6 ms·

It is more of the effect of not eating or drinking for ~8 hours. 1 pint of water weighs around 500g. Also the average human exhales 1kg of CO2 a day which about

It is more of the effect of not eating or drinking for ~8 hours. 1 pint of water weighs around 500g. Also the average human exhales 1kg of CO2 a day which about a quarter of that is carbon weight. You will lose weight if you do not drink or eat for 8 hours awake. "Morning weight" == fasted and somewhat dehydrated weight.

RobertRoberts 7y ago
>"Morning weight" == fasted and somewhat dehydrated weight. I was tracking weight loss over time, so it's not just water loss. I tracked weight multiple times a day to see when weight loss actually happens. If it was simple dehydration then sleeping would be irrelevant, but sleep is when something is processed, an action occurs that expels the waste/water.
- balfirevic 7y ago
  Wait.. Where does the weight go? Apart from water - sweated and breathed out, which you say isn't all that's happening.
  - defective 7y ago
    Most weight your body actually loses (as in not water) is lost as carbon in the CO2 you exhale.
    - balfirevic 7y ago
      Right, but that's just regular metabolism. In the context of this thread, parent poster claimed it wasn't all that's happening and it certainly won't account for 0.5 lbs of mass lost during the night (mentioned elsewhere in this thread).
      - RobertRoberts 7y ago
        It seems I have to be careful about my statements. I lost .5 lbs of mass (on average it was over this like .57 lbs) every day for 30 days. Some days I lost more some less. What I found was that during the day I gained weight consistently from morning till night. I drank water, ran (2 miles then later 3 miles around 4:30pm) ate food (one meal at around 5:30pm), sweated on my runs, bowel movements were every couple days, urinated multiple times a day. But, consistently gained weight morning -> night. I measured my weight Morning > noon > evening (before meal) > night (before sleep). Only in the morning after urination did weight leave my body. Otherwise is consistent gains. People want to claim "it's all water", but that is nonsense, as I lost 15+ lbs that month. So, during a few days, I stayed up all night, no extra water in the night, no urination until morning to see if it was just that 8 hour period (approx) that caused the final loss of total weight to get me to my lowest measurement of the day. Nope. I had not lost any (or negligible weight, I was still at or near night weight). After I slept, (I'd wake in the afternoon) urinate, and I was back to my expected morning weight - with the average loss of .5 lbs. Sleep has an effect on the processing of urine related to the expulsion of waste and the metabolism of fat. That is my theory. A lot of people here are calling this asinine, so be it. If you are up for experimenting, weigh yourself in the morning and night for a week. Then stay up all night and weigh yourself in the morning, then after you get a nap. Then tell me I am crazy and there's nothing to this effect.
- johnmaguire2013 7y ago
  You can lose "true" weight during the day, while still gaining enough weight from food/water to offset the previous night's fasting and weight loss. In other words, it's not that you don't lose weight until you sleep: it's that you can't differentiate whether you have net lost weight or gained weight until you have similar conditions of measurement.
  - RobertRoberts 7y ago
    Yes, thank you, this is a better way of describing the process that I observed. But I would add to this, that it seems that you can lose some net lost weight from not having enough time sleeping for the process to finish. Maybe like how a sceptic tank gets filled and drained repeatedly, but only gets drained at night (for an equal analogy). And if there's not enough night (sleep), it can't drain completely, therefore retaining waste. It would explain also why you get sick if you don't get enough sleep... something else to ponder.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  specialp and johnmaguire2013 are correct. 'real' weight loss occurs very slowly in comparison to the ways your body can shed or accumulate water. In a week you're not likely to lose more than a 'real' pound unless you're being pretty extreme about your calorie intake or expenditure, but you can fluctuate by easily 5 pounds of water/food weight in a day. Source: tracking my calories and weight for the better part of a decade and having lost and kept off 150+lbs.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Exactly. I “lose weight” every time that I take my blood pressure pill (a diuretic) and “gain weight” when I don’t. My weight fluctuates 5 pounds in a given day based on how much I eat, drink, workout etc.
