Why does your weight change throughout the day?

Did you know?

There are 99 more bones in a child’s body than in an adult’s body. New­born babies have 305 bones, while adults have only 206.

Did you know?

Sci­en­tists have cal­cu­lat­ed that the aver­age per­son can dis­tin­guish about a tril­lion odors. At the same time, the sense of smell is much more accu­rate and sharp­er than sight. The human eye dis­tin­guish­es “only” 10 mil­lion col­ors.

Did you know?

The human brain accounts for 2% of the total body weight. At the same time, it requires up to 20% of oxy­gen, which enters the blood.

Expert com­ment

Oksana Orlo­va, MD, PhD, researcher at the St. Peters­burg Insti­tute of Bioreg­u­la­tion and Geron­tol­ogy, lab­o­ra­to­ry of aging bioreg­u­la­tion, cos­me­tol­o­gist

Our body con­sists of thir­ty tril­lion cells and is cal­cu­lat­ed by the for­mu­la:

MT u003d PZHT + SMM + SM + MO,

• where MT — body mass,
• PVT — the mass of the sub­cu­ta­neous fat lay­er togeth­er with the skin,
• SMM — skele­tal mus­cle mass
• CM — the mass of the skele­ton,
• MO is the mass of the remain­der.

More­over, about 60% is water, includ­ing the con­tents of the intestines, blad­der, flu­id retained in tis­sues or ede­ma due to mal­nu­tri­tion and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­or­ders. Weight real­ly fluc­tu­ates between 1–3 kg per day and there are cer­tain rea­sons for this:

• The amount of food and liq­uid con­sumed. The time of day when eat­ing is impor­tant: either it will turn into use­ful vital ener­gy and burn out dur­ing the work­ing day, or it will accu­mu­late in “deposits”.
• Num­ber of vis­its to the toi­let per day.
• Salty food leads to water reten­tion in the body in the pro­por­tion of 1 g/100 ml.
• Car­bo­hy­drates accu­mu­late in the form of glyco­gen, which reg­u­lates fat metab­o­lism, and this is weight gain — 1 g / 3 ml of liq­uid. An unex­pect­ed fact: an attempt to inten­si­fy train­ing from a habit leads to mus­cle swelling and weight gain. Mus­cles are heav­ier than adi­pose tis­sue and there is no direct cor­re­la­tion between weight and vol­ume.
• The men­stru­al cycle in its sec­ond phase explains weight gain from 3–5 kg ​​due to the reten­tion of salt by the female hor­mone estro­gen.
• Stress. Against the back­ground of stress — an increase in the pro­duc­tion of the hor­mone cor­ti­sol, you can both get bet­ter and lose weight.

Expert com­ment

Ele­na Kalen, psy­chol­o­gist, expert in the psy­chol­o­gy of weight loss

Some peo­ple who want to lose weight weigh them­selves sev­er­al times a day. And they can notice fluc­tu­a­tions. For exam­ple, in the morn­ing the weight is one kilo­gram less than it was yes­ter­day, and in the evening the fig­ure is again at the same lev­el. At such moments, it seems that prop­er nutri­tion and train­ing do not bring results.

I want to quit every­thing and go back to my old way of life. Do not rush to get upset and stop the path to har­mo­ny.

An increase of 1–2 kilo­grams per day does not mean that fat deposits have formed. The process of fat accu­mu­la­tion is quite com­plex. Even if you eat accord­ing to the needs of the body, by the evening the weight may be more than in the morn­ing. There are the fol­low­ing rea­sons for this:

Stress. Dur­ing stress, the body is reluc­tant to say good­bye to extra pounds due to increased lev­els of cor­ti­sol (stress hor­mone). If in the morn­ing you got up in a great mood, and by the evening you were pret­ty ner­vous, the weight can go up.

Flu­id reten­tion. Eat­ing salty foods, alco­hol and sweets, lack of sleep and too hot weath­er cause flu­id reten­tion in the body. It is because of her that by the evening there is an increase in weight.

Pow­er train­ing. After active work with a bar­bell or dumb­bells, micro­c­racks form in the mus­cle fibers. As a result, mus­cle vol­umes increase, ede­ma appears. A per­son can observe that the weight has gone into plus.

