What is water weight?

This is the clearest and most helpful thing I have read on this:

http://www.justinowings.com/understanding-bodyweight-and-glycogen-de/

I found this article incredibly enlightening and helpful.
thanks!

The glycogen issue is just one of many kinds of 'water weight' - binds with 4 times its own weight in water. Is the only food the brain can consume.

People say that sudden starvation diets simply rob the body of all glycogen, causing a 4 x greater weight loss as the water bound to it goes as well.

However for the first time in my life I've gone on a starvation diet (around 800 - 1000 cals/day) and what has actually happened is this:

1. Lost 4.5kg in the first week. About 3 of these have turned out to be food in the gut.

2. when I eat actual food (on sundays) my weight increases. On monday and tuesday it returns as the food is eradicated. I go down to where I should be if I were losing 130g a day consistently. Which I am continuing to do, and now i'm on week 5. I've so far lost almost 6 1/2 kg, being maybe a kilo a week and those extra couple and a half or whatever of food weight.

If it were all glycogen then I would not consistently be going down. I would bob up almost all the way when I ate food.

I am not losing brain power, I am not flagging and dying in exhaustion. On the contrary, I am bounding with energy which is something I put down to teh vitamin bars I'm eating.

I actually am starting to think the whole thing is rubbishy mumbo jumbo designed to confuse, intimidate and frighten young dieters into never managing to keep on a diet for more than three weeks before finding themselves obsessing about their brains melting and their muscles disappearing. what a have.

The glycogen issue is just one of many kinds of 'water weight' - binds with 4 times its own weight in water. Is the only food the brain can consume.

People say that sudden starvation diets simply rob the body of all glycogen, causing a 4 x greater weight loss as the water bound to it goes as well.

However for the first time in my life I've gone on a starvation diet (around 800 - 1000 cals/day) and what has actually happened is this:

1. Lost 4.5kg in the first week. About 3 of these have turned out to be food in the gut.

2. when I eat actual food (on sundays) my weight increases. On monday and tuesday it returns as the food is eradicated. I go down to where I should be if I were losing 130g a day consistently. Which I am continuing to do, and now i'm on week 5. I've so far lost almost 6 1/2 kg, being maybe a kilo a week and those extra couple and a half or whatever of food weight.

If it were all glycogen then I would not consistently be going down. I would bob up almost all the way when I ate food.

I am not losing brain power, I am not flagging and dying in exhaustion. On the contrary, I am bounding with energy which is something I put down to teh vitamin bars I'm eating.

I actually am starting to think the whole thing is rubbishy mumbo jumbo designed to confuse, intimidate and frighten young dieters into never managing to keep on a diet for more than three weeks before finding themselves obsessing about their brains melting and their muscles disappearing. what a have.

Eeep. That sounds so unhealthy and gross - the only way you're losing weight is by emptying your gut by starving yourself? :sick: Pass! I'd rather not mess up my metabolism forever. But good point that there are of course other explanations such as hormones etc

I'm forty two years old. If I were going to mess my metabolism up forever I would've already done it. Metabolism is just a flash word for the amount of calories you use while resting. Grow some muscle, up your metabolism. Lose some muscle, lower your metabolism. It's not magic and it's not mumbo jumbo it's just plain old science.

As to your fear that losing food weight is all I am doing - no, you missed the point. I'm saying that you carry around maybe 2 kg or 3 kg of food in varying states of process in your body. If you are fat, and you eat lots, and then you decide to diet and you stop eating lots, or change to vege which goes through you fast, as I have done - then you aren't carrying around so much food in varying states of decay in your gut. Your gut is very long. It can hold a lot of food.

So those people who report a three or four kilo weight loss in the first week, I am simply saying they're not evaporating, they're not melting - they're just flushing out some of the food in their gut. People who bang on about toxins and water weight and such really need to go hug a tree or something. All that's truly happening is they've got a kind of lag and they're pooing it out in the first week.

If anyone wants to actually lose fat on a diet they have to continue on. they have to keep eating less than they use. That's another story - but that first week is truly just the old body adjusting to the new amount of food and water.