    - jobigoud 7y ago
      I wish people would use percentage of weight or BMI points instead of pounds. For one it would save others a conversion, and secondly it would make things comparable. 2.2 Kg in a day seems impossible to me, but for someone else it might be nothing. My max fluctuation is about 1.5%, it happens when there are several factors combined.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        BMI is also flawed. According to my BMI, I’m “morbidly obese”. I’m 30 pounds overweight. However when I was 10 pounds less than I am now, I was objectively tone, muscular, and had a body fat percentage of around 10%. Even now, no one (including doctors) look at me and would say that I’m “obese” and need to lose that much weight. At 10 pounds lighter I was wearing 28 regular cut pants. Where would I lose the weight from? I’m 5’5.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  I'm going to try to reiterate more clearly what your parent comment was saying: Your experimental methodology is flawed because it fails to control for water loss. This isn't negligible: in the summer when it's hot and I sweat a lot, I can easily drink a 1 liter Nalgene bottle in the morning, about 2 pounds of water. It's likely that what you've measured is simply the slow loss of water through perspiration and exhalation throughout the night. I guess technically this is weight loss because you do weigh less when dehydrated, but it's not loss of fat weight, which is what I think most people mean when they say weight loss. Weight fluctuations throughout the day due to water/food intake and waste excretion/water loss dwarf any actual fat loss, so I don't think weighing yourself throughout the day is a viable method of determining when fat weight is lost during the day.
  - RobertRoberts 7y ago
    >Your experimental methodology is flawed because it fails to control for water loss. I absolutely tested for water loss. What I found was that some extra (?) water retained until we sleep. And that something happens with fat or other processing that occurs during sleep. Again, I charted my weight carefully multiple times a day over a month. Carefully testing when weight loss occured. I Recorded my diet as well as my exercise. I lost .5 lbs of fat (on average) every day for a month. The question I found interesting was "when/how do we actually lose weight?" It has to come out of our body somehow. And it's not through excrement, it's through urine. The reason I know this is because when doing my test I ate one meal a day, and I would sometimes not have a bowel movement for a few days, yet still have eaten a few meals and still lost weight.
    - ska 7y ago
      > It has to come out of our body somehow. Mostly you breath it out, excepting water.
    - kerkeslager 7y ago
      > I absolutely tested for water loss. No, you didn't. How do you think you tested for water loss? Briefly, you'd need to separate out the water for your urine, weigh that, then separate out the water from your feces, and weigh that, and spend all your time in a sealed chamber and monitor the humidity of that chamber to see how much water you're exhaling and sweating out. I'm guessing you did exactly none of this. Oh and after all that, there's the confounding fact that a small part of fat's mass is metabolized into water, so even measuring all your water excretion doesn't actually allow you to separate how much of that water is water you took in, and how much of that water is the result of fat metabolism. > And it's not through excrement, it's through urine. Given urine is mostly water and you didn't control for water loss, your result is exactly what I'd expect from water loss and not fat loss. Look, do you really think you're the first person to research this? There's a whole subfield of biochemistry devoted to this, with more brains, equipment, and funding than you have. You're right that weight mostly doesn't come out through excrement: most of the mass of burned fat is exhaled as CO2[1][2][3]. [1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141216212047.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141216212047.h... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-30494009 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-30494009 [3] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/weight-loss-fat-cells-what-happens-burned-scientist-explanation-carbon-dioxide-water-urine-a8258941.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families...
- coldtea 7y ago
  >I was tracking weight loss over time, so it's not just water loss. I tracked weight multiple times a day to see when weight loss actually happens. And what you saw was just repeated measurements of water loss each morning, plus some actual weight loss, when the real weight loss happened 24/7 but was too spread for you to notice. >If it was simple dehydration then sleeping would be irrelevant Sleeping is irrelevant (it is needed to be less stressed, but it's not the time you "actually lose weight" any more than any other time of the day) research has shown.
