So, all week I knew I was going out to dinner with my dh and our good friends to our favorite mexican restraunt. I thought all week about if I was gonna eat carbs and go crazy or not. My friend and I love to indulge in the margaritas which is something I havent had in months. So after much thought, I decided to go with a low carb meal (blackened chicken salad with ranch dressing--very little dressing btw) and I had a large AND a small margarita. Our friends came back to the house where I had 2 rum and diet cokes. I woke up this morning with a THREE pound gain. I have to admit, I kept saying I wasn't going to beat myself up about it, and I am trying not to, but THREE pounds?!?!? REALLY??? Thats the downside to low carbing it. You lose fast but you gain it back even faster.

My husband has an awards banquet that we are going to at the end of this month and I wanted to lose 10 pounds before the banquet...I had already lost 5 of those pounds and now I have to lose 8 pounds! grrrrr. I do know this. In the past I would have said "well I already cheated, now I am depressed, so now I am going to eat some more bad stuff" NOT THIS TIME! That was the old me. The new me can enjoy a splurge once in awhile and then get focused and get back on track! I drank a Protein shake this morning and I am working on my water! My the end of this week I will lose those 3 pounds!

I am 8 months out and i low carb it for the most part. I have learned the trick is to have some carbs.... that way ur body doesnt freak and go into fat holding mode when you eat them. I dont have many but once a week i have a meal where i eat what i want and have dessert even..this helps me not to pig out during the week. That below 20 carbs is for the birds..and if i could do that i'd not have had to have lapband for the assistance!! lol i have under 60 usually and that works for me. I avoid bread and rice and potato of course... no alcohol. My snacks if i have them are nuts or South Beach. Dont beat urself up about it... you can and will do it... Good Luck!

I bet 2 of those pounds are sodium!

The thing is with every molecule of carbohydrate your body stores, it also stores a couple of molecules of Water - 2 or 3, I cant remember. So when you low carb you lose spectacular weight, much of which is only water, as your body becomes depleted of carbs. And when you eat carbs, back comes the water weight.

It doesnt mean you've not lost great portions of fat too of course, just that you tend to get this swing in weight thing going on because you are affecting your body's water stores. You havent gained 3lb of fat overnight.

You can also get swings in your weight due to Water weight loss and gain related to exercise. There is a long technical explanation for it that I can go into if people are interested.

Alcohol also slows your weight loss down because it inhibits fat loss.

Bottom line: if you lose or gain a couple of pounds in *one day* water had something to do with it. :rolleyes2:

After a year of observing trends what i've found about eating out at restaurants is that they always always use a lot of salt. Every single time I eat out, the next day my eyes are hooded - i am retaining water from the huge amount of sodium that restaurants notriously use to pump of the flavor of the food. When I cook at home which is 96-7% of the time - I watch how much salt I add. I don't measure but i watch how many dashes I put. I am so used to doing this that I immediately notice how salty food is in restaurants. To counteract the effect I have to drink almost twice as much water to flush out the salt and get rid of water retention. The weight always comes back down.