whenever people say something like, ‘i lost 18 pounds in three days on the dirt-and-bark diet!’ the serious medical professionals always point out that 17.5 pounds of that was water weight. even dieters who follow healthy weight loss plans lose more weight in the first week of dieting, the extra poundage always being written off as water weight.
my question is, if a dieter were to drink a whole lot of water when they were dieting (crash dieting or otherwise), would they not lose any water weight? like, if you keep yourself well hydrated the only weight you will lose is actual fat-weight? or do cells just start pushing out water as soon as caloric intake drops, no matter how much water someone drinks?
The funny response is, as I read in some refutal of a weight which called for one to drink lots of water to prove that the weight you lose is not water weight, is that if you do significantly increase your water intake, it actually prompts your body to lose MORE water weight!
It’s similar to the idea that if you don’t eat enough you won’t lose as much weight as if you eat just enough. Almost as a rule, Americans don’t drink enough water (64 oz. a day for a woman, 80 oz. for a man) so the body compensates by storing extra water. When you suddenly start drinking a lot, the body feels it does not need these stores any longer, and gets rid of them. Also, that extra water you’re taking in is not stored and is just forced through your kidneys (that’s why your urine will become almost “clear” - it’s having higher and higher concentration of water).
So if you want to lose weight fast, for the majority of people, one easy thing to do is down a half gallon of water every night for a week or so 