- driverdan 7y ago
  Weighing yourself multiple times a day is just tracking noise. It's not a large enough time interval to track tissue loss.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    Once a day is sufficient to establish the trend line in a few weeks.

RobertRoberts 7y ago

>"Morning weight" == fasted and somewhat dehydrated weight. I was tracking weight loss over time, so it's not just water loss. I tracked weight multiple times a day to see when weight loss actually happens. If it was simple dehydration then sleeping would be irrelevant, but sleep is when something is processed, an action occurs that expels the waste/water.

balfirevic 7y ago
Wait.. Where does the weight go? Apart from water - sweated and breathed out, which you say isn't all that's happening.
- defective 7y ago
  Most weight your body actually loses (as in not water) is lost as carbon in the CO2 you exhale.
  - balfirevic 7y ago
    Right, but that's just regular metabolism. In the context of this thread, parent poster claimed it wasn't all that's happening and it certainly won't account for 0.5 lbs of mass lost during the night (mentioned elsewhere in this thread).
    - RobertRoberts 7y ago
      It seems I have to be careful about my statements. I lost .5 lbs of mass (on average it was over this like .57 lbs) every day for 30 days. Some days I lost more some less. What I found was that during the day I gained weight consistently from morning till night. I drank water, ran (2 miles then later 3 miles around 4:30pm) ate food (one meal at around 5:30pm), sweated on my runs, bowel movements were every couple days, urinated multiple times a day. But, consistently gained weight morning -> night. I measured my weight Morning > noon > evening (before meal) > night (before sleep). Only in the morning after urination did weight leave my body. Otherwise is consistent gains. People want to claim "it's all water", but that is nonsense, as I lost 15+ lbs that month. So, during a few days, I stayed up all night, no extra water in the night, no urination until morning to see if it was just that 8 hour period (approx) that caused the final loss of total weight to get me to my lowest measurement of the day. Nope. I had not lost any (or negligible weight, I was still at or near night weight). After I slept, (I'd wake in the afternoon) urinate, and I was back to my expected morning weight - with the average loss of .5 lbs. Sleep has an effect on the processing of urine related to the expulsion of waste and the metabolism of fat. That is my theory. A lot of people here are calling this asinine, so be it. If you are up for experimenting, weigh yourself in the morning and night for a week. Then stay up all night and weigh yourself in the morning, then after you get a nap. Then tell me I am crazy and there's nothing to this effect.
johnmaguire2013 7y ago
You can lose "true" weight during the day, while still gaining enough weight from food/water to offset the previous night's fasting and weight loss. In other words, it's not that you don't lose weight until you sleep: it's that you can't differentiate whether you have net lost weight or gained weight until you have similar conditions of measurement.
- RobertRoberts 7y ago
  Yes, thank you, this is a better way of describing the process that I observed. But I would add to this, that it seems that you can lose some net lost weight from not having enough time sleeping for the process to finish. Maybe like how a sceptic tank gets filled and drained repeatedly, but only gets drained at night (for an equal analogy). And if there's not enough night (sleep), it can't drain completely, therefore retaining waste. It would explain also why you get sick if you don't get enough sleep... something else to ponder.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
specialp and johnmaguire2013 are correct. 'real' weight loss occurs very slowly in comparison to the ways your body can shed or accumulate water. In a week you're not likely to lose more than a 'real' pound unless you're being pretty extreme about your calorie intake or expenditure, but you can fluctuate by easily 5 pounds of water/food weight in a day. Source: tracking my calories and weight for the better part of a decade and having lost and kept off 150+lbs.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Exactly. I “lose weight” every time that I take my blood pressure pill (a diuretic) and “gain weight” when I don’t. My weight fluctuates 5 pounds in a given day based on how much I eat, drink, workout etc.
