Weigh yourself before you have anything to drink or eat: Weigh yourself ONLY before munching on the first meal of the day, however small it may be. Also remember to not drink any fluids before you hop on the scale. The empty stomach number on the scale is what your true weight is.
As a rule of thumb, it's still a good idea to avoid a large, salty restaurant meal the night before your weigh-in. When we eat carbs, we store them as glycogen in our muscles and liver—and every one gram of glycogen is also stashed away with about three grams of water.
The Right Way to Weigh In
Use your scale every morning after you empty your bladder (and before you eat or drink anything), wearing as little clothing as possible. Because you lose water weight overnight, you'll get a lower number, too. Place your scale on a hard, even surface—no carpeting.
Up to 24 hours before weigh-ins, keep fluid intake high. Sipping on nutrition shakes can provide carbohydrates, electrolytes, and energy needed for competition and what the body does not need can be expelled in urine during the 24 hours before the event.
“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.”
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.
Cut water about 18 hours before the weigh in. This means 0 drinking and no watery foods like fruit. From here you will want to match the amount of calories you expect to burn by the weigh in (about 1700 if resting) with only foods such as peanut butter.
You'll get the most accurate reading from your scale if you weigh yourself first thing in the morning after using the restroom and before your breakfast or first chug of water.
For every pound you need just drink a bottle of water before the weigh in. It would also help to eat a heavy meal before as well. Don't go to the bathroom just keep it all in. You can easily put 4-6 pounds of food/liquid in you.
Your weight is affected by your hydration levels. This is true. Coincidentally 1 litre of water weighs 1kg (not a coincidence, that's how the metric system works) so drink a litre of water and you'll weigh 1kg more.
Research suggests that the best day for weekly weigh-ins is Wednesday. You perhaps had weekend splurges, like eating out or drinking alcohol, and may have started eating healthy again in the run-up to hump day.
Digital scales can easily be manipulated. Stick a jug of water or something the weight you need to lose from your actual weight on the scales and let them calibrate to zero with that on them. Then stand on the scales, remove the heavy item and voila. You appear to have lost 3–4 pounds.
48 Hours Before Weigh-In: Slow down on food and liquid intake. 24 Hours Before Weigh-In: Stop drinking, sauna, diuretic supplements. 24 Hours Before Event: High portions of food, re-hydrate body.
Weight decreases as a change in muscle, fat and water. Fat mass doesn't change quickly, but you can lose as much as five pounds of water in a day. The average 24-hour urine loss is about 1.8-4.4 pounds because water is heavy. By contrast, it's virtually impossible to burn off a pound of fat in a day.
The key is to go with a natural, gentle laxative, such as Senokot. Use it the night before the weigh-in, ensuring that you can make your “move” in the morning when you wake up. Hardcore laxatives can be really draining, so don't overdo this either. As I said, you should have been on a nice diet plan up to this point.
If you want lose weight, research shows, the single best predictor of success is monitoring and recording calorie and fat intake throughout the day -- to "write it when you bite it."
“Everyone's weight fluctuates throughout the day, and especially from morning to night,” says dietitian Anne Danahy, MS, RDN. “The average change is 2 to 5 pounds, and it's due to fluid shifts throughout the day.” If you see fluctuations of less than 5 pounds, you needn't worry.
Dehydration takes away the thirst signals and sends hunger signals instead due to which you tend to eat more. “When your body is dehydrated there is a loss of energy and you feel tired. To replenish that energy you tend to eat more and this ultimately leads to weight gain.
“Muscles may retain water after workouts to help repair micro-tears and inflammation that occur from the stress of the workout,” Clayton says. “It's negligible, and the additional water in there goes away in an hour or two. You probably won't see any difference in scale next day.”
Contrary to popular belief, water has no calories, which means it can't make you put on weight.