Your weight can fluctuate for natural reasons. Sometimes, however, there are specific areas in which you changed your habits. If you appear to have gained weight over the past week, these could be some of the reasons.
Your period is coming around
Each month, when your period is coming around, you probably feel a little heavier than normal. It isn’t your imagination — the changes in estrogen and progesterone that come with the onset of the menstrual cycle can lead to gaining water weight. Fortunately, the added bloat goes away once your period winds down.
You didn’t weigh yourself often enough
If you didn’t find the time to step on the bathroom scale often enough in the past week, chances are that you allowed yourself to slide a little bit on your weight-loss goals. Weighing yourself every day is important to keeping your mind on what you need to do.
You slept late
A study done by the University of California in Berkeley tracked more than 3,000 young people and found that for every hour of sleep that they lost, they gained more than 2 pounds. If you’re up watching TV late each night, then, you’re doing your weight-loss plan a disservice.
You didn’t drink enough coffee (or you drank too much)
Coffee is good for weight loss; it helps increase your body’s rate of metabolism. According to a study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. However, too much coffee causes insulin resistance, which goes on to cause the body to increase its storage of fat.
You skipped meals
A carefully planned diet that lowers your calorie intake is one thing; skipping meals is another. If you’re working too hard and don’t have enough time for your meals, your body begins to believe that there are food shortages looming, and begins to conserve its energy. This means that your body fails to burn fat. The fact that skipping meals causes nutritional deficiencies adds to the problem. Poor nutrition can have unpredictable effects on your body weight.
You’re on medications
Beta blockers, antidepressants, steroids, and birth control pills are among the many kinds of prescription drugs that affect how your body retains fluids. The effect can take over within a few weeks of starting on your prescription. The idea, however, should not be to drop medications that you need. Instead, you should simply ignore the problem because it is only water weight retained.
You focused too much on your healthy habits
From being regular to the gym to eating healthy, healthy lifestyle choices, in some people, have the effect of an easing of the amount of conscientious attention paid to their snacking. Their good habits make them feel so healthy that they decide to reward themselves when it comes to picking up a bag of chips. If this is you, you need to pay attention to how your healthy habits play mind games on you.
You ate while standing up
Walking meetings at work may be a good idea, but not if they are walking lunch meetings. Studies have shown that when you stand up and walk around while eating, you end up knocking back 30 percent more — not at that very meal, but at the next meal. It’s because your body doesn’t equate standing meals as real meals. Feeling deprived, it tries to make it up at the next meal.It can be hard to predict how the mind and body react to the things you do. These ideas, however, can get you started at understanding these specific qualities, and help you work around them.