  - jobigoud 7y ago
    I wish people would use percentage of weight or BMI points instead of pounds. For one it would save others a conversion, and secondly it would make things comparable. 2.2 Kg in a day seems impossible to me, but for someone else it might be nothing. My max fluctuation is about 1.5%, it happens when there are several factors combined.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      BMI is also flawed. According to my BMI, I’m “morbidly obese”. I’m 30 pounds overweight. However when I was 10 pounds less than I am now, I was objectively tone, muscular, and had a body fat percentage of around 10%. Even now, no one (including doctors) look at me and would say that I’m “obese” and need to lose that much weight. At 10 pounds lighter I was wearing 28 regular cut pants. Where would I lose the weight from? I’m 5’5.
kerkeslager 7y ago
I'm going to try to reiterate more clearly what your parent comment was saying: Your experimental methodology is flawed because it fails to control for water loss. This isn't negligible: in the summer when it's hot and I sweat a lot, I can easily drink a 1 liter Nalgene bottle in the morning, about 2 pounds of water. It's likely that what you've measured is simply the slow loss of water through perspiration and exhalation throughout the night. I guess technically this is weight loss because you do weigh less when dehydrated, but it's not loss of fat weight, which is what I think most people mean when they say weight loss. Weight fluctuations throughout the day due to water/food intake and waste excretion/water loss dwarf any actual fat loss, so I don't think weighing yourself throughout the day is a viable method of determining when fat weight is lost during the day.
- RobertRoberts 7y ago
  >Your experimental methodology is flawed because it fails to control for water loss. I absolutely tested for water loss. What I found was that some extra (?) water retained until we sleep. And that something happens with fat or other processing that occurs during sleep. Again, I charted my weight carefully multiple times a day over a month. Carefully testing when weight loss occured. I Recorded my diet as well as my exercise. I lost .5 lbs of fat (on average) every day for a month. The question I found interesting was "when/how do we actually lose weight?" It has to come out of our body somehow. And it's not through excrement, it's through urine. The reason I know this is because when doing my test I ate one meal a day, and I would sometimes not have a bowel movement for a few days, yet still have eaten a few meals and still lost weight.
  - ska 7y ago
    > It has to come out of our body somehow. Mostly you breath it out, excepting water.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    > I absolutely tested for water loss. No, you didn't. How do you think you tested for water loss? Briefly, you'd need to separate out the water for your urine, weigh that, then separate out the water from your feces, and weigh that, and spend all your time in a sealed chamber and monitor the humidity of that chamber to see how much water you're exhaling and sweating out. I'm guessing you did exactly none of this. Oh and after all that, there's the confounding fact that a small part of fat's mass is metabolized into water, so even measuring all your water excretion doesn't actually allow you to separate how much of that water is water you took in, and how much of that water is the result of fat metabolism. > And it's not through excrement, it's through urine. Given urine is mostly water and you didn't control for water loss, your result is exactly what I'd expect from water loss and not fat loss. Look, do you really think you're the first person to research this? There's a whole subfield of biochemistry devoted to this, with more brains, equipment, and funding than you have. You're right that weight mostly doesn't come out through excrement: most of the mass of burned fat is exhaled as CO2[1][2][3]. [1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141216212047.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141216212047.h... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-30494009 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-30494009 [3] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/weight-loss-fat-cells-what-happens-burned-scientist-explanation-carbon-dioxide-water-urine-a8258941.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families...
coldtea 7y ago
>I was tracking weight loss over time, so it's not just water loss. I tracked weight multiple times a day to see when weight loss actually happens. And what you saw was just repeated measurements of water loss each morning, plus some actual weight loss, when the real weight loss happened 24/7 but was too spread for you to notice. >If it was simple dehydration then sleeping would be irrelevant Sleeping is irrelevant (it is needed to be less stressed, but it's not the time you "actually lose weight" any more than any other time of the day) research has shown.
driverdan 7y ago
Weighing yourself multiple times a day is just tracking noise. It's not a large enough time interval to track tissue loss.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  Once a day is sufficient to establish the trend line in a few weeks.