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What exactly is water weight?

by Monica Reinagel, MS, LDN

Hai-Ting asks: “What exactly is water weight? It’s a phrase that gets thrown around a lot. I would love to know what we are talking about. How and why do we gain and lose so much water?”

If you are in the habit of getting on the scale every morning (a practice which is linked with healthier body weights over the long-term) you’ve probably noticed that your weight can vary wildly from day to day—in ways that sometimes seem unfair. “How could I have gained two pounds overnight? I had a salad for lunch and skipped dessert at dinner. I should weigh two pounds less!”

It’s tempting to think whatever we did or didn’t eat yesterday should show up the next day on the scale. But it doesn’t work that way. As Dan Ariely pointed out in our recent interview, it takes a lot longer for dietary changes to result in fat loss (or gain). If you gain or lose three or four pounds overnight, most of that is probably due to water weight.

This article is also available as a podcast. Click below to listen

Where is Water Weight Stored

Our bodies contain a lot of water, but we’re not just giant water balloons. Water is held in a variety of places in the body. Some of these don’t change very much from day to day. Our bones, for example, are about 30% water but that stays relatively constant.

Other compartments, such as our stomachs and bladders, can hold relatively large amounts of water, but only on a very temporary basis. And here’s the thing: Water is heavy. A pint of water (or, for that matter, beer) weighs about one pound.

If you were to weigh yourself, drink 16 ounces of fluids and immediately weigh yourself again, you’d have “gained” one pound in about 15 seconds. A couple of hours later, a lot of that water will be collected in your bladder. Weigh yourself before and after visiting the bathroom and you can enjoy the thrill of “losing” up to a pound in 15 seconds.

Obviously, the amount of fluid in your stomach and bladder have a fairly profound (yet meaningless) effect on your body weight at any given moment. But that’s not the only thing we’re talking about when we mention water weight.

In between the stomach and the bladder, things get a bit more complex. As it passes through the small intestines, the water we consume is absorbed into the bloodstream and distributed throughout the body’s organs and tissues, where it is used for all kinds of things, everything from lubricating our  membranes to metabolizing nutrients to maintaining electrolyte balance. All of these activities affect the amount of water retained in our bodies.

Water is a major component of perspiration, for example. Heavy sweating can cause us to lose a lot of water weight in a relatively short period of time. Run a few miles on a hot day and jump on the scale before rehydrating and you’ll see how much water you’ve lost. (You probably won’t, however, see how much fat you burned.)

Water is also involved in lots of different chemical reactions. Some reactions—such as converting carbohydrates into glycogen—require water. Others—such as breaking down proteins—release water.

Sudden changes in the protein or carbohydrate content of your diet can either lock up or mobilize relatively large amounts of water.

How Diet Affects Water Weight

If you dramatically reduce the amount of carbohydrates you are eating, your body will be forced to dip into the glycogen stored in your muscles and liver for energy. As the glycogen is used for energy, a lot of water is released into the bloodstream and routed to the kidneys for elimination. Obviously, this has nothing to do with fat loss but it does give low-carb dieters a big sense of accomplishment during the first few days of their diet.

Even if you don’t go low carb, suddenly reducing your calorie intake will also force the body to use its glycogen stores and result in some water loss. The effect is just not quite as dramatic as it is with a low carb diet.

This effect is also completely reversible. As soon as you start eating more calories or carbohydrates, your body will use some of those carbs plus some water to restock its depleted glycogen energy stores, leading to an increase in water weight.

But these sorts of changes in water weight don’t represent changes in your fat stores. That’s going to have more to do with how many calories you take in and burn over the long term, not how many of them are from carbohydrates.

Although it takes a lot longer to lose fat than it does to lose water, there is a pretty big consolation prize: The resulting changes in your body size (and how your jeans fit) are much more durable. Having a piece of bread with dinner won’t undo them by morning.

How Kidneys Regulate Water Retention

Eventually, all the water in your body passes through the kidneys, which regulate how much water is either retained or eliminated in order to maintain the right amount of fluids and concentration of electrolytes. This process is directed by hormones released by the pituitary and adrenal glands.

Any health condition that affects the kidneys or the glands that secrete these hormones can cause this delicate balancing system to go awry—causing excess water retention. Less alarming but still frustrating is the temporary water retention that many women experience before their period, due to fluctuations in hormone levels.

What Foods and Nutrients Reduce Water Retention

There’s not too much we can do about our hormones. But there are a few dietary factors that we can control. Eating a lot of salt, for example, can cause the kidneys to keep more water in circulation in order to dilute the extra sodium. Reducing your sodium intake (or, paradoxically, increasing water intake) can help reduce water retention.

It may also be useful to increase your intake of green vegetables. In addition to being high in water, they are also good sources of magnesium and potassium, which may help relieve water retention. In particular, dandelion greens and asparagus are known to have diuretic properties.

