*Water-Weight* loss when eating protein?

sscad

In the long term, eating a lot of protein can positively affect weight loss, but what about in the short term? Yesterday, I ate the most protein I have ever eaten (at least since logging my protein intake), so much in fact, that I bragged to people about it When I weighed myself this morning, I had lost nearly three pounds since yesterday. Now I understand our weight naturally fluctuates on a day to day basis (this is why we shouldn't weigh ourselves everyday even) but usually, at least for me, if I don't stay the same, I significantly gain overnight, not lose. A couple of weeks ago, out of curiosity, I was keeping up with the correlation of overnight gain/loss and the amount of carbs/fat/sugar/salt/protein I had eaten the day before- my conclusion after doing this was that protein was the nutrient that had a *consistent* positive correlation with my weight (the more protein I ate, the more I lost). I understand that in these fluctuations, that it is not actual body fat you are losing in such a short amount of time - in the sense of weight gain, I've heard this is mostly associated with water weight - so could it be that a significant amount of protein leads to water loss overnight?

Bakkasan

As a diet, high protein has a diuretic effect, but no idea on a night of meat binge

Agirard25

when you eat high protein you need to signigantly up your water--at least according to my friend who is a scientist--because of something to do with cell respiration or something along those lines...I myself am not very science minded. I did eat very high protein for a good while last year and lost tons of weight (30 lbs) I've, of late, not been eating high protein and put back on ten lbs.! boo! Anytime you're trying to lose weight people say drink lots of water, but with high protein be extra sure you do or you could end up with some other issues from what my friend told me! good luck!

minizebu

A large difference in weight overnight is a water weight change. However, I would not attribute it to the amount of protein you ate yesterday. Your weight fluctuates daily and is more dependent on your sodium and water intake than on how much protein you consumed on any one particular day.

If you really want to investigate the issue, then you should weigh yourself daily and record your protein intake daily.

Look at the graph that is my profile picture and you can see how much variation in weight there can be on a weekly basis.

In my experience, I don't see a correlation between total weight lost and my protein intake. However, I do note a correlation in the amount of fat I lose (vs. lean body mass loss) as a percentage of weight lost. That is, more fat lost/less LBM lost each week now that I have been eating at least1g of protein for each pound of LBM.

SideSteel

The correlation could be that if your calorie intake remained constant and your protein intake was significantly higher, you may have reduced carbohydrate intake significantly, which could reduce water weight.

onyxgirl17

water weight loss happens when you have less carbs paired with more protein...

sobriquet84

its not the higher protein, its the lower carbs. i assume your daily calorie count stayed roughly the same when eating higher protein.