Water weight?

silacey08

How do you know what is just water weight?

janejellyroll

You can't really.

We all have water weight, but pinpointing exactly how much we have at a given time isn't possible.

MikePTY

Unless you get it professionally measured by a reliable scan such as a DEXA or BodPod, you won't really be able to get an idea of how much you have at any given time. Even then, there is a margin of error.

If you are referring to how do we know if a loss or gain is just water weight, that is also hard to definitively know, but its easier to get an idea of. Both losing and gaining fat takes times. To lose fat you need to eat a deficit of 3500 calories from your maintenance levels. To gain fat, you need to the opposite, and eat 3500 calories above maintenance. Both take work and do not happen rapidly. So if you notice a big loss, or a big gain that happens quickly, it is likely the result of a water weight change. If you lose 10 pounds in a week, it's likely to be majority water weight. You didn't have a 35000 calorie deficit. If you eat a big meal and weigh 5 pounds heavier the next day, it's likely almost all water weight. You didn't eat 17500 calories over your maintenance calories in that meal. So big swings on the scale in either direction is usually an indication of water weight coming into play.

That's why long term trends are more important to watch. If you continue in one direction, be it a loss or gain, it becomes more and more likely that the majority of that is body fat, and not water weight.

lin_be

I would say big swings from day to day is a decent sign that it’s water weight. Did you eat a lot of carbs the day before? Are you sore today? A high sodium dinner? All things that can cause big swings and water renterion.

Long term loss (months, years) is really the best way to track fat loss. I also usually pee a lot the day before I have a big loss on the scale. Most of that is probably water weight but there’s probably some fat loss in there too. Hard to judge.

AnnPT77

If you stick to your healthy routine for a month or so, have your calorie goal set at a sensible level, stick to it, and log eating/exercise reasonably accurately, you'll see some little (few pounds) ups and downs on the scale from day to day, and a gradual, steady downward trend over the whole month or so. ("Steady downward trend" means the high weights will get a little lower, the low weights will get a little lower, just generally/overall, not every weigh-in).

Looking backward, the little ups and downs will have been mostly water weight. The overall downhill trend is mostly fat loss.

In my weight-trending app, one chunk of my weight loss looked like the graph below. (The connected down-hill-ish line is the trend; the little upright bars connect each daily weight to the trend. You can see that the daily weights bounce all over: That's water fluctuation. The downhill shows that I was losing fat (mostly).)

[/quote]

P.S. I accidentally lost weight too fast for a while during the time period shown. Don't do that: It's a Bad Plan.

silacey08

AnnPT77 wrote: »

If you stick to your healthy routine for a month or so, have your calorie goal set at a sensible level, stick to it, and log eating/exercise reasonably accurately, you'll see some little (few pounds) ups and downs on the scale from day to day, and a gradual, steady downward trend over the whole month or so. ("Steady downward trend" means the high weights will get a little lower, the low weights will get a little lower, just generally/overall, not every weigh-in).

Looking backward, the little ups and downs will have been mostly water weight. The overall downhill trend is mostly fat loss.

In my weight-trending app, one chunk of my weight loss looked like the graph below. (The connected down-hill-ish line is the trend; the little upright bars connect each daily weight to the trend. You can see that the daily weights bounce all over: That's water fluctuation. The downhill shows that I was losing fat (mostly).)

P.S. I accidentally lost weight too fast for a while during the time period shown. Don't do that: It's a Bad Plan. [/quote]

What app is that?

AnnPT77

silacey08 wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

If you stick to your healthy routine for a month or so, have your calorie goal set at a sensible level, stick to it, and log eating/exercise reasonably accurately, you'll see some little (few pounds) ups and downs on the scale from day to day, and a gradual, steady downward trend over the whole month or so. ("Steady downward trend" means the high weights will get a little lower, the low weights will get a little lower, just generally/overall, not every weigh-in).

Looking backward, the little ups and downs will have been mostly water weight. The overall downhill trend is mostly fat loss.

In my weight-trending app, one chunk of my weight loss looked like the graph below. (The connected down-hill-ish line is the trend; the little upright bars connect each daily weight to the trend. You can see that the daily weights bounce all over: That's water fluctuation. The downhill shows that I was losing fat (mostly).)



P.S. I accidentally lost weight too fast for a while during the time period shown. Don't do that: It's a Bad Plan.

What app is that?

Libra (for Android). There are others, similar: Happy Scale (iOS), Trendweight (need a free Fitbit account, I'm told), Weightgrapher, and more.