How to Lose Water Weight #69
Posted by lose weight | Tagged as: top 100 weight loss tips
Keeping up the pressure, here is another of my Top 100 Weight Loss Tips with article number 69 in the series. For this post, I’m going to look at how to lose water weight, or ways to reduce water retention.
Water retention, or Edema (to give it its proper name, which is the accumulation of fluids within body tissues) is something that affects a lot of people and it can be dealt with. That is not to say that losing retained water is a permanent weight loss strategy, but if you are retaining excess fluid, it will make you a little lighter to get rid of it.
How to Lose Water Weight
First of all, if your body has tended to accumulate and hold on to excess fluids, the best thing you can do is visit your doctor so that he can take steps to learn the cause. Your doctor may be able to determine if an underlying medical condition is causing your edema. While edema itself can be harmless, your doctor can check if it is a symptom for one of these medical conditions:
- Filariasis
- Glomerulonephritis
- Heart disease
- High blood pressure
- Kidney problems
- Liver problems (including cirrhosis)
- Lymphedma
- Nephrotic Syndrome
- PMS symptoms (eg bloating)
- Pregnancy
- Thyroid problems
Your doctor may prescribe diuretics to help those suffering from edema. Diuretics helps the body get rid of excess retained fluid. You should not indiscriminately use diuretics when trying to lose weight as it can lead to potentially serious problems such as dehydration and potassium deficiency.
If there is no medical condition evident, then the next step is to look at your diet for a possible cause and a change in diet can be how to lose water weight.
You need to know that certain factors in your diet can contribute to fluid retention and by making simple changes to that diet, you can reduce your water retention naturally. The four major contributing factors are an excess of salt, refined sugar, lack of proteins and lack of amino acids and/or B-vitamins.
So straight away you can see that by reducing your salt and refined sugar intake and by increasing the amount of protein rich food as well as increasing your intake of amino acids and B vitamins, you can reduce your water retention through diet alone.
You should eat foods with high water content as this improves the elimination of excess fluids. Some foods contain elements that boost kidney performance. Beets actually help your body to fight floating fats and fatty deposits. These foods would include things like:
- Artichokes
- Asparagus
- Brussel Sprouts
- Cucumbers
- Cabbage
- Carrots
- Garlic
- Lettuce
- Oats or oatmeal
- Tomatoes
- Watercress
- Watermelon
There are some natural herbs and foods that provide natural diuretic effects and are completely safe to eat. These include
- Celery and celery seeds
- Cider vinegar
- Cranberry juice
- Dandelion and Dandelion leaf tea
- Green tea
- Fennel (or fennel seeds)
- Juniper berries
- Parsley (flat leaf is best)
- Stinging Nettle
In addition to the above you should actually drink more plain water despite how it looks, as this helps your body to remove excess fluids and drink herbal teas such as camomile, mint and ginger as these also help with kidney function to flush the excess fluids.
To also boost the good work that the above diet changes can make, you should make sure you are getting plenty of mold exercise daily, such as walking, swimming or playing sports.
100 Weight Loss Tips number 68 follows in the next post!
My wife was suffering with water retention (edema) for a long time and she took diuretic pills off and on for many months. But while they got rid of it for a while as soon as she stopped taking them, the fluid came back and she was exactly where she was before she started taking the pills.
She looked at her diet and started cutting back on the salt, which she always used far too much of, in my opinion. The water retention disappeared after just a few days and it has never come back again.
So you are absolutely right about too much salt being a major cause of water retention. Interesting about sugar too, part of her change in diet meant cutting out a lot of the junk food she used to eat. I probably don’t need to tell you that she also lost around four stone in weight over 3 months since she changed her diet!
Jeremy
Thanks Jeremy. Well done to your wife, by the way I bet she’s very pleased with the outcome. Its incredible to think just how many people don’t realize the amount of salt they eat every day and the damage that excess is doing to them in so many ways.
Thank you for these wonderful weight loss tips on how to lose water weight. This problem is something that has plagued me for some time and I had no idea that it was diet related. I was certainly eating too much salt and refined sugar as you suggested so it all made good sense to me. Now I have started to change my diet and I am already noticing a difference in only a few days.
Frieda
This is exactly what I was looking for with regards to how to lose water weight as edema is something that has been plaguing me for some time now.
I never realized it was just down to diet! Man, our diets have got a lot to answer for!
Sam
Since we are discussing the matter of losing water weight, I’ve been studying countless sources of information on the effects of alkaline water and water ionizers. It seems by drinking alkaline water we promote the intake of oxygen and help neutralize the build up of acids before they are stored in the body. Acid coagulates blood causing bad circulation.
However, an abundance of alkaline water, promotes better blood circulation, eliminating acidic waste helping the body heal itself. It also helps rid acidic waste making them more soluble in the blood. Thus, acidic wastes will be easily drained from the body .. Is there anyone else here that has evidence of this?