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Are You Losing Water Weight or REAL Weight? - Thomas DeLauer
You know those first few pounds that you lose when you first go on a ketogenic or even just a low carb diet? Well, a lot of people wonder if that's fat or if it's water. A lot of times they psych themselves out. They think, "Ah, it's just water, it's probably no big deal. I don't want to get too excited." Well, I want to help you understand the intricacies and the science of what's really going on in your body. Whenever you start on any new diet protocol, specifically something that's like paleo, low carb, or keto.
All right, so let's get down to the science of what's going on. There's really two things I want to address. The first thing is when someone starts to go on any kind of low carb diet, of course you're going to lose some water, simply because carbohydrates hold water within the body. For every one gram of carbohydrate that you consume, you generally hold about 3.7 grams of water. So as you can figure, this will add up.
It's not quite that simple. It's not like you consume 400 grams of carbs and you're going to hold close to 1600 grams of water. It's not quite that extravagant. What it is, is it's the carbs that are stored in the way of glycogen. And when you first go on a low carb or a keto diet or even a paleo diet what's happening is your body has no choice to go through what it's called glycolysis where your body takes carbohydrates that are stored inside your muscle as a stored form of energy and releases them into the bloodstream.
If you're glucose dominant, which means that you've been eating carbs for most of your life and your body usually is synthesizing carbohydrates as a fuel source, the first thing that your body is going to do when it's in any kind of caloric deficit or any kind of carbohydrate deficit is it's going to release those carbohydrates into your bloodstream to be burned because you're not consuming those carbs through your actual diet. So once those carbs are burned and evacuated from the muscle stores then you're no longer holding the water that is associated with them. You only hold that excess water when those carbs are stored as glycogen. It's not like you consume a 100 grams of carbs right here, right now, and you instantly hold 400 grams of water. It's not that, that easy. But still it explains why you drop some weight really, really quick.
Is this something to be upset about? Absolutely not and here's why. What happens is once your body loses that additional glycogen and loses that additional water, your body actually reduces amounts of inflammation in it. Which mean that your body is able to mobilize fat a lot better. Your joints are able to move a lot easier. You're able to work out and get your heart rate up that much higher. So it actually plays a very big role and acts as sort of a, for a lack of a better word, catalyst for more weight loss later on down the line.
But there's another thing that you have to remember. When you're on a keto diet or any kind of low carb diet, your kidneys expel more water. And simply put, when you have insulin in your system, so insulin is something that's released whenever you eat carbohydrates or whenever you spike your blood glucose. Your kidneys are triggered to hold onto water. They hold onto sodium, so therefore it holds onto water. When you don't have high levels of insulin your kidneys don't regulate quite as well. And I know that sounds like a bad thing but in this particular case it's a good thing. It means that your kidney's signal to your body to excrete sodium and when your body excretes sodium you excrete water too because sodium is what's going to allow a lot of that water to be held. But where does it release that water? Well, it generally releases it from the subcutaneous tissue. So when you release water from the subcutaneous tissue you're not releasing water inside the muscle, you're releasing water on top of the muscle, underneath the skin giving you a leaner appearance.
Now, why is this good? Well, it's good because it gives you a fair look at what you actually look like. It gives you a fair assessment of what your muscle tone is like, and a fair assessment of where you really need to go. And this does some things very powerfully when it comes down to a psychological aspect. If you start to see results early on in a diet, you generally can excel a lot further throughout the entire range of that diet. Again, not saying that keto or paleo is even a diet, it's more of a lifestyle, but still it helps give you that initial surge that you need. That motivation to really keep on going.
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