I literally gain 3-5 pounds if I go to dinner and skip a day of fasting. Does anyone else have this big of a consequence?
Yes this is normal because of how glycogen work.
When we’re losing weight we’ve depleted all the glycogen in the body, the average adult has a few pounds of it in the liver and muscles. Glycogen is essentially sugar water. The important part is each gram of glycogen comes with three grams of water. So when you have a day of surplus the body restocks on glycogen, which also retains that extra water. This is how the scale can jump several pounds without eating the thousands of extra calories it would require, in addition to other normal body weight fluctuations.
Once you get back on the deficit the body will use up the glycogen and let go of the extra water a few days later.
I found that weighing myself daily can be demotivating at times. I find more peace of mind when I only weight myself once a week. Also, take a couple body measurements, and use those to track progress rather than just weight. Measurements can tell a different story.
Yup. It’s just food stored in your stomach. This is why its very important to weight yourself daily, so you can look back. Sure, you might be 3lbs heavier that yesterday, but you are still 10lbs lighter than a month ago.