As tempting as it might be, I don’t recommend using diuretic supplements or teas to get rid of water weight, except as directed by a health practitioner. Overdoing it with diuretics can lead to dehydration and electrolyte imbalances, which can be potentially serious.

The Quick and Dirty on Water Weight

Water weight can come and go for a variety of reasons, but most are temporary and not related to long-term changes in body fat. Don’t get too freaked out (or impressed) by big swings on the scale. A moving average calculator can help smooth out those meaningless ups and downs and reveal what’s really going on with your weight.

What’s the best diet for your genetics?

by Monica Reinagel, MS, LDN

Personalized nutrition is getting a lot of attention these days. Companies will analyze your DNA and tell you what foods and supplements you should and shouldn’t eat based on your genetic profile. But a huge new study throws cold water on the idea of matching your diet to your genetics.  Participants with a “low-carb genotype” (who would hypothetically do better on a low-carb diet) were no more successful on a low-carb diet than on a low-fat diet. The same was true for those with a “low-fat genotype.”

The study also found that, overall, low-carb diets are no better or worse than low-fat diets at producing weight loss.  Those are the two headlines from this study. (Examine.com has produced an excellent detailed analysis of the study, if you want to take a deeper dive.)

But there is so much more here that warrants mentioning. Here’s what really got my attention:

None of the study participants were asked to count or limit their calories. Instead, both groups were told to limit their intake of added sugars, refined flour and junk food, and to eat lots of vegetables and whole foods. And that was enough to produce weight loss.  In other words, when you pay attention to the quality of your food choices, the calories often take care of themselves. And when you’re eating a healthy, whole foods diet, low carb is no more effective than low fat.

[bctt tweet=”When you pay attention to the quality of your food choices, the calories often take care of themselves. ” username=”nutritiondiva”]

The other thing that’s notable about this study is that the participants received intensive coaching throughout the year. They were taught how to choose foods that kept them satisfied for fewer calories.   They were encouraged to avoid distracted eating and eat more mindfully. Making sustainable changes was a bigger priority than achieving fast weight loss.  (All of this will sound very familiar to participants of  the Weighless program, our 12-month coaching program for sustainable weight loss.)

[bctt tweet=”Making sustainable changes matters more than achieving fast weight loss.” username=”nutritiondiva”]

At the end of the study, the most successful participants reported having changed their relationship to food. And that’s ultimately what’s required for permanent weight loss. Not calorie or fat or carb counting.

Click here to learn more about the Weighless Program.

Is IV Nutrition Worth a Try?

by Monica Reinagel, MS, LDN

Will IV Therapy improve your health?

If you have a confirmed deficiency of a specific nutrient, or a condition that prevents you from absorbing nutrients  delivered orally, IV nutrition might make sense. And if you were severely dehydrated, an IV can be an efficient way to deliver fluids.

But I have grave reservations about these “IV therapy” clinics that are springing up and pumping people full of nutrient cocktails.  Although it’s promoted as everything from a hangover cure to energy booster to anti-aging therapy, most of the claims are not supported by evidence and may even be unsafe.

IV fluids may help relieve some of the acute symptoms of a hangover (many of which are due to dehydration), but won’t counteract the other harmful effects of drinking too much. More questionable are the alleged benefits of the vitamins, minerals, and other compounds used in IV therapy.

Supplying nutrients in excess of the body’s needs will not make your cellular processes work better or faster, any more than over-filling your gas tank will make your car run faster.

High doses of antioxidants can even shut down the body’s own antioxidant mechanisms.

There are also general risks associated with any IV therapy, such as infection or hematoma.

Those administering IV therapy may be well-meaning but uninformed, or they may simply be out to make a buck. Given the lack of regulation and oversight (and research), I think I’d steer clear.

What is the Sirtfood Diet?

by Monica Reinagel, MS, LDN

Will there ever be an end to silly new diet trends?

The Sirtfood Diet is the latest to cross my desk and, boy, is it a doozy.

The premise is that certain foods increase the activity of sir ruins in your body. Sirtuins are special proteins which allegedly have all sorts of beneficial effects, everything from fighting inflammation to preventing cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, all the way to reversing aging and extending lifespan.

The Sirtdiet protocol consists of lots of green smoothies and other meals made from “sirtfoods,” which include capers, celery, cocoa powder, green tea, kale,  parsley, onions, strawberries, turmeric, and walnuts.

Nothing wrong with those foods.  But there is a lot wrong with this diet.

First, the claims for this diet are not only unproven, they verge on the preposterous. Although sirtuins are an area of promising research, what we don’t know about them far exceeds what we do know about them.

Even if we did know more about how sirtiuns promote health and longevity, the idea that these foods will increase sirtuin activity is pure speculation.  These foods are rich in poloyphenols, compounds that might boost sirutin activity. Then again they might not. We’ll have to get back to you on that.

The other problem with this diet is that it is designed to produce extreme (and extremely fast) weight loss. As you’ve heard me say before, dieting is counter-productive. Extreme dieting is extremely counter-productive.

