Daily weight variance - as high as 2 or 3 percent?

Question

Of course, your weight varies throughout the day. Your weight is different morning/evening, before/after eating, and so on. Naturally if you are tracking your weight, you should measure your weight at exactly the same time each day.

However, out of curiosity, I have found variations as high as 2 or even more kilograms. (Call it 2% to 3%.)

Does anyone have any specific information on the normal or usual weight variation through the 24 hours of day? Is "two or three kilograms" just wildly too much?

I realise that "extreme weight managers" such as boxers, bodybuilders and so on can deliberately vary their weight by huge amounts in a day or less. However what I am asking about here is the normal variation for a typical person, eating and drinking normally, perhaps doing an hour of aerobic exercise a day.

Anyway - in normal life is a weight variation as high as 2-3 kg per day, unusual? What's the norm?

Answer 1

That's within the normal variance. Several things can contribute to the higher number on the scale including, but not limited to:

• Water retention
• Undigested food in the stomach (fresh after a banquet)
• Mild allergic reaction to food
• For women: menstruation
• mild fat gain
• building muscle (while sleeping)
• feces yet to be expelled

So here's the deal, just because the scale shows a higher number than normal doesn't mean you have gained all that as fat. In fact you might have a couple things working together to give you that 2-4kg swing from morning till evening. Yet, by morning your body has been able to process the undigested food, deal with the mild allergic reaction, build new muscle, etc. As a result the inflated number goes back down.

I think the most common reason for scale swings throughout the day is the different levels of water retention. After a day of insufficient hydration and a lot of salty foods, I'm more bloated than after a day of plenty of water and more sane food choices.