First of all-- tell your hubby to STOP WEIGHING IN EVERY DAY. This gets repeated over and over on these boards, but people seem to do it anyway-- and then get stressed when they see no loss or (god forbid) a gain. Daily weighing-in is pointless and serves no purpose other than to mess with your head.
Hundreds of factors go into determining a person's weight from day to day, so to weigh in every single day is NOT a reliable method of tracking weight loss.
Some examples that can tip the scales in either direction each day:
1. Amount of salt intake (and subsequent water retention)
2. Fluctuating amount of liquids consumed from day to day
3. The weather
4. Constipation/diarrhea
5. Less-than-accurate bathroom scales
6. Monthly hormonal changes (women)
7. Exercise (muscle tissue weighs more than fatty tissue)
Probably the biggest newly-post-op reason for weight loss stalls/little gains is the fact that your body just went through TRAUMA and is trying to HEAL. A body in the process of healing does funny things sometimes-- it can hold on to energy reserves (fat) even if your energy intake (eating) isn't enough to keep things going; it thinks "starvation time" is coming and it does everything it can to conserve its stockpiles. Eventually (a few days to a few weeks) it goes back into fat-burning mode again, but it's one of those things that JUST HAPPENS-- and to most of us, it happens on numerous occasions in our journey.
As for what keeps you from gaining when you increase your food intake-- to understand that, you first have to understand a little bit about
metabolism, which is the process by which your body converts food/fat to energy.
The human body requires a certain amount of energy to keep going throughout the day, and it gets that energy from two sources:
food and
stored fat. If you take in more food in a given day than the body can use, it stores the excess energy as fatty tissue. Keep eating MORE than your body needs, and you store more fat and then you gain weight. Keep eating LESS than your body needs, and it has to use up the energy in the fat storage, and then you lose weight. (Some people's metabolism are faster than others; you know the ones who can eat huge quantities of food and not gain weight, right? Bingo.)
The way we measure units of energy is the CALORIE. How many calories a person needs in a given day varies from person to person (depends on age, gender, activity level, etc.), but a good average is to take whatever your current weight is and add a "0"-- that's roughly how many calories your body needs every day to process normal, routine functions (breathing, digestion, standing, routine walking, etc.)... so if you weigh 150 lbs., your basic intake needs to be about 1500 calories per day. Heavier people burn more calories, because (among other reasons) it's harder to move around a 300-lb. body than a 150-lb. one.
So if I weighed 150 lbs. and ate 1500 calories per day, I wouldn't GAIN weight, and I wouldn't LOSE weight. If I weighed 200 lbs. and ate about 2000 calories per day, same thing.
A pound of fat contains 3,500 calories-- so in order to lose a pound of fat, you have to cut 3,500 calories out of your diet for a week, which translates to about 500 calories per day. You can do this by eating 500 less calories than you need each day, or you can "burn" 500 calories by excercise each day, or you can do a combination of both.
So if I weigh 150 lbs. and consume 1000 calories per day (500 less than needed), I will lose 1 lb. per week. And if I weigh 300 lbs. and I consume 1500 calories per day(1500 less than needed), I will lose 3 lbs. per week.
This surgery works-- at least initially-- because it restricts our intake to very small quantities of food, thus forcing the body to tap into its fat storage for metabolism. In other words, it is IMPOSSIBLE not to lose weight if you weigh 300 lbs. and are only consuming 800-1000 calories per day. Even if you increase your intake by 200 calories, you're still below what your body needs for the day, so it still has to tap its fat reserves and you still lose weight.
BUT, the factors I mentioned above will still affect the day-to-day weight fluctuations. I notice that my weight can go 1-3 pounds in either direction on any given day, and I've learned not to worry about it.
Hope this VERY long-winded explanation helps a little.
3 weeks out - weight gain
55 pounds is amazing
Linear Mode
