary, this was clearly not the case.

So if the majority of the weight you may gain from short periods of overeating is not fat, where is the weight coming from?

The answer is water.

Whenever you eat or drink more than your immediate needs, your body converts some of that excess into glucose (a simple sugar) and then into glycogen, and this is stored in your muscles and liver to tide you over until your next meal.

When you're losing weight (as Emily had been before she went to stay with her daughter), your body doesn't store much glycogen because you're using up all of the kilojoules you put into your body. However, when you eat more than you need your body accumulates up to about half a kilo of glucose as glycogen. Glycogen is a bit like a sponge in that it holds roughly three times its weight in water. So if you gain half a kilo of glucose as glycogen from a period of temporary turbulence, you'll likely weigh about 2 kilos more on the scales due to the weight of the water that is stored with that glycogen. Add to this weight the water retention that often comes from eating salty party foods or meals outside the home, and it's quite easy to see disproportionately large ('unfair') weight gains in response to what seems like relatively small slip-ups.

In response to Emily's e-mail, I reassured her that her sudden weight gain would most likely right itself if she simply continued to do what she had done to lose those 2.5 kilos in the first place, as you'll see in my e-mail below;

I would fathom a bet that if you were to get back to eating your fruits and veggies and to scoring all 2s and 3s in your Success Diary for the whole day today, then if you weighed yourself tomorrow morning you would see a significant loss on the scales, taking you quickly back towards the weight you were before your trip. This would also be an opportunity to see your Fat Brake in action. If you ate a bit more than usual at your daughters' place, then you will likely find that you are not very hungry today, and it may take just the fruit and veg and hardly anything else to satisfy your hunger today. You may also notice that you need to go to the toilet more often than usual today, as your body breaks down excess sugar that has been stored in your muscles and liver as glycogen, releasing the water that was stored with that glycogen. If you're going to the toilet a lot today, it's a good sign that your body is eliminating the fluid that was stored with any excesses you may have eaten while away. I look forward to hearing of your experiences.

Sure enough, within four days of that initial shocking weigh-in result, Emily had not only lost those 2.5 kilos (a sure sign that her sudden weight gain was mostly water weight, after all), as well as realizing an additional half a kilo loss, taking her total weight loss to 3 kilos in eight weeks.

In all this time, including her time away with her daughter, Emily had obviously been on the right track, because for the same reasons I've explained above it's simply not possible to lose 3 kilos of fat in just four days. However, if Emily had freaked out and given up after seeing that shockingly sudden weight gain, as many people are apt to do, she never would have seen the fruits of her ongoing attentiveness to listening to her body.

Over to you

Here's something you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

If you see a sudden increase in your weight that seems at odds with what you've been eating or drinking of late, please don't freak out.

Remind yourself that it's impossible to gain that much fat from that many kilojoules, and then get back to listening to your body and eating accordingly, as well as to eating the two or more serves of fruit and the five or more serves of vegetables that are so necessary for health and permanent weight loss.

You'll likely find that after you've eaten all those fruits and veggies you don't have much appetite left over for much else, but this will only last until your Fat Brake rapidly brings your weight back down to its usual level and your normal appetite kicks back in again.

If you regularly see shocking numbers on the scales and you find that it's adversely affecting your ability to remain focused on managing your weight, you may like to consider weighing yourself less frequently, using a tape measure and your clothes for week-to-week or day-to-day feedback as to whether you're on the right track.

Have a wonderful month, and I look forward to reading via return e-mail any comments or queries you may have about this newsletter.

Sincerely,

Amanda

Dr Amanda
Connect with your body
www.DrAmandaOnline.com