The length of time that it takes to lose water weight depends on how much water you're retaining, the cause of the water weight gain, and the action taken to lose it. If you have one high-sodium meal and then return to normal, healthy dietary habits, you'll likely return to your normal weight in 1-2 days.
It's caused by fluid buildup in body tissues. Sitting for a long time during the workday or on plane flights, hormone changes during pregnancy, and even standing for too long can all cause this to happen. Your body is made up of 50 to 60 percent water.
How Much Water Weight Can You Lose? You can lose up to 20 pounds of water weight in one week after modifying your diet and starting an exercise routine.
For example, going on a low carb diet, or cutting your carbs way back, triggers the loss of glycogen and the water stored with it, and if extreme, can also be dehydrating. Just two cups (16 oz) of water weigh one pound, so shedding fluid fast can result in weighing a lot less on the scale.
Aim for 64 ounces a day (it's a good goal for all of us, even if specific needs vary) and of course, skip the soda.
The amount of water weight your body stores can vary a lot, but the average person carries one to five pounds, Clayton says; athletes (or anyone training at least 90 minutes a day) can train their bodies to stash away double that (a good thing, he notes, because they'll use it the next day).
If you press on your skin and an indentation stays there for a couple of seconds, that's a sign you have water weight. One way to check if you're retaining water is to press on swollen skin. If there's an indention that stays for a little while, that's a sign that you could be retaining water.
While counterintuitive, drinking water can actually reduce water weight. Dehydration can make the body hold on to extra water to make up for lack of incoming water. Water also improves kidney function, allowing excess water and sodium to be flushed out of the system. Adults should drink around 2 liters of water a day.
If you push on your skin with your finger or thumb and your skin remains depressed, you're probably experiencing water retention. Fat cells are more springy, so the skin will bounce back. Do you feel bloated after eating?
So there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer to how much you should be drinking. But at a minimum, it should be 64 ounces. That's eight cups of water every day. Drinking at least 64 ounces (eight cups) of water every day may help with weight loss.
Baths around 90 degrees have been shown to improve diuresis (increased urine production) by 107 percent. That means loss of some water weight, as when you urinate, you do temporarily lose that weight. It's not a long-term effect, and it doesn't magically melt the pounds.
Another downside of water weight? Minor weight gain. Usually, the water weight will make you five to 10 pounds heavier and can easily be a reason for why you gained weight this week.
When you go on diet that either restricts your caloric intake too much or cuts out an entire category of food, like a zero-carb diet, it's possible to see the scale go down by five to 10 pounds in one week, but Dr. March says that's usually not real fat loss; it's water.
Small fluctuations in water weight aren't always noticeable. But some days, you might wonder whether your jeans are suddenly snug due to water weight or actual weight gain. Dr. Srivastava says a distinguishing clue is that water weight often shows up in the body's extremities—think hands, feet, and ankles.
Extra water is typically stored all over your body in the tissue or between blood vessels, and tends to pool in the extremities (fingers, toes and lower legs).
For weight loss purposes, your weight and activity levels govern how much water you should drink. In general, you should drink between half an ounce to an ounce every day for every pound you weigh.
You lose a moderate amount of water weight every time you sweat, but it's possible to increase this amount with the attire you choose for your workout.
Some popular weight loss diets suggest that you can lose weight while sleeping. However, the majority of the weight you lose while sleeping may be water weight. That said, getting adequate sleep regularly may promote long-term weight loss.
Water retention is often the result of eating too much salt, processed, high-sodium foods, and not drinking enough water. 1 Ingredients like monosodium glutamate, or MSG, baking soda, sodium nitrite, sodium saccharin, and sodium benzoate have just as much of a role in inducing bloating as plain table salt.