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How to Lose Water Weight

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:

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. It may surprise some to realize that a change in diet can be an effective way to lose water weight.

What's the Cause?

You need to know that certain factors in your diet can contribute to fluid retention. Just by making simple changes to that diet, you can reduce your water retention naturally.

The four major contributing dietary factors are an excess of sodium (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, you can cut down on the water retention. Also by increasing the amount of protein rich food as well as increasing your intake of amino acids and B vitamins, you can also reduce the amount of water your body retains. And you do it all through diet alone.

Additionally, you should eat foods with high water content. This improves the body's elimination of excess fluids.

What to Eat

Beets actually help your body to fight floating fats and fatty deposits. Some foods contain elements that boost kidney performance. These foods would include things like:

There are some natural herbs and foods as well as some liquids that provide natural diuretic effects and are completely safe to eat. These include

In addition to the above you should actually drink more plain water. Despite how it looks, this helps your body to remove excess fluids. You can also 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 mild exercise daily, such as walking, swimming or playing sports.

100 Weight Loss Tips number 68 follows in the next post!

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Posted on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 in Top 100 Weight Loss Tips | 7 Comments

7 thoughts on "How to Lose Water Weight"

Terry says:

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.

Jeremy says:

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

Frieda says:

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

Sam says:

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

Adeline says:

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?

Felicia says:

I have learned a lot of useful tips from this site. The list of foods that helps eliminate excessive fluids was very useful.

AK says:

Informative and nice post. Certainly we need to eat alkaline foods for it helps prevent the body from disease and illness. It will boost one's health, helps recovery, and will slow the aging process. They help weight loss too.