dieter's edema, squishy fat, wooshes and what nots

My personal experience suggests its true but that's worth nothing. In for science!

Same here...I have no actual proof of this scientifically being accurate, but I know for myself whenever I stop exercising/watching what I eat for a while and then get back into it, I always have a small weight gain and feel really puffy for a few days/couple of weeks until I get back into the routine, and then it seems to go away pretty quickly.

My personal experience suggests its true but that's worth nothing. In for science!

Same here...I have no actual proof of this scientifically being accurate, but I know for myself whenever I stop exercising/watching what I eat for a while and then get back into it, I always have a small weight gain and feel really puffy for a few days/couple of weeks until I get back into the routine, and then it seems to go away pretty quickly.

That could actually be the diet and exercise getting your fluids back your current 'normal state' of low-ish glycogen stores that you are achieving through calorie restriction.

Huh. I know nothing about this. What a fun topic!

Alas, I can not contribute any actual knowledge to this thread except this little tidbit:

Proteins contribute to osmolarity too (see colloidal osmotic pressure and net filtration/absorption between capillaries, interstitial fluid, and the lymph system). It's not just about salt. Any 'solute' or particle dissolved in water will influence osmolarity.

This is speculation only, but perhaps dieting leads to a mild protein deficiency in some... if the deficiency is extracellular... well, you could get a net fluid movement into the cell, though why on earth it would be specific to fat is anyone's guess... and for that matter, I AM just guessing.

Maybe its time to go play on pubmed.

We know from really old literature (lovely descriptions in French from the revolution period) that the quality of meat flesh, butter etc is dependent of the "oil" diet of animals when these were changed and that the fat fluidity changed with specific diets exerimentally between butter and margerine in calves, etc. I would guess (guess!) that when you add that to how lipolysis rates occur differently for different lipids the fluidity of tissue is affected.

thats interesting what did they find?

In.

More from Brad Pilon- (I think he means Ancel Keys.)

---

“Can you explain what dieter’s edema is? You are the only person
I’ve ever heard discuss this before.”

"BRAD: Right. So dieter’s edema is very interesting. Part of doing graduate work and research for “Eat Stop Eat” is learning how to ask a question, answer question and trying to find out where some of these assumptions came from. When you’re looking at dieting, it led me to the work of Andrew Keys who did a starvation experiment back in World War II. It was something that everyone used as a reference but no one ever sort of comes out and states they read it. So I tracked it down. It was two volumes with thousands of pages of data and research. In that work is where our original idea that when you’re dieting, cutting calories drastically, you get to a point where all of a sudden you just don’t lose any more weight, even though you’re still technically in calorie deficit. That actually happened with the people in this trial.

But when you do further measurements you realize they’re actually still losing body mass. They’re losing fat mass and they’re actually so depleted they start losing body tissue because these people were on massive diets for several years at a time. But their weight wasn’t changing. They realized that when the body goes into prolonged periods of a caloric deficit as the fat is burned as a fuel you tend to get a watery-like substance moving into where it was. These people started getting edema in their legs. Their legs were really bloated with sort of a water substance, to the point where they could stick their fingers in their legs and leave kind of fingerprints. I know it sounds odd to a lot of the guys but a lot of the women out there will understand what I’m talking about when I say a little bit of water bloating drastically affects the way we look..

This is really interesting because when you look at stories taken from fitness models and body builders with severely restricted diets, trying to get down to what are really unhealthy levels of body fat, for a short period of time for a show, some of them start to see they don’t, what they use a term called “stay smooth.” They’ll use a term “spill over.” They’re not actually gaining fat magically even though they’re in calorie deficit, they’re experiencing dieter’s edema.

The interesting thing with dieter’s edema is that it does not happen during a total fast. If you’re using fasts to lose weight you don’t see this edema. But when you’re using small amounts of calories you tend to get this odd edema going on, in certain cases that are fairly rare. It was unique enough…I wrote a book about it in the “Eat Stop Eat” advanced package.

It’s very phenomenal research. The research was done in the day before a lot of the research ethics that we have now. No way, ever, I could go back to school and recreate those trials. I would not be allowed. We have rules to protect the subjects of trials. That’s how bad of an environment these people were in. So you can’t reproduce this diet. It’s one of a kind data that’s only really found in Andrew Keys work and then in some really interesting work from, believe it or not, the 1800s. They found the same thing.

Extrapolating that to what we’ve seen with fitness models and body builders and severe diets for prolonged periods of time, we realize that the water in your body does play an absolute, huge, underappreciated role in how we look and what we weigh. Even slight fluctuations make water in our body, if it’s close to our skin, can make you look like you’re not losing weight and can take what would have been a very sharp six-pack and make it blurry or almost nonexistent. It’s a little bit of type of bloat that women might see before their period, that sort of concept. Exaggerate that to your whole body and you’ll see where this could create a drastic difference in how your body looks.

