I’d be surprised if you haven’t heard people say something like this dozens if not hundreds of times: “I lost a bunch of weight pretty quick, but it turns out it was all just water weight, and I gained it back as soon as I stopped (*whatever it was).”
If you haven’t heard this, let me give you an example: If I’m eating lactose-free dairy, I am automatically 20 lb heavier. literally 3 days after I stop eating dairy altogether, I will begin to lose weight hand over fist; 10 to 20 days later after cessation of dairy, I will be 20 lb lighter and will stay that way indefinitely.
Why do people say, “Water weight?” It’s because they don’t understand why their body holds onto that weight. The real question that you should be asking is: Yes, this weight comes from water; but why is my body clinging to this extra water?
The answer is simple: inflammation. when you have out of control inflammation, your body needs significantly more water to buffer against that inflammation – think about what happens when you wump your head or get a blister or get a welt on your leg: You get a massive fluid buildup. Your gut’s “water weight” is no different: You are injuring your gut, and in response, the body defends itself with extra buffer fluid.
Simply put: “Water weight” is a misnomer. You are injuring yourself; your body is trying to defend itself from your myopic eating habits – whether that’s factory-farm dairy, petroleum-based elements, GMO foods, etc. Lots of self-harming options these days.
A far more accurate term instead of “water weight” is “Inflammation weight.” While “water weight” is a red herring that throws you off the right track, “inflammation weight” instantly makes you realize that this 20 lbs that you quickly lose isn’t an irrelevant phenomenon – rather, it’s a prerequisite to you actually losing fat.
Strictly speaking, fat weigh is water weight. That’s correct: aside from when you gain fat too quickly and your fat cells split and multiply, you don’t actually get more or fewer fat cells – rather, The fat cells that you do have get larger by storing more water, or, you “lose fat” by decreasing the water storage in your fat cells. (*This is why, strictly speaking, you lose weight through breathing – the weight that is being lost is the excess water that is being reduced via exhaling). Ergo, if you have high levels of certain types of inflammation (*not all inflammation is equivalent of course), you will never be able to lose fat, period. Until the prerequisite of lowered inflammation is met, your body will cling to that extra buffer water for dear life – and it should, because it is literally for dear life; that excess inflammation would eventually reach your organs and kill you: You may not appreciate this, but your body does thankfully.
Words are the building blocks of thoughts, and thoughts are the building blocks of actions. So, rise and build: the next time you hear somebody mention “water weight,” reframe it as “inflammation weight.”
