drtbear1967
Musclechemistry Board Certified Member
How to Get Rid of Water Retention
Alright then…it’s time to put some rubber on the road.
If you’ve read everything up to this point then you already have a good idea about how to lose weight weight, but I’m going to spell it all out here.
You Probably Need to Reduce Your Sodium Intake
As you know, eating too much sodium in general promotes water retention and large fluctuations in sodium intake does as well.
Thus, by stabilizing your sodium intake at a healthy level, you can drop and stabilize water weight.
First, you want to get an idea of how much sodium you’re eating.
Check out the sodium content of the last week or so worth of food you’ve eaten using a tool like Calorie King. Don’t forget to add in guesstimates for how much salt you’ve been using as well (salt has about 2.3 grams of sodium per teaspoon).
If you’re like most people, you’re going to discover two things:
In terms of how much sodium you should be eating, stick to the USDA’s recommendation of about 2.3 grams of sodium per day (and 1.5 grams for African Americans, individuals with hypertension, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease and individuals ages 51 and older).
(I should note, however, that people that sweat regularly may need more sodium to offset losses through sweating. I personally eat around 3.5 to 4 grams per day.)
Here are some good rules of thumb for keeping your sodium intake under control:
Watch out for mixed seasonings as well, like chili or pizza seasoning. They can contain quite a bit of sodium.
While it might be annoying to plan/track yet another thing in your diet, don’t worry–you don’t have to track sodium intake forever.
Instead, you want to plan/track at first to see what works and what doesn’t and then just use common sense in maintaining good habits going forward.
Yes, that means your sodium intake is going to fluctuate some and occasionally spike with “cheat meals” and such, and that’s fine.
So long as your intake is stably in the right range most of the time, and you go back to normal right after occasional spikes, you’ll be fine.
And Raise Your Potassium Intake
Insufficient potassium intake is one of the most common nutrient deficiencies in Western diets. The Institute of Medicine recommends 4.7 grams of potassium per day and, as of 2010, the average American intake was 2.64 grams per day.
The best sources of potassium are the types of foods many people avoid–fruits and vegetables–and hence the widespread problem.
This mineral imbalance contributes to water retention, but it’s a lot worse than that.
A study conducted by scientists from the Center for Disease Control and Harvard University found 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.
The bottom line is people with diets very high in sodium and very low in potassium are playing with fire.
So pay attention to your sodium and potassium intake. Your life quite may literally, one day, depend on it.
How to Get Your Cortisol–and Water Retention–Under Control
Water retention is particularly common among dieters and the culprit is often chronically elevated cortisol levels.
There are simple things you can do to bring this hormone back to where you want it and shed the water…
People are willing to work incredibly hard to reach their goals and figure the more they exercise, the faster they’ll get there.
Unfortunately that’s only true up to a point.
Yes, training 5 hours per week is more effective than 1 hour, but 10 hours per week is not necessarily more effective than 5.
The reason for this is simple: intense exercise puts a lot of stress on your body and it needs time to rest and recover
This isn’t just muscular stress, either. The nervous system is also heavily involved and, if you try to demand too much of it, eventually it just can’t keep up.
So, here’s the long story short:
If you’re in a calorie deficit and you’re doing more than 4 to 6 hours of weightlifting and 1 to 2 hours of moderate-to-high-intensity cardio per week, you’re probably doing too much.
And if you’re doing that and also dealing with issues like water retention and general fatigue, I can basically guarantee that you’re doing too much.
If that’s you…or if it’s not quite you but you suspect your cortisol levels are too high…here’s what I want you to do:
You can be aggressive with your calorie deficit and do well but not reckless.
That’s why I generally recommend a deficit of 20 to 25% for maximizing fat loss and minimizing muscle loss while also managing metabolic adaptation.
If you don’t know how to do this–how to approximate the amount of energy you’re burning every day and how much you should be eating–check out this article.