I bet a lot of these so called “sirtfoods” are already in your diet. Stay the course! And some of the “sirtfood” recipes I’ve seen look delicious. Feel free to add them to your repertoire. But the actual Sirtfood Diet protocol? I’d pass on that if I were you.

Is Tofu a Good Source of Calcium?

by Monica Reinagel, MS, LDN

Karen writes: “How would you rate tofu as a source of calcium? Is it bioavailable?”

Calcium sulfate is often used as a coagulant in the tofu making process. It’s added to the soymilk to get it to set into a solid form. The more coagulant you add, the firmer the tofu gets. As a result, firm tofu will contain more calcium per serving.

The exact amount of calcium per serving varies considerably by brand, so check those nutrition facts labels.

Calcium sulfate is also a bioavailable form of calcium which can rival milk as a source.

A cup (8 oz) of milk contain about 300 mg of elemental calcium, about a third of which is absorbed from the digestive tract, providing about 96 mg of calcium.  A three ounce serving of firm tofu can also provide 300 mg of calcium. Despite a slightly lower absorption rate, you’d still get about 93 mg of calcium out of it.

Note that the recommended intake of calcium (1000 to 1200mg per day) is based on the amount of calcium in the food and not the amount of calcium that you absorb. In other words, the recommendations take into consideration the fact that calcium absorption varies from food to food and are based on typical dietary patterns.

Here’s more on calcium absorbability from different foods.

Do phytates fight cancer?

by Monica Reinagel, MS, LDN

Jennie writes:

“I read a book on plant-based diets that which cliams that the phytates in whole grains kill cancer cells. Do whole grains really fight cancer?”

Ironic, isn’t it? In some corners of the nutrition world, the phytates in grains and legumes are reviled as “anti-nutrients.” In other circles, they are heralded as cancer killers.

In fact, both are true. Phytic acid in nuts, whole grains and legumes can bind to minerals like calcium and magnesium and reduce absorption of these minerals.  This effect can be greatly diminished by soaking, sprouting, or cooking these foods. But if you’re not soaking or sprouting your grains, don’t worry.  It’s unlikely to lead to mineral deficiencies.

In fact, the health benefits of phytic acid from whole grains and legumes appear to be much more significant than any downside.  In addition to building strong bones, lowering cholesterol, and removing heavy metals from your body, phytates may help prevent cancer (colon cancer in particular).

It’s worth pointing out that there are a lot of things that kill cancer cells.  But killing cancer cells in a petri dish and impeding the progression of cancer in a living organism are two entirely different things. Phytates are not effective chemotherapy. But they have been found to reduce the effects of actual chemotherapy in cancer patients.

 

How to Motivate Healthy Habits: An Interview with Dan Ariely

by Monica Reinagel, MS, LDN

Our theme all this month is Healthy Habits and this week I spoke with behavioral economist and author Dan Ariely. He’s written several books including his 2008 bestseller Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions and his more recent title Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter. Dan Ariely teaches at Duke University and he’s the founder of the Center for Advanced Hindsight. (Get it?)

This article is also available as a podcast. Click below to listen.

Dan has spent his career trying to understand (and explain to the rest of us) why we make choices that are clearly not in our best interest. Things like buying lottery tickets and selling stocks when they lose value and, of course, eating things that we know are going to keep us from looking and feeling the way we want to.

And, in fact, his latest project is one that focuses on helping people lose weight and get healthier. It’s a bathroom scale called Shapa and the interesting thing about this scale is that it doesn’t tell you what you weigh. Instead, it simply tells you whether your weight is trending up, down, or staying the same. (This is very similar to the approach that we use in our sustainable weight loss program. )

When trying to develop healthy habits, we should focus on rewarding the behavior instead of the outcome.

In a pilot study, Dan’s group recruited volunteers who either weighed themselves every morning on a conventional scale or on the Shapa scale. While the group who used the regular scale gained a bit of weight over the course of the study, the group that used the Shapa scale lost about 1% of their body weight each month.

That may not seem like very much but, as you’ve heard me say before, you are far more likely to maintain your weight loss when you lose it slowly. (It also beats the heck out of slowly gaining weight!)

In our interview, Dan explains the behavioral economics at work and how the insights that led to the Shapa scale can help you form other healthy habits as well.

Here are just a few highlights from our interview.

  • When trying to develop healthy habits, we should focus on rewarding the behavior instead of the outcome.
  • Getting on the scale every morning can help remind you of your intention to eat healthy throughout the day.
  • Our weight can fluctuate by several pounds from day to day. But this has very little to do with actual fat loss or gain.
  • It can take up to two weeks for changes that you make to your diet and exercise to actually translate into fat loss.
  • To get a true picture of how changes to your diet and exercise are impacting your body, you need to look at the long-term trend.

You can learn more about the Dan’s work at his website http://danariely.com

 

This article was originally published at QuickandDirtyTips.com