mosiarmstrong's Journal, 18 Sep 21

Be careful of the 🍱 Bento.🤣 

Yup I am going through that right now after eating salted roasted pistachios lol 

Everytime someone post a weight gain, it's always followed by the comment "too much sodium". how do you know the processed food isn't just sitting in your gut. while your body struggles to digest it? 

Umm 🤨 I am just guessing here that sodium retains water. So if you know what foods has the highest content carbs, sodium etc. we can pin point what could be the culprit. No meed to stress about it. This is our safe space to journal. These are popular quotes “I’m not a doctor”, “let it go, let it go”. “Keep calm and carry on “. 

My point was... How do you know its the sodium? Why assume it's sodium or water gain at all. Why dont you see people saying something like "maybe youre low on potassium?" Or "did you sleep good last night" or "when's the last time you poo'd" Or something like that lol.  

There’s some posts like that especially the bowel movement one. I had posted that one hehehe 🤭. Also the hormone thing for women when it’s that time of the month or coming towards the time of the month.  

@rickstewart1983: that's a fair point. I'm not trying to demonize sodium or anything but its effect on my weight fluctuations is something I've studied and watched closely for the past several months. I always, always show a weight gain when I eat high-sodium foods. And of course it varies based on how many salty dishes I eat and how much in each meal. Yesterday I had 3 fried buffalo wing drummettes (not the whole wing), and a slice of cheese pizza weighing 92g for dinner. Trust me, that wasn't that much. Lunch was 135g (about 4.7 oz) of the leftover teriyaki chicken, 64g of stir fry veg and 109g (3.8oz) of noodles. I mention the amounts because I didn't eat a high volume of food, and I didn't eat all that at once. Plus, I ate dinner about 4 hours before I went to bed. That's why I'm close to 100% sure it wasn't just the food sitting in my stomach. I've definitely had that happen before when I'd crush 2 lbs of French fries and 4 fried wings from the Chinese place, on top of 5 donut holes AND a slice of cheesecake back during the times when I'd binge a lot. Plus I wasn't really bloated and my stomach didn't have that tight feeling like I usually have when I over eat. I hope that makes sense as to why I felt very strongly that it was all the salty food. As an aside, I just drank 32 oz of water and went to the bathroom. As an experiment, I went on the scale and my weight went down exactly 1 lb from this morning.  

@rickstewart: also, you make a great point about pooping :-) I always go to the bathroom first thing in the morning after I wake up before stepping on the scale to make sure it's not waste weight affecting the number. I understand all those things affect weight but I also know my body, which is why I can confidently say I'm sure the salt is the culprit. I don't really know anything about how low potassium affects your weight so I won't speak to that. Maybe my potassium is low, who knows? I don't know what my numbers are so I'm willing to at least acknowledge that it may be a factor. Appreciate your comments though. I think it gives us all something to think about. 

@XtyRn: damn those pistachios!!! :-)  

@XryRN: all great points about hormones in women etc. My wife always gains weight during her time of the month. I also understand that some people are more sensitive to carbs and that might cause weight gain too? Not sure how it works because I haven't studied the phenomenon or anything. Again, I just know my body and I know how it responds when I'm a bad boy and I eat all the delicious, bad-for-me foods. I really learned not to stress out about overnight weight gain though, especially when I've been eating well more than about 80% of the time. I understand that it's not fat gain because all through that, I still remained in a calorie deficit and I know I didn't eat an extra 3600 cal or whatever the number is. I think the average person trying to get fit/lose weight gets hung up on the number on the scale too much when it really only tells you a small fraction of the story. It took some doing but I'm really starting to focus on more non-scale victories like if I'm looking more cut, or how my clothes fit, or if my muscle mass is increasing (my scale measures that). I'm only about 5 weeks into a 52-week transformation so I'm really excited to see where this all takes me by the time I get to that goal. Cheers!