Even if I don’t eat very much I can gain as much as 6 pounds from a cheat day and then it’s very hard to take it off again. (I lost 22 pounds on IF in Spring of 2021)
52 5’4” SW 173.8 CW 172 GW 135 Started IF 2/1/22
6lbs of body fat means you would have had to have eaten 21,000 calories. That would require a frightening amount of food. Your body is also just not physically capable of producing that much body fat in 24hours.
If you had drank pure olive oil you would have had to drink about 2.7 litres to gain 6 pounds if your body was even capable of storing it (it is not). Olive oil is more than 3 times as calorically dense as a McDonalds burger and is 1.5x more calorically dense than milk chocolate. (so that would be about 4kilos of chocolate (about 8.8lbs). So it should be clear that you did not gain 6lbs of body weight on a single cheat day.
Most of the weight is like water weight, food in your intestines, or inflammation. It will stabilize.
Edit: and as Slycne says below, glycogen.
Let’s talk about glycogen.
See the body doesn’t just store energy as fat. It also puts away some essentially sugar water in the muscles and liver. Each gram of glycogen also comes with 3 grams of water, and the average adult has a couple pounds of this stuff stored away.
When we reduce calories throughout the week the body uses up the glycogen and lets go of the excess water. This is often why folks will see such dramatic results at the start of their dieting. This is one of the key parts of ‘water weight’.
When you have a cheat day, the body will use that surplus, especially surplus carbs, to refill its glycogen storage. But again, this comes with a bunch of extra water. So often this look like these big spikes even if you didn’t eat that much extra.
Once you’re back on a deficit the body will again use up this glycogen and let this extra water go in a few days. So as long as the cheat days are not in so much excess to undo a week’s worth of deficit you’ll still be making progress. It might not look like it on the scale for a few days.
I’ve gained 4-5 Lbs over cheat days & the weight comes down back to normal after 2-4 days. I make sure to drink a lot of water and let my body do it’s thing! I’m also 5’4.. started 185 Lbs, Dec 2020.. am now 141. GW: 130. I do IF combined with Cico. Enjoy ur cheat days & get bak in routine the next day!
In general, cheat meals/days only slow down progress and render the efforts done the other days kinda pointless when you could just reduce the efforts everyday to make it sustainable and… well, sustain it as long as needed.
A big part of what make IF great is that since you eat less often, when you do eat, you should be able to mindfully eat to satiety with a good chance of still being in a deficit. And since meals aren’t supposed to be disapointing, there are less of a need for cheat meals/days. So if you still need those, maybe you are restricting yourself too much for it to be sustainable.
If eating to satiety doesn’t create much of a deficit with your current eating window, you could consider a smaller one / eat less often, that way you could eat even bigger, satisfying meals while eating even less overall. It’s all a question of balance and personal needs and… well, everybody is different so you might need to explore a little bit to find what suits you best.
Hope it helped!
My body does shoot up if I go off plan and although it comes back down, it is slow. That’s totally normal though. There are a lot of factors that cause that gain and most of it is not true fat gain. If I’ve gone off plan I know it’s better for me mentally to stay away from the scale for a few days while my body recovers. I wonder what you’re classifying as a “cheat day”. A huge binge all day of terrible foods? Opening you’re eating time? A burger for dinner after a normally healthy day? That makes a difference too.
I note from one of your replies that your “cheat” is starting your eating window early, and that you don’t count calories. I would say that’s probably your downfall - IF mostly works by reducing the number of calories you take (and supports this by training your body not to constantly want more,) but ultimately you do have to reduce your calories.
Having a specific eating window helps you to keep your calories down. You either have to be strict with your windows (usually leading to fewer calories), or just be strict with the calories. There are lots of people who stick faithfully to their fasting hours but still overeat within their eating window, so you still can’t completely binge within your eating window.
I’m no expert, but my current plan (varies between 18/6 and 16/8) is to stick to the fast and avoid anything obviously calorific. I’m like you - I don’t want to calorie count. The progress is very slow, but it’s coming. The nice thing is that I can still have “naughty” foods, I just have to allow for it. If I have a (small!) muffin early in my window, I’ll make sure my dinner is full of veggies.
IF does give you some flexibility to eat treats, perhaps you don’t need a cheat “day” at all?