Why You Gained 5 Pounds in 3 Days (And Why It's Not Fat)

The scale jumps 3–5 pounds after you start eating more and your brain screams, “I knew it, fat gain!”

Not so fast. We break down the real reasons behind that early spike and show you how to navigate the first two weeks with confidence (instead of fear). 

Why does the scale goe up 3-5 pounds or more so quickly? What's actually happening physiologically, and why do most people reverse course right when they should hold steady?

If you've ever tried to "eat more" (reverse diet) and felt like you immediately started gaining fat, this explains exactly what's going on.

Learn the complete 10-Week Recovery Diet at our live workshop this Tuesday, Oct 21 at noon Eastern. Learn the systematic approach to raising your intake so you can add up to 400-600 calories a day by New Year's without gaining more body fat.

Register here: https://live.witsandweights.com

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Transcript

The Costly Panic Weight Spike

Philip Pape 0:00

Hey everyone, I have another quick bonus episode today because I'm seeing a mistake made over and over again that I think costs people lots and lots of progress. And it has to do with when you try to increase your calories, right? You hear the advice to reverse diet or you have to increase your metabolism and then your scale jumps like three to five pounds. It's probably going to happen. And I want to talk about why it happens so that you have a little more confidence if this happens next time. Now, let's let's pick a number. Let's say you're eating 1200 calories, and some advice tells you, or you've listened to a coach, or if you've listened to a podcast, and they say you need to eat more, right? Maybe you're exhausted, you're feeling the effects of being at such low energy. And so you're like, okay, I need to increase my calories. I'm going to increase them by, let's say, 400 calories to 1600. And then a few days go by and you check the scale and it's up like three or four pounds. This is actually quite common, but a lot of us panic because of the emotional connection to the scale. And you think, okay, look, I knew I would gain fat if I ate more, so I kind of have to step back down to 1200 calories. And it's kind of a cycle, vicious cycle where you're stuck. But if you've ever listened to this show, we talk about water weight fluctuations. You probably know in the back of your head that that it's that it's not fat gain, but are you sure? And will that will that pattern continue? And I think that's where the fear comes from. And when you increase calories, if your body has been suppressed, your metabolism has been adapted for a long time, your body does two things. The first thing it's going to do is replenish your glycogen stores. Glycogen is stored carbohydrate in your muscles and liver. And when you're under-eating, they get depleted. It's the reason that people can lose weight quickly on like a low carb or a keto-style diet because they're immediately immediately depleting a lot of that glycogen. When you eat more, especially more carbs, then they refill. So if you think of the numbers, each gram of glycogen holds about three to four grams of water. So if you restore 200 grams of glycogen, that's another six to eight hundred grams of water coming with it, which is two pounds of not fat, but water. The second thing that happens is the increased food just means you have more in your digestion, but digestive system in your gut, right? You're literally carrying more food and water because you're eating more. And then that shows up on the scale. And so the three to four pound jump you might see in the first few days is glycogen, water, gut content, zero fat gain. You're not going to gain that fat that quickly because you would have to overconsume by 3,500 calories just to gain one pound of fat. Most people aren't quite understanding this or are too emotionally tied to the scale. And then it causes you to reverse course. And that's the mistake I'm talking about. Because if you had held steady for let's say, I'll say seven to 14 days, it varies by individual, you probably would see your weight stabilize, and then you could have assessed from there. And even if it didn't stabilize, if it kept going up there, that could be information in and of itself. But if you panic, if you cut back, if you keep your metabolism where it is, you're not going to find that out and find out what to do. So this is why a recovery diet, right, when you're coming out of this suppressed state, requires being systematic about it. You can't just wing it. You have to understand the physiology behind it. What is, you know, normal adaptation versus fat gain? When do you hold steady versus when do you increase? Like, is it a plateau or not, or do we have to wait a bit? How do you use biofeedback to confirm that you are actually recovering? Because those are going to be more important than the scale. And then what happens when life disrupts all of this because life is messy, right? So it's not just about adding calories, is kind of my point. It's based, it's doing all the things together based on your body's response. And I'm actually teaching that complete protocol this Tuesday, October 21st, noon Eastern, in a live workshop. It is our monthly workshop in Physique University. We have every month either a workshop or a challenge. Like next month, we're going to do a finish strong challenge for the end of the year. But this Tuesday, it's a 10-week recovery diet workshop. You're going to learn the assessment that you can perform on yourself. It's like a little quiz or test that tells if you're ready to start or what needs to be adjusted so that you're ready to recover. A week by week roadmap based on how your weight is changing. So it actually says if this, do this over 10 weeks. And then how to monitor your body feedback to know if you're recovering or if you're kind of in a rut. And then, of course, a playbook. I always include troubleshooting like here are the common issues and then what you do. If you have this problem, this is what you do. And all that's going to be crammed together into a 20-page workbook that you get along with a whole bunch of other goodies. I'm not going to spend time explaining here. I think the workshop alone is plenty worth the price of admission. It's $27. Registration closes tomorrow night, Monday. If you're stuck at low calories, if you want to rebuild that metabolic capacity without using reverse dieting or guesswork, but really to do it the right way, join us Tuesday. Link is in the show notes or go to live.witsandweights.com. Again, that's live.witsandweights.com. I'll see you there.