Whatever calms you is worthwhile.
I share 10 scientifically proven ways to relax and lower cortisol here. Check ’em out and put them to good use!
Get more 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.
Well, when your body is asleep, it might look inactive, but that’s far from the case.
It’s very busy repairing tissue and producing hormones—functions that are especially important if you’re subjecting your body to increased lev*els of stress every day through dieting and exercising.
Unfortunately, if you’re like most people, you don’t get as much sleep as you should.
I’m not going to point fingers here–I’m often just as guilty as the rest of us–but if you’re dealing with cortisol issues, it’s time to spend more time with Morpheus.
Eat a Bunch of Food
Yeah, you read that correctly.
Remember what triggered the rapid weight loss with the starved subjects of the Minnesota Experiment?
Large increases in calories. Or, in fitness parlance, “cheat meals.”
I mentioned earlier that this was due to a reduction in cortisol levels, so let’s take a closer look at how this actually works.
The key is a hormone called leptin, which is produced by fat cells, and which regulates many things in the body such as hunger, metabolic rate, appetite, libido, and more.
That said, I don’t recommend eating just anything. If you want to get the most anti-bloat bang for your calories, you want to do a “refeed day.” Click here to learn how it works.
Drink Enough Water
The Institute of Medicine recommends that we get 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 and living in Florida (sweating).
In terms of what type of water is best to drink, research shows that tap water is becoming more and more contaminated with all kinds of pollutants–bacteria, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, and various types of poisonous chemicals.
Bottled water isn’t much better, either. It’s exorbitantly expensive and research shows that it’s often chock full of chemicals too.
One study examined 18 different bottled waters from 13 different companies and found over 24,000 chemicals present including endocrine disruptors.
Martin Wagner, a scientist at Goethe University Frankfurt’s Department of Aquatic Ecotoxicology and author of the study, had this to say:
Keep in mind that what you want to achieve with water filtration is very low levels of dissolved solids in the water, as measured in “parts per million.” The closer to 0, the better. (Tap water generally tests at anywhere from 200 to 700 PPM of dissolved solids.)
You can measure the levels of dissolved solids in your water using an electronic water tester like this one. It’s what I use to keep an eye on my water quality so I know when filters need to be changed.
Do Natural Diuretics Work?
There are many foods and naturally occurring substances that supposedly have diuretic effects, including…
The reason for this is simple: while there are natural substances that exert mild diuretic effects, they don’t address the cause of the water retention and thus can’t resolve the issue.
For example, caffeine and alcohol posses slight diuretic effects but they’re so slight that the amount of liquid you consume to get the molecules can offset it.
Similarly, research shows that hawthorn and parsley are natural diuretics but their effects are mild and temporary.
The reality is if you’re struggling with water retention, fixing it is going to require lifestyle changes and not pills and powders.
The only situation where I would recommend turning to natural diuretics is if you’re very lean and have a competition or photo shoot or some other one-day affair that requires you look as dry and defined as possible.
That’s why many fitness competitors restrict carbohydrate intake leading up to a show, often restrict sodium intake several days before going on stage, and add several natural diuretics to their regimen. (Well, let’s be real–most competitors use diuretic drugs and other compounds to increase hardness as well, which are much more effective than anything you can buy on Amazon).
If you’ve read everything up to this point then you already have a good idea about how to lose weight weight, but I’m going to spell it all out here.
You Probably Need to Reduce Your Sodium Intake
Thus, by stabilizing your sodium intake at a healthy level, you can drop and stabilize water weight.
First, you want to get an idea of how much sodium you’re eating.
Check out the sodium content of the last week or so worth of food you’ve eaten using a tool like Calorie King. Don’t forget to add in guesstimates for how much salt you’ve been using as well (salt has about 2.3 grams of sodium per teaspoon).
If you’re like most people, you’re going to discover two things:
- You eat a lot of sodium.