Eat­ing. While food is digest­ed and pass­es through the diges­tive tract, weight can be added. But this does not mean at all that extra pounds auto­mat­i­cal­ly stick to the body. Calo­ries from food go to the work­ing process­es of the body. When eat­ing food for hunger and before it is sat­is­fied, after a while you will again notice a plumb line.

Pre­men­stru­al syn­drome. Some women notice a weight gain of 1 to 3 kilo­grams before the start of the cycle. More­over, the weight appears as if from the air. Such changes are nor­mal and not ter­ri­ble. They occur due to flu­id reten­tion and hor­mon­al changes.

There is also the oppo­site sit­u­a­tion, when the fig­ure on the scales decreas­es in the evening. Espe­cial­ly often this hap­pens in the first week of weight loss. For exam­ple, when switch­ing to intu­itive eat­ing. The body gets rid of tox­ins and excess water dur­ing the day, which can be imme­di­ate­ly seen on the scales.

To see the gen­er­al trend, it is bet­ter to focus not only on the arrow of the scales, but also on the vol­umes of the body. You can weigh your­self at the same time, once a day, and do it bet­ter on an emp­ty stom­ach and after going to the toi­let. Remem­ber that the body is a fair­ly com­plex sys­tem and changes in weight dur­ing the day are nor­mal.

Expert com­ment

Eldar Akhtyamov, Bach­e­lor of Adap­tive and Ther­a­peu­tic Phys­i­cal Edu­ca­tion, fit­ness train­er

Jumps in body weight dur­ing the day are due to a change in the amount of flu­id in the body, which in turn is due to the cir­ca­di­an rhythms of the release of var­i­ous hor­mones and medi­a­tors, the rhythms of the activ­i­ty of var­i­ous organ sys­tems, the nature of food, and the fre­quen­cy of its intake.

In the morn­ing, adreno­cor­ti­cotrop­ic hor­mone is active, which increas­es the release of cor­ti­sol and a cer­tain amount of cat­e­cholamines (adren­a­line, nor­ep­i­neph­rine). The max­i­mum dai­ly peak of cor­ti­sol accel­er­ates our metab­o­lism, and there­fore the activ­i­ty of the excre­to­ry sys­tem — the body active­ly gets rid of water. Adren­a­line acti­vates lipol­y­sis — active­ly “burns” fat. In the morn­ing we are as thin as pos­si­ble.

By evening, metab­o­lism slows down due to a decrease in cor­ti­sol lev­els and the activ­i­ty of the thy­roid gland, the hor­mones of which are respon­si­ble, among oth­er things, for the meta­bol­ic rate. Car­bo­hy­drates retain water (about 1 gram of car­bo­hy­drates 4 grams of water), sodi­um retains water, dairy prod­ucts cause flu­id reten­tion in many, cut­ting down on the drink­ing reg­i­men reduces the activ­i­ty of the excre­to­ry sys­tem and can, on the con­trary, cause flu­id reten­tion.

Expert com­ment

Maria Niko­lae­va, yoga instruc­tor, author of books on ori­en­tal prac­tices

As you know, the human body up to 70% con­sists of water, that is, in prin­ci­ple, it is a very flu­id sub­stance. Dur­ing the day, the main para­me­ters of weight change are set by sleep, meals and excre­tion process­es, as well as phys­i­cal activ­i­ty.

After a night’s sleep and a morn­ing trip to the toi­let, body weight is usu­al­ly the low­est, since the body has not tak­en food for a long time, had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to car­ry out a long metab­o­lism and remove all excess as much as pos­si­ble.

Fur­ther fluc­tu­a­tions are rel­a­tive­ly indi­vid­ual as they are relat­ed to per­son­al pref­er­ence, but in any case the weight increas­es after eat­ing and drink­ing, but decreas­es after each use of the toi­let or active sweat­ing as a result of exer­cise or high ambi­ent tem­per­a­ture (hot day or stay in the sauna).

In part, weight also changes due to gas exchange in the lungs, as well as bio­chem­i­cal reac­tions in cells, but these fluc­tu­a­tions are too small. As a result, a person’s weight by the evening will still be the max­i­mum for the day, unless he is inten­tion­al­ly starv­ing.

Remem­ber that the body is a flow, there­fore, in prin­ci­ple, it can­not have an absolute­ly fixed weight.