Have you ever been shocked by overnight weight gain? You step on the scale only to find you gained four pounds overnight?
Does everything from your jeans to your rings feel snug?
Do you try to justify it by thinking it must have been the cookie you had last night, or maybe you stuck to your diet and you’re as flat out puzzled as Annette was when we met during her recent habit analysis call.
The truth is, it is possible to gain four pounds overnight, but it’s impossible to gain four pounds of fat overnight. You would have to eat at least 7000 more calories a day for this to happen.
Whew… Are you feeling relieved?
The #1 reason for overnight pounds is from water weight
Here’s the skinny on water weight.
For most of us water weight shows up as bloating, and puffiness in your extremities, particularly fingers and ankles. Your kidneys are responsible for maintaining a balance of salt or sodium in your body.
If your body is too salty, you will hold on to extra water to dilute the salty water in your body and maintain balance. When this happens, the extra water is stored all over your body in the tissues or between the blood vessels.
When too much salt or sodium causes bloating that’s sporadic, it is usually triggered by diet and or lifestyle.
Five main reasons for water weight gain:
- Eating too many salty foods or drinks. Sodium attracts water and the more sodium in your blood the harder your body will work to retain the water in your tissues
- Dehydration. When your body doesn’t have enough water to function properly it will hold onto every single drop. Reasons you could be dehydrated stem from not drinking enough water during the day, intense workouts before bed, or drinking a lot of alcohol before bed.
- Late night dinners. Eating too close to bed disrupts the digestive process leaving food to sit in your stomach and hold on to water.
- Missing a bowel movement. This causes the waste to sit in your intestines which draws water from your body into your stool.
- Stress. The hormone cortisol not only controls your hunger and fullness but also makes your kidneys retain sodium, thus retaining water for added overnight pounds.
When I explained these reasons to Annette, she still seemed puzzled. She told me that although a few of these reasons could apply to her once in a while, she was very conscientious of her salt intake, rarely drank alcohol, had great bathroom habits, and had created a lifestyle habit of drinking plenty of water throughout the day.
She felt overall her habits of eating a healthy diet were on track with everything she knew. She thought could I really be so stressed?
As a healthy habit lifestyle coach, I see how my clients become complacent with everyday stress. But there is another kind of stress.
Another type of stress is from Food Intolerance or Food Sensitivity.
Which is reason # 6
I asked Annette the following question:
How long have you been on a diet?
She responded, ”As long as I can remember I’ve been on a diet. I eat healthy most of the time, low-fat yogurt and veggie omelets for breakfast, whole wheat bread and pasta, lots of salads, for lunch and dinner and I even use Splenda in 1% milk in my coffee.”
Many people have food sensitivities that are different than allergies. Food sensitivities cause inflammation which causes you to hold on to water, whereas, an allergy causes an allergic immune response in your body, much more severe than a sensitivity.
A food sensitivity is something that happens over a period of time. Think of pinching yourself in the same spot every day. At first, it’s just a pinch, but over time it becomes sore and bruised. Now imagine your gut bruised and sore from a food that you have eaten for years. It might be deemed a healthy food, but what’s healthy for some, may not be healthy for you!
Your healthy diet might be the culprit of overnight weight gain.
So, the healthiest meal can cause two to four pounds of weight gain overnight, if you have a food intolerance. If you eat these same foods on a regular basis they can even cause a disruption in your gut bacteria, which creates even more inflammation and more consistent weight gain.
Overnight weight gain is one of the first clues of possible food intolerance. Other symptoms or clues show up as, bloating, body aches, constipation, fatigue, acne and skin issues, brain fog, and more.
How will you know which food is causing your weight gain?
The easiest and most conclusive way to figure this out is to eliminate all the typical intolerant foods, of which there are seven.
Gluten, dairy, eggs, soy, peanuts, corn, sugar (sugar substitutes)
These all must be eliminated from your daily eating for at least 21 days.
This gives your body enough time to get rid of the inflammation and heal your gut. The best news is you will drop weight very quickly, and feel fabulous as you eliminate the very foods that caused you to gain weight overnight.
After 21 days, your body is reset, and it’s time to play detective and re-introduce these foods one at a time. If you are intolerant, you will have symptoms over the first 2-48 hours and you will know that a food that is healthy is just not healthy for you.
Take my food intolerance quiz to see how you score.
Use the scale as information about inflammation
When I work with my clients, I always want them to get a baseline weight on the scale to start. From the first day forward we want to use the scale as information about inflammation, particularly looking for the water weight gain overnight and symptoms by building awareness of how food makes you feel.
I bet you never realized food could make you feel anything other than full.
You are not alone. The diet mentality has duped you into believing that if you eat “healthy” or “diet” foods you will lose weight and feel great. However, this is not always the case.
We were each created to be unique in every way, not cut out with the same cookie-cutter, so it stands to reason that our diets should not be one-size-fits-all, and yet that is the standard cookie-cutter diet approach. As a no-diet coach, I know diets don’t work long-term. Your diet, and the food you eat, should be as unique as you.
But what if you learned to eat to live with an awareness of the messages your body sends you? You are now empowered to choose what to eat to lose weight and feel amazing!
Imagine a lifestyle where you can eat anything you want because you know how it feels to be in control of your eating habits and have the confidence to eat and achieve your healthiest.
The Ultimate Food Awareness Bootcamp- On Demand
If you want to connect how food is affecting your body, sign up for the Ulitmate Food Awareness Bootcamp-On Demand. This self-guided Bootcamp offers you a new look into how food makes you feel, with the awareness you need to discover your own food intolerances.
Your awareness, combined with the habits on How to eat to move your into a healthier lifestyle with our proven NO-Diet approach. You will find the freedom to choose what to eat to achieve and maintain your healthy weight without ever dieting again.
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