An interesting thing I came across, did all the research I could on it and figured it was something people should probably know about. One of the reasons we have that misconception that after a while your body will actually hold onto fat, even though you’re in a caloric deficit, it wasn’t fat. It was a water-like substance."

I never have whooshes, but I do get the squishy fat. Nothing in how I lose weight indicates a big water drop; my lbs lost are really gradual. The fat on my belly does get a different texture, definitely, though. And then the inches go down, but again it's a gradual progression.

More from Brad Pilon- (I think he means Ancel Keys.)

---

“Can you explain what dieter’s edema is? You are the only person
I’ve ever heard discuss this before.”

"BRAD: Right. So dieter’s edema is very interesting. Part of doing graduate work and research for “Eat Stop Eat” is learning how to ask a question, answer question and trying to find out where some of these assumptions came from. When you’re looking at dieting, it led me to the work of Andrew Keys who did a starvation experiment back in World War II. It was something that everyone used as a reference but no one ever sort of comes out and states they read it. So I tracked it down. It was two volumes with thousands of pages of data and research. In that work is where our original idea that when you’re dieting, cutting calories drastically, you get to a point where all of a sudden you just don’t lose any more weight, even though you’re still technically in calorie deficit. That actually happened with the people in this trial.

But when you do further measurements you realize they’re actually still losing body mass. They’re losing fat mass and they’re actually so depleted they start losing body tissue because these people were on massive diets for several years at a time. But their weight wasn’t changing. They realized that when the body goes into prolonged periods of a caloric deficit as the fat is burned as a fuel you tend to get a watery-like substance moving into where it was. These people started getting edema in their legs. Their legs were really bloated with sort of a water substance, to the point where they could stick their fingers in their legs and leave kind of fingerprints. I know it sounds odd to a lot of the guys but a lot of the women out there will understand what I’m talking about when I say a little bit of water bloating drastically affects the way we look..

This is really interesting because when you look at stories taken from fitness models and body builders with severely restricted diets, trying to get down to what are really unhealthy levels of body fat, for a short period of time for a show, some of them start to see they don’t, what they use a term called “stay smooth.” They’ll use a term “spill over.” They’re not actually gaining fat magically even though they’re in calorie deficit, they’re experiencing dieter’s edema.

The interesting thing with dieter’s edema is that it does not happen during a total fast. If you’re using fasts to lose weight you don’t see this edema. But when you’re using small amounts of calories you tend to get this odd edema going on, in certain cases that are fairly rare. It was unique enough…I wrote a book about it in the “Eat Stop Eat” advanced package.

It’s very phenomenal research. The research was done in the day before a lot of the research ethics that we have now. No way, ever, I could go back to school and recreate those trials. I would not be allowed. We have rules to protect the subjects of trials. That’s how bad of an environment these people were in. So you can’t reproduce this diet. It’s one of a kind data that’s only really found in Andrew Keys work and then in some really interesting work from, believe it or not, the 1800s. They found the same thing.

Extrapolating that to what we’ve seen with fitness models and body builders and severe diets for prolonged periods of time, we realize that the water in your body does play an absolute, huge, underappreciated role in how we look and what we weigh. Even slight fluctuations make water in our body, if it’s close to our skin, can make you look like you’re not losing weight and can take what would have been a very sharp six-pack and make it blurry or almost nonexistent. It’s a little bit of type of bloat that women might see before their period, that sort of concept. Exaggerate that to your whole body and you’ll see where this could create a drastic difference in how your body looks.

An interesting thing I came across, did all the research I could on it and figured it was something people should probably know about. One of the reasons we have that misconception that after a while your body will actually hold onto fat, even though you’re in a caloric deficit, it wasn’t fat. It was a water-like substance."

If true, what would make it so that it doesn't happen at all when losing weight from fasting? Assuming water intake wasn't limited as well.

in..teresting

I don't know but I'm leery of trusting Brad Pilon's research because he's selling a product that he feels is supported by this theory so he's not every objective. But I love that he and Lyle M. at least address it and try to come up with something.

Plus it sounds like famine edema is known to occur ten times more in men than women and is in the lower extremities. It doesn't sound like the same thing, though maybe it's related?

So would it be possible for a cell to go from 10% to, just guessing, 75% fluid filled? I'm picturing little water balloons of fat cells.

Another question are the triglycerides arranged in the cell kind of like a circle of with their little arms inside the droplet?

That is the question, yes.

Tagging to read later.