How much water weight can you have?

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rtopper0211
rtopper0211 Posts: 2 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
My starting weight a couple months ago was 236. I'm down to 214 now. I look at myself and how my clothes fit and they seem to all fit the same and I don't really look any different. Could all the weight I'm losing be water weight? At what point do you feel like it's no longer water weight and you are actually losing fat?

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  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
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    When we lose weight we're hardly ever just losing one thing. We're losing water, fat, and muscle. Nobody can really tell how much of your weight loss has been water. The important thing is that it doesn't really matter. If your calorie deficit is reasonable and your weight is trending downward, then you can be confident that you're losing some fat. It's pretty common for people to have rapid weight loss when beginning a new plan. A lot of this will be water.

    The fact that your clothes aren't fitting differently doesn't necessarily mean you haven't lost any fat. Water on the body takes up space too! Think of how your pants might fit tighter after a higher sodium meal (or maybe that's just me!). Sometimes it takes a while for us to see the difference.
  • 1poundatax
    1poundatax Posts: 230 Member
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    I have lost 14 pounds, posted recently asking how much weight people lost before they saw a difference in their clothes. A week or 2 later with only another pound gone I am able to zip a pair of pants (note I dein't say wear) that I have wanted to get into. When I had posted they were no where near zipping yet I know that I wore them and probably bought them when I am heavier than I am now. It appears to me that it may take awhile for our body to catch up with our weight loss.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,224 Member
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    The mind plays tricks on us sometimes. So it can be hard to see the difference.

    Also, when we weigh more it seems to take larger amounts of weight before clothes become noticeably looser.

    We all lose weight differently too: some people will lose gradually all over, others might see specific body parts shrink but not others. We might lose weight in areas that don't impact how clothes fit (hands, feet, face,...).

    Measuring yourself and taking progress pictures might help (although it might take a while before your brain sees the progress in the pictures 🙂 ).
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,656 Member
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    Imma trot out the onion analogy here. If you have a good-sized onion, and take off the outer layer, it doesn't make much difference in the size of the onion. Each successive layer seems to make more difference, if you keep going. Women, particularly, tend to have a subcutaneous fat layer over much of our bodies. We can lose quite a bit of fat fron that overall distribution, without a huge change in appearance at first. (This is kinda disgusting 😉, but think about how thin several pounds of butter would be if spread out over the size our whole skin.)

    Also, it's not unusual for people who are overweight to have excess visceral fat. This is a particularly dangerous type of fat, and it lives inside our body cavity, inside our muscle sheath, so really doesn't show up as much externally. This can often be the first fat to go, and the most beneficial to lose for health's sake, but it doesn't give the visual or clothing-size gratification that losing exteriof fat may have.

    What others said about our self-image taking time to catch up to our actual diminished size is also true.

    Hang in there, you're doing great: Your results will show, and (probably a little later than that 😉) you will be able to see them.

    Best wishes!
  • domeofstars
    domeofstars Posts: 480 Member
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    You are also losing lean muscle mass too unfortunately. Not just fat and water

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