Water - does this make sense?

david1956

Hi there, new here and a couple of posts I've read have lit up a lightbulb to me.

I'm at the stage that I'm pretty happy with my training and diet, and may be somewhere near a good weight if I drop my fat % a bit and am adding muscle (I am doing some pretty serious strength training + boxing + cardio. That is all good).

I tend to carry my weight on my chest and stomach (typical middle aged guy in terms of where we most carry our extra weight), and am at that stage that clothed or in the gym I'm really happy with development in my overall physique, but looking in a mirror I keep zooming in on the fat that I'm well aware is still there. I'm down to those hard bits to lose I guess.

But what had been puzzling me for ages is that my stomach (and chest actually) seems to fluctuate rapidly from quite firm to kind of flabby. It happens so quickly that I've suspected for a while it can't really be fat. And more specifically it actually seems worst the day after a reasonable cardio workout.

But some posts on here have made me start suspecting, could this be dehydration? Comments here have made me read up a bit and discover we will tend to bloat if we are dehydrating and our body thinks it needs to store fluid. And I have been vaguely aware for some time that I don't drink a lot of water (I almost forget to get into the habit), and worse still lately going into our winter gas heating is sometimes really dehydrating me.

Can other people associate that rapid fluctuation (day to day rather than over a long length of time) from quite firm to almost flabby with a lack of water intake? My weight is very static now, which is good given I am almost certainly gaining some muscle. It's more of a very obvious visual thing. Might I be on the right track?