What does it mean when you lose or gain “water weight”. Is it as simple as you’ve drank a lot of water, then pee it out? Does that count as weight?
In: Biology
Water is amount is quite dynamic in the body. If you drink a lot of fluids, you will transiently increase your mass, until you lose the water that is (urination, sweat, breathing, etc). If you have an intense cardio workout, you will lose a lot of water due to sweating and breathing. But you will quickly replenish it as you drink again (your body will know it’s missing fluid and it will retain it next time you drink). If you start routinely working out, you will also have long term adaption where your body retains more fluid than it usually does in order to increase blood volume (15% or so if I recall correctly). But when people refer to water weight they’re usually referring to a quick weight loss, too quick to reflect loss of fat tissue. Some people have intense diets where they cut down food drastically to one meal per day and not much of it. Food also contains water, a lot of it, and these people usually lose weight quickly in the beginning, that’s likely water loss because they don’t compensate for the reduced food intake by drinking. And usually when people have diets they also switch to healthier food, and in general healthier food has less salt (like home cooked food vs junk and fast food). Less salt = less water retention, so you lose even more water. That’s why initial weight loss is not indicative of the efficacy of a diet and you need to weight till you reach the plateau phase followed by the ever so slow linear phase before you can judge a given diet.
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