Dorm summer: -16lb, tuna habit

night shifts here. 16 is real. Early drop is water/glycogen, then it slows. Don’t trust daily scale. I weigh after sleep and average weekly.

Tuna packets got me too. Rotisserie chicken from the grocery is my swap. Pull it, bag it, freeze. Cheaper and roommate stays. Frozen edamame for 3am.

What’s your late-night hunger plan? That’s where my dorm diet fell apart. Vending machine was undefeated until I started pre-portioned snacks.

16 lbs in six weeks is not fake—your dorm chef era is clearly doing something right. The tuna habit made me laugh; my roommate used to call my canned-chicken-and-hot-sauce bowls “crimes against the microwave.” One thing that helped me when dining halls closed early: a tiny rice cooker + frozen edamame + salsa + whatever protein, and I pre-logged the bowl before I was hungry so I didn’t graze.

What was your go-to combo when you wanted something warm? And did you track just calories, or also protein/fiber?

Those lentils + cottage cheese are a sneaky good protein/fiber base.

16 lb in ~6 weeks is steep enough that I’d separate fat loss from fluid/glycogen noise. Packet tuna and canned chicken are sodium-heavy; my scale can swing 2–3 lb on that alone.

What was your average protein and step count? If protein was sub-100 g, some of that loss may be lean mass—waist and strength numbers would clarify.

Also, how many tuna pouches/week are we talking? That’s the variable I’d log if you’re troubleshooting the next plateau.

yo tuna packets + hot sauce was my whole summer once, roommate started eating in the hall lol. the thing that made tracking feel less fake for me was weighing at the same time after my first pee and before coffee, otherwise dorm sodum had me swinging like +/- 3 lbs.

did your 16 come off more during soda-swap weeks or the dining-hall-closes-early tuna weeks? also which flavor packet is least room-clearing, asking for science

I’d gently push back on framing the drop as mostly noise. In my dorm-food era, the scale bounced 3–4 lb from sodium and late meals, but my waist tape kept moving one notch every couple weeks.

So I’d trust fit/measurements more than the daily number. Did your sleep shift when the dining hall closed early?

For me, short sleep made me puffy and snacky, which made fat loss look stalled even when it wasn’t. Also, are you rotating the tuna with other proteins, or is it daily?

The roommate reaction is real, lol.

Tbh curious: did you ever land on a dorm-friendly protein you didn’t hate? I did canned salmon with mustard—smell was worse, honestly, so I switched to a rotisserie chicken from the grocery and a cheap plastic knife.

The real fix was a “second dinner” before the hall closed: cold plate with cottage cheese, cucumber, and everything bagel seasoning, so I wasn’t scavenging at 10pm. Are you still in the dorm this fall, or did you move somewhere with a real kitchen?

That would change the whole cheap-protein calculus.

Random but I obsessively track $/g protein: campus-market tuna pouches were $1.79 for 2.6 oz, the 5-pack came out to about $1.41 each, and bulk canned chicken beat both around $0.95 per 20g. Frozen broccoli was the actual budget hero.

Did you keep a food log during the 16 lb, or just weigh-ins? I’m curious whether your dinners were mostly cold/no-cook, because that changes which proteins are realistic when the dining hall shuts early.