Woodlands Fitness Centre

Water Retention and Weight Loss

Thursday 25th October 2018

If you want to know how water retention can prevent weight loss and even make you look fatter - and what to do about it - then you want to read this article. Unfortunately, there are many ways you can screw up a well-designed diet.

For example...

You can accidentally eat more calories than you should.
You can move your body too little.
You can over-estimate the amount of energy you burn every day.
You can set yourself back with gluttonous "cheat meals."
These common diet mistakes are elementary.

You run through a quick checklist, see where you've gone wrong and you're back on track. What isn't so elementary is the inexplicable weight loss plateau.

Your macros are on point. You're doing plenty of exercise. You're accurately estimating energy expenditure. You're not stuffing your face / getting drunk every Saturday. Yet you're still seeing the same dismal sight in the mirror and on the scale every week.

Well, if you're stuck in such a predicament, don't do what most people do: exercise more and eat less. It will just make things worse.

Chances are the culprit is likely water retention. If you don't know how to deal with it properly, it can fuel an emotional firestorm of anger and frustration. Well, I don't want that to happen to you - so I wrote this article.

Hopefully, by the end of this article you will know what causes water retention, why so many people trying to lose weight struggle with it, and how to bring everything back to normal, including your weight loss.

In a perfect world, we would lose weight in a neat, orderly manner. We would stick to our workouts and meal plans and wake up a little lighter and leaner every day. The weeks would breeze by and before we knew it, we'd be the proud owners of a shiny new set of six-pack abs. But in the real world weight loss can be quite erratic.

You might lose a pound or two per week for several weeks and then - for no good reason - not see any change for a few weeks. Almost as if your body suddenly forgot how to burn fat. Then - for not apparent reason - you might lose four pounds overnight. So what is going on?

How can you maintain what you know is a calorie deficit only to have nothing change for extended periods of time, and then, just as mysteriously, see a dramatic shift in the right direction?

Well, the answer is simple.

The fat you lose through proper dieting can be obscured - both on the scale and in the mirror - by additional water that your body is holding on to.

Many people have heard this but don't realise how significant the effects can be. It's not uncommon to lose upward of 3 to 4 pounds of fat over the course of 3 to 4 weeks without even knowing it due to increased water retention. The fat loss only becomes visible when the excess fluid is flushed out of the body, creating the illusion of extreme fat loss over very short periods.

Why does your body hold onto more water when you diet though? And what can you do about it?

During World War II, Dr. Ancel Keys led a groundbreaking scientific study wherein 36 men willingly submitted themselves to a semi-starvation diet of about 1,500 calories per day for 6 months and hours of hard labor every day.

This become known as the "Minnesota Starvation Experiment" and its purpose was to learn about the physiology and psychology of starvation, and to work out a proper regimen for helping starved war prisoners back to normal diets and metabolic health.

One of the many interesting findings that came from this study was that weight loss progressed in a nice, linear fashion in the beginning. Men lost about 2 pounds per week, every week. After some time, though, it became erratic and unpredictable.

Body weight would remain stagnant for several weeks followed by overnight "bursts" of large amounts of weight loss (3+ pounds). It's physically impossible to burn several pounds of fat overnight - so how is that possible? Well, the scientists looked into the phenomenon further and found the answer: water retention.

What was happening is the men were steadily losing fat even when their weight wasn't changing because as they lost more fat, they held more water. This only became obvious once the excess water was expelled, which gave the appearance of very rapid weight loss. The calorie deficit did systematically reduce body fat levels, but the reductions in total body weight were often counter-balanced by increases in water retention.

There are some weight loss "gurus" who like to claim that this experiment actually "proves" that calorie-based dieting "doesn't work" because subjects weren't losing weight despite being in a calorie deficit. Losing weight isn't the goal. Losing fat is what you should be aiming for.

Fluctuations in weight normally occur randomly - but scientists found that reliable trigger was a dramatic increase in caloric intake. For instance, a 2,300-calorie meal was served to celebrate the half-way mark of the experiment - and researchers noted that many of the men woke up several times to pee that night and, in the morning, were several pounds lighter than the day before.

If you've ever dieted down to a super-lean level (7% body fat and below for men, 16% and below for women), you've probably experienced something similar after doing a refeed day. Why is this, though? What's happening physiologically?

The answer has to do with a hormone called cortisol, which your body produces in response to stress. Research shows that a prolonged calorie deficit dramatically raises cortisol levels. This causes quite a few unwanted effects in the body including increased water retention.

And that's exactly what happened to the Minnesota Experiment patients. The combination of little food and lot of physical activity spiked cortisol levels, which spiked water retention. This is why many people who follow starvation diets and do large amounts of exercise tend to struggle the most with water retention as well.

Scientists found that the feast that triggered the weight drop in the experiment's subjects dramatically lowered their cortisol levels, which explains the large expulsions of water. Again, this is why a refeed day will often produce a weight loss drop. This is also why weight loss will often continue during a period of reverse dieting.

Last week I suggested a few tips for reducing water retention:

1). Don't starve yourself.
2). Don't do hours and hours of cardio every week.
3). Eat large amounts of food occasionally.
4). And it turns out that those are actually effective strategies for shedding excess water because they reduce cortisol levels.

Let's look a bit closer at each as well as a few other ways to reduce water retention.

