Sugar Causes Water Retention

Everyone knows that eating sodium will cause water retention but were you aware that sugar and refined carbohydrates also cause water retention. When you eat sugar, your body does basically three things with it: stores it as glycogen for quick energy, burns whatever it can in the moment depending on your level of activity, and stores the rest as fat with the help of insulin. What little can be stored as glycogen in the muscle cells and liver requires the presence of potassium. When the body's potassium is used to store sugar, an imbalance is created between potassium and sodium causing water retention.

A great example of this is the typical potbelly that many men have. You might see an otherwise not so overweight man with this protruding belly, like he has a watermelon under his shirt. It is actually somewhat firm in that there isn't a roll of fat on the outside. That is because the protrusion is caused by fluid retention. The body is deficient in potassium from an abundance of sugar, starch or alcohol and a lack of fresh, potassium rich, vegetables.

Just drinking water won't bring potassium levels back to where they need to be. Raw, or lightly steamed veggies are the best source of potassium. Canned veggies are full of preservatives like sodium and overcooked are depleted of nutrients. The majority of your veggies should be raw.

The lack of potassium limits how much sugar can be stored which means more will be stored as fat. Potassium also lowers insulin levels, but in its absence insulin levels could rise and inhibit fat burning.

When you eliminate sugar and starch from the diet, you will usually experience an immediate weight loss that can last for several weeks, as many did when they went on the Adkins Diet. This is water weight and was often criticized as not being real fat loss but it adds weight and takes up space between cells causing a bloating effect. Fat or not, it needs to go. For some, it could make up the majority of their weight loss. During this water weight loss, you will have to pee all the time. When the balance of potassium and sodium is restored, the body will let go of the retained water, as well as stop storing it. How soon and to what degree this happens depends on how depleted the body's potassium stores are and how much is being consumed in the new diet.

Most overweight people have a combination of actual fat and water retention, and as I mentioned before, the water weight can come off rapidly. At most, you can burn about 2 lbs. of fat per week, but you can lose 5-10 lbs of water weight in a week. Don't let anyone tell you its only water weight. If it reduces your weight, shrinks your waist and improves your overall health, it counts.