- Your sodium intake fluctuates dramatically from day to day.
In terms of how much sodium you should be eating, stick to the USDA’s recommendation of about 2.3 grams of sodium per day (and 1.5 grams for African Americans, individuals with hypertension, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease and individuals ages 51 and older).
(I should note, however, that people that sweat regularly may need more sodium to offset losses through sweating. I personally eat around 3.5 to 4 grams per day.)
Here are some good rules of thumb for keeping your sodium intake under control:
- Be wary of canned or pre-packaged foods.
- The same goes for deli meat.
- Reduce your use of table salt and certain seasonings.
Watch out for mixed seasonings as well, like chili or pizza seasoning. They can contain quite a bit of sodium.
- Watch out for sauces and salad dressings.
- Cheese can be a problem too.
While it might be annoying to plan/track yet another thing in your diet, don’t worry–you don’t have to track sodium intake forever.
Instead, you want to plan/track at first to see what works and what doesn’t and then just use common sense in maintaining good habits going forward.
Yes, that means your sodium intake is going to fluctuate some and occasionally spike with “cheat meals” and such, and that’s fine.
So long as your intake is stably in the right range most of the time, and you go back to normal right after occasional spikes, you’ll be fine.
And Raise Your Potassium Intake
The best sources of potassium are the types of foods many people avoid–fruits and vegetables–and hence the widespread problem.
This mineral imbalance contributes to water retention, but it’s a lot worse than that.
A study conducted by scientists from the Center for Disease Control and Harvard University found 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.
The bottom line is people with diets very high in sodium and very low in potassium are playing with fire.
So pay attention to your sodium and potassium intake. Your life quite may literally, one day, depend on it.
How to Get Your Cortisol–and Water Retention–Under Control
There are simple things you can do to bring this hormone back to where you want it and shed the water…
Cut back on the exercise.
In my experience working with thousands of people, overtraining is far more common than under-training.
People are willing to work incredibly hard to reach their goals and figure the more they exercise, the faster they’ll get there.
Unfortunately that’s only true up to a point.
Yes, training 5 hours per week is more effective than 1 hour, but 10 hours per week is not necessarily more effective than 5.
The reason for this is simple: intense exercise puts a lot of stress on your body and it needs time to rest and recover
This isn’t just muscular stress, either. The nervous system is also heavily involved and, if you try to demand too much of it, eventually it just can’t keep up.
So, here’s the long story short:
If you’re in a calorie deficit and you’re doing more than 4 to 6 hours of weightlifting and 1 to 2 hours of moderate-to-high-intensity cardio per week, you’re probably doing too much.
And if you’re doing that and also dealing with issues like water retention and general fatigue, I can basically guarantee that you’re doing too much.
If that’s you…or if it’s not quite you but you suspect your cortisol levels are too high…here’s what I want you to do:
- Do a deload week in the gym. Taking a short break from heavy lifting can be surprisingly restorative.
- Do no cardio for the week. No, this isn’t going to make you fat.
- Increase your calorie intake by 5 to 10%. Do this by increasing your carb intake. And no, this won’t make you fat either.
- Make sure you get enough sleep. Shoot for 7 to 8 hours per night.
Make sure you’re not in too severe of a calorie deficit.
The worst way to lose weight is to simply starve yourself and do a ton of cardio.
You can be aggressive with your calorie deficit and do well but not reckless.
That’s why I generally recommend a deficit of 20 to 25% for maximizing fat loss and minimizing muscle loss while also managing metabolic adaptation.
If you don’t know how to do this–how to approximate the amount of energy you’re burning every day and how much you should be eating–check out this article.
Chill out.
You can reduce cortisol levels by simply taking some time each day to relax, take a nap, listen to some good music, drink some tea, do some deep breathing, and so forth.
Whatever calms you is worthwhile.
I share 10 scientifically proven ways to relax and lower cortisol here. Check ’em out and put them to good use!
