Lose Weight Program > Salt and Weight Gain

But there can be too much of a good thing. Water-logged tissues may not be fat tissues, but that's the way they strike the public eye. You cannot control your water content by exercise or intake, to any satisfactory extent. It is important in reducing to take enough water. Unless there is sufficient moisture in the tissues you can't break down and burn up fat.

There is no valid health rule that can set down your water needs arbitrarily at six or eight or ten glasses a day. A great deal depends on what you eat, too. The only "rule" any normal person needs is to drink when you're thirsty. (Editor's note: some people experience sugar cravings when actually they are craving water. If your sweet tooth is acting up, trying drinking a glass or two of water, waiting half an hour, and see if the craving has not passed). Nature planned it that way. Some conditions, such as enlarged prostates in elderly men, make excessive water-drinking quite unwise, and even if harmless, the practice imposes contingent interruptions during the day and night.

One way to prevent water retention is to be sure that you get enough protein. Your reducing diets will provide that. When protein is severely restricted, water tends to accumulate in the tissues and make them puffy.

A second means of controlling water retention by diet is by restricting the use of common salt. Salt has a natura{ affinity for water; look at the Pacific Ocean. Internally, your fluid economy is something of an ocean itself, in that it contains mineral salts in approximately the same proportion as was found in the seven seas 'way back there millions of years ago when life first began to squirm in them.

Salt holds about seventy times its weight of water in the tissues. If you get a mental picture of one surplus teaspoonful of salt holding seventy teaspoons of water in captivity in your person, you may be encouraged to reduce your salt intake. Actually, salt can have such a powerful water retention effect that some people can lose up to 3-5 in a week simply by cutting out all salt from their diet. Keep in mind, though, that that will probably mean cutting out all proceeded foods -- these are huge sources of salts.

An increase in potassium discourages water retention. Vegetables are, in general, rich in potassium and low in calories. Reducing diets allow liberal use of vegetables of low calorie value, and there is an added virtue in the tendency of their potassium to drive out surplus water.

In a sense, your body is a hot-water heating plant, and a lot of your energy, which is to say calories, is dissipated in warming water that keeps your weight down. One fourth of the caiories you consumed in yesterday's meals have already escaped from your person in the form of water vapor - as insensible or invisible perspiration, and in the moist air exhaled from your lungs.

If you don't believe it, breathe a few calories onto a mirror.


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