water weight gain and losing it...

jpadie

Hi
I've been trying to lose weight for just over eighteen months now. I'm male, 178cm tall and 42 years old.
Over the previous twelve years I had ballooned from 12.5st to 101kg or so (changed countries so also units...). By complete chance I found that the weight gain was directly linked to taking Irbesartan (a hypertension medicine).
I was, throughout this period, suffering from a debilitating cough. Bad enough to cause vomitting on a daily basis.
I left my meds at home in France (by mistake) when I travelled to the UK for a court hearing (I'm a lawyer). On day six, my cough stopped. I instantly recognised the change on waking up. The first day in years that I had not woken up coughing.
I rationalised that the only change had been the meds, so stayed off them for a six week period.
In that six week period, I lost six kilos. No dieting, no exercise.
So I stayed off the meds and transferred to a calcium channel blocker.
I set myself a goal of being under 90kg by the beginning of 2012, and ten kilos lighter by the end of 2012.
In mid-december I was at 80.8kg. Within reaching distance. Hooray!
But now the interesting bit ...
Between 23-25 December I went (between two same-time weigh-ins) up to 84.8kg. So 4kg, 5% body mass.
Which was pretty emotionally annoying given how close to the goal i had been.
Now, I know that this cannot be fat gain, nor muscle gain. And I know that I had a quantity of smoked salmon, oysters and bacon over those two festive days. Loads of salt.
The weight gain was obvious, more flesh in the abdomen and around the chest.
So I put the weight gain down to water, on which scientific topic I was greatly aided last year by a reply on this forum.
To get rid of this excess water, I followed the usual pattern of decreasing sodium content, increasing water input (normal for me is about 2-2.5L per day; I increased by about 0.5L) and increasing workout intensity. I should add that I was also taking a diuretic for hypertension at that time (and had been for about a month).
I was also hospitalised for some tests for a week at the beginning of January (for hypertension investigation). During my stay there was no exercise (wired to machines) but also a zero sodium diet. I visibly lost puffiness and clothes felt less tight. On exit I was 83.5kg.
On getting out, I continued on the regime of keeping net calories low (1500 ish - probably undercounting a wee bit), an hour of cardio a day (5km run plus half hour on elliptical or bike or whatever), loads of water, lo-so and also introduced some sauna to help kick-start the water loss. plus a weight session every three days or so. My potassium levels (and a bunch of other stuff) are checked weekly by the hypertension consultant. Potassium is always at the lower end, but within norms. All the other normal tests are squarely within norms except cortisol (which is always low).
A week later i've gone down a further 0.5kg.
Now to the questions please. I'm looking to understand whether it is "normal" to gain that much water weight over the course of so few hours. And then to take so long to shed that weight - it feels that it's taking the same time to shed the weight that it would do were it fat-weight being lost through calorie deficit ?

thanks in advance for your insights.
Justin