title: Unstaged and uncommitted changes to files gone after checking out master branch
body: <p>I really hope someone can help me here. I've Googled and searched on SO endlessly to no avail.</p>
  
  <p>I have a git repo of a project i'm working on. I've been working on many different features, each in a different branch. Today I wanted to change to the master branch and typed the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>git checkout master
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I got a warning stated that it couldn't change to the branch because I had uncommitted files (none of these files were ones I'd made changes to) so <em>as a complete idiot</em> I did the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>git checkout master -f
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I was shocked to find that <code>git status</code> shows absolutely no changed files. Are all my changes gone? When I switch to one of the branches I created, <code>git status</code> shows no changes. I had not committed or staged any of the files I made changes to.</p>
  
  <p>I really hope someone can help me, multiple days of work went into the features I was working on.</p>