1). Don't Be Too Aggressive with Your Calorie Deficit

If you want to rapidly lose fat and not muscle, you have to be careful with your calorie deficit. A Moderate Caloric Deficit - 20% of your daily calorie allowance - is the best choice for losing weight successfully. You'll end up maximizing fat loss, minimizing muscle loss, and doing it in a way that is the perfect combination of easy, fast, sustainable, and enjoyable.

There are several reasons for this and one of them is eating too little leads to large increases in fluid retention.

2). Don't Do Too Much Exercise
Yes, this is a weight loss article that's telling you to eat more and move less, because if you're trying to lose weight but are holding a lot of water, you can probably benefit from both.

Specifically, I recommend no more than 3 to 5 hours of weightlifting and 1 to 2 hours of cardio per week when cutting. This is enough exercise to burn large amounts of fat while preserving muscle and minimizing water retention.

3). Adjust Your Sodium and Potassium Intake

You Probably Need to Adjust Your Sodium and Potassium Intake. Why? Because Sodium and potassium intake affects fluid levels in the body.

Sodium is a mineral that brings water into cells, which is why eating large amounts of it can cause a large increase in water retention (or "bloating"!). You've probably seen this the morning after eating a large, salty restaurant meal. This is also why when you sodium intake decreases lead to water retention decreases.

Potassium is another mineral that has the opposite effect on cellular fluid levels. Whereas sodium sucks fluid in, potassium pumps it out. This is why research shows that restricting potassium intake can increase fluid retention.

Chances are your diet is probably very high in sodium and quite low in potassium. Your sodium intake could be at least 50% higher than the recommended levels of about 2.3 grams per day (or 1.5 grams for individuals with hypertension, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease and individuals ages 51 and older).

Your potassium levels could be at least 50% lower than the recommended levels of about 4.7 grams per day. This mineral imbalance contributes to water retention - but it's a lot worse than that. People with the highest ratio of sodium to potassium were twice as likely to die of a heart attack and had a 50% higher risk of death from any cause than people with the lowest ratio. However, people that sweat regularly may need more sodium to offset losses through sweating.

Here are some good rules of thumb for keeping your sodium intake under control:

1). Look at the sodium content of canned or pre-packaged foods. They're often loaded with sodium as a preservative.
2). Avoid deli meat. For the same reason.
3). Cut back on salt and certain seasonings. Use salt sparingly and if needed, use a potassium-based salt substitute.
3). Watch out for mixed seasonings as well, like chili or pizza seasoning. They can contain quite a bit of sodium.
4). Watch out for sauces and salad dressings. Many are very high in sodium.
5). Be wary of cheese. Just one ounce of cheese could have nearly 500 milligrams of sodium.

The best way to raise your potassium intake is to include potassium-rich foods in your meal plans, such as beans, dark leafy greens, banana, potato, squash, yogurt, salmon and avocado, mushrooms. This list is not exhaustive.

You don't have to track sodium and potassium intake forever. Instead, track at first to see what works and what doesn't and then just use common sense in maintaining good habits going forward.

Your sodium and potassium intake will fluctuate. Make sure your intake is stable in the right range most of the time and you'll be fine.

4). Control Your Cortisol

You can reduce cortisol levels by simply taking some time each day to do relaxing things like...

Listening to some good music
Drinking some tea
Taking a nap
Getting a massage
If you want some more strategies for relaxing your mind and body, check out this article.

Losing weight through calories consumed alone is not recommended as it will trigger the fight or flight mechanism within the body, encouraging a reduction in the metabolic rate as well as an increase in the Cortisol Hormone, which is the hormone responsible for fat storage.

However, the combination of a healthy diet and exercise plan will prevent a drop in the metabolic rate, which will also mean that not only weight loss is achieved at a greater rate, but also that it is easier to sustain the weight loss.

Steady state cardio elevates cortisol (a nasty stress hormone!!!) levels in your body. This you do not want. Steady state cardio is also catabolic. Being in a catabolic state is muscle wasting. Lots of steady cardio causes muscle tissue breakdown. You want your body to be in an anabolic (muscle building) state.

5). Get Enough Sleep

High-quality sleep is getting scarcer and scarcer these days thanks to ever-increasing obesity rates, work hours, TV watching, video game playing, and other distractions that keep us up at night.

Sleep is so vital to staying healthy. Sleep deprivation is like the trifecta for weight gain. When you're sleep deprived, your body reacts in different ways on a hormonal level, which can impede weight loss. During times of sleep deprivation, your body is on high alert thinking that there's danger (or else you would be sleeping), so your metabolism slows down to conserve energy. Second, your appetite is higher (due to elevated levels of cortisol) looking for food for more energy. Third, your food choices change. Your body tends to crave high-carb, high-fat foods because they help produce serotonin, which helps calm you down from this aroused state."

One of the many reasons to get enough sleep is inadequate rest increases cortisol levels, which, as you know, increases water retention. Try to get 7-8 hours of sleep per night.

6). Drink More Water

Ideally you should drink about a gallon of water per day, and while we do get a fair amount from food, this requires drinking at least a few liters of water every day. Personally I drink about 1 to 1.5 gallons per day because I lose a fair amount of water through my daily exercise.

If you've been watching your calorie intake, following a sensible workout program, taking supplements etc and you're mysteriously not losing weight then you're probably dealing with water retention issues.

So in summary, don't try to fight fire with fire by further reducing caloric intake and increasing physical output. It's just going to make things worse.