“Your skin is the largest organ in the body and absorbs fluid easily,” says Dr. Keith Kantor, a leading nutritionist and CEO of the Nutritional Addiction Mitigation Eating and Drinking (NAMED) program. “After a swim or a shower, your body can absorb 1 to 3 cups of water, increasing your true weight by a few pounds.”
Weighing yourself after a shower can also affect the scale as your skin absorbs moisture and your hair weighs more when wet. You weigh yourself at different times. Because so many factors affect your weight throughout the day, it doesn't make sense to weigh-in at varying times on different days.
They say it's best to weigh yourself after you've gone to the bathroom (and eliminated any extra water weight). To add complexity, they recommend weighing in before you shower, eat, drink, or get dressed for the day.
“Most stool weighs about 100 grams or 0.25 pounds. This can vary based on a person's size and bathroom frequency. That said, poop is made up of about 75% water, so going to the bathroom gives off a little bit of water weight,” says Natalie Rizzo, MS, RD.
You have lost water weight due to the heat from the shower. Your body is trying to keep its temperature constant and attempts to do that by evaporative cooling (which doesn't work quite as well in the humid environment of a shower).
The easy answer is yes; drinking water affects weight significantly enough to be seen on a scale immediately. Usually, in a 24-hour period, you will cycle through this process of gaining water weight and losing water weight and have either a net loss or stable weight for the day. What about weight loss?
It is normal to lose weight overnight, meaning that your weight in the morning will often be lower than your weight in the evening. The amount of weight you lose overnight will depend on how much you sweat at night and how dehydrated you are in the morning.
But for those of you who aren't squeamish, we'll explain. When you have a bowel movement, you're emptying your colon. Depending how much you go, that visit to the ladies' room can add up to half a pound a day—hence the reason you feel so much lighter after you poop.
You should step on the scale first thing in the morning. That's when you'll get your most accurate weight because your body has had the overnight hours to digest and process whatever you ate and drank the day before.
Muscle is denser than fat, and as it is more compact within your body, as you gain muscle mass, you end up looking thinner, no matter your physical weight. So, if you've been doing a lot of strength training lately, it's likely this is the reason that you're looking fantastic but not dropping those numbers.
A person should also avoid weighing themselves on the days before their period. During the week leading up to menstruation, hormones cause fluctuations in weight. These fluctuations can temporarily affect weight measurements.
Fighters gain weight after weigh-ins because they already weighed that much. It's easier to gain weight back than it is to build new muscle, fat, or even hold more water. Fighters typically walk around near the weights they compete at – a 155lbs boxer only weighs that much for moments.
Weigh yourself first thing in the morning
That means after you pee, but before your morning cup of joe. Why morning? Because it's consistent. It's also the time your weight is least likely to be affected by food (making you weigh more) or exercise (making you weigh less).
Clothing. Wearing clothing while weighing yourself can add up to two pounds—more if you're wearing shoes. Again, this isn't a big deal if you consistently weigh yourself wearing the same thing, but since our clothes vary with our moods and seasons, it's best to go without when you step on the scale.
If you don't feel like showering after a workout, you really don't have to. Sweat is sterile, so it's actually OK to skip a post-workout shower, Xu says. "The sweat you produce isn't filled with bacteria or anything that's going to be dangerous," Xu tells SELF.
“On a day you don't eat for 24 hours, you're guaranteed to be losing a third or half a pound of non-water weight that's mostly from body fat,” Pilon told Global News. “The truth is intermittent fasting is a way to create slow, steady weight loss.”
As your body metabolizes fat, fatty acid molecules are released into the bloodstream and travel to the heart, lungs, and muscles, which break them apart and use the energy stored in their chemical bonds. The pounds you shed are essentially the byproducts of that process.
In order to lose 5kg in a week, you would need to create a calorie deficit of approximately 35,000 calories. This would require burning an additional 5,000 calories per day or cutting 5,000 calories from your diet each day.
Most people need significantly more than 1,200 calories a day. Therefore, individuals who cut their daily intake to 1,200 calories can expect to lose some weight.
On average, a single strand of hair typically weighs between 0.000015 ounces, or about 0.0004 grams. This is much lighter than many people might expect, particularly given how strong and durable our hair can be. The weight of your hair will vary significantly on its length and porosity.
The authors concluded that women can subtract 1.75 pounds and men can subtract 2.5 pounds for their clothing (without shoes). So next time you're getting weighed in a clinical setting, be sure to mention to whomever weighed you to subtract 1.75 pounds for your apparel.
It's highly unlikely that you would lose any significant amount of weight after a haircut. Hair is made up of dead keratin cells and does not weigh much compared to other parts of your body.