Get more sleep.
Well, when your body is asleep, it might look inactive, but that’s far from the case.
It’s very busy repairing tissue and producing hormones—functions that are especially important if you’re subjecting your body to increased lev*els of stress every day through dieting and exercising.
Unfortunately, if you’re like most people, you don’t get as much sleep as you should.
I’m not going to point fingers here–I’m often just as guilty as the rest of us–but if you’re dealing with cortisol issues, it’s time to spend more time with Morpheus.
Eat a Bunch of Food
Remember what triggered the rapid weight loss with the starved subjects of the Minnesota Experiment?
Large increases in calories. Or, in fitness parlance, “cheat meals.”
I mentioned earlier that this was due to a reduction in cortisol levels, so let’s take a closer look at how this actually works.
The key is a hormone called leptin, which is produced by fat cells, and which regulates many things in the body such as hunger, metabolic rate, appetite, libido, and more.
- When you’re in a calorie deficit, your leptin levels drop, and this triggers a cascade of unwanted side effects like a reduction in metabolic rate, increased appetite, and even depression.
- On the other hand, when you give your body more energy (calories) than it needs, leptin levels are boosted, which can then reverse–to varying degrees–some of the negative effects given above (including the elevation in cortisol levels).
That said, I don’t recommend eating just anything. If you want to get the most anti-bloat bang for your calories, you want to do a “refeed day.” Click here to learn how it works.
Drink Enough Water
The Institute of Medicine recommends that we get 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 and living in Florida (sweating).
In terms of what type of water is best to drink, research shows that tap water is becoming more and more contaminated with all kinds of pollutants–bacteria, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, and various types of poisonous chemicals.
Bottled water isn’t much better, either. It’s exorbitantly expensive and research shows that it’s often chock full of chemicals too.
One study examined 18 different bottled waters from 13 different companies and found over 24,000 chemicals present including endocrine disruptors.
Martin Wagner, a scientist at Goethe University Frankfurt’s Department of Aquatic Ecotoxicology and author of the study, had this to say:
“Bottled water had a higher contamination of chemicals than glass bottles. There are many compounds in bottled water that we don’t want to have there. Part is leaching from the plastic bottles, lids or contamination of the well.”
This is why I recommend you invest in an effective water filtration device such as the ZeroWater pitcher or iSpring reverse osmosis system, and why I myself stick to filtered water.
Keep in mind that what you want to achieve with water filtration is very low levels of dissolved solids in the water, as measured in “parts per million.” The closer to 0, the better. (Tap water generally tests at anywhere from 200 to 700 PPM of dissolved solids.)
You can measure the levels of dissolved solids in your water using an electronic water tester like this one. It’s what I use to keep an eye on my water quality so I know when filters need to be changed.
Do Natural Diuretics Work?
- Caffeine
- Alcohol
- Celery
- Onion
- Eggplant
- Asparagus
- Hawthorn
- Parsley
- Watermelon
- And more…
The reason for this is simple: while there are natural substances that exert mild diuretic effects, they don’t address the cause of the water retention and thus can’t resolve the issue.
For example, caffeine and alcohol posses slight diuretic effects but they’re so slight that the amount of liquid you consume to get the molecules can offset it.
Similarly, research shows that hawthorn and parsley are natural diuretics but their effects are mild and temporary.
The reality is if you’re struggling with water retention, fixing it is going to require lifestyle changes and not pills and powders.
The only situation where I would recommend turning to natural diuretics is if you’re very lean and have a competition or photo shoot or some other one-day affair that requires you look as dry and defined as possible.
That’s why many fitness competitors restrict carbohydrate intake leading up to a show, often restrict sodium intake several days before going on stage, and add several natural diuretics to their regimen. (Well, let’s be real–most competitors use diuretic drugs and other compounds to increase hardness as well, which are much more effective than anything you can buy on Amazon).
Last edited:
