Most of us have been there: You're eating healthily, working out, and the pounds are coming off, then there's a break in the momentum and you gain a few pounds out of nowhere. It's a frustrating setback, to say the least.
Tired of yo-yo dieting and determined to find out what was keeping her from losing those last few pounds, Sylvia Tara, Ph.D., author of The Secret Life of Fat, spent five years researching fat and speaking with more than 50 world leaders in the field. The complicated answer involves genetics, bacteria, viruses, gender, age, hormones, and, yes, water weight.
Gaining a pound or two in just a few days is almost always the culprit of water weight, because fat takes more time to accumulate. Glycogen, the stored form of glucose, holds much more water than fat because of its biochemical makeup. Tara compares it to a checking account: something we reach for when our glucose levels are low. "It's not as readily available as glucose, the 'cash' in this scenario, but is nearby," says Tara. "Fat is a whole different, long chain molecule that follows a completely different pathway than fat. Fat can be compared to a certificate of deposit. You will burn it last. It holds a lot more energy, the most compact energy we have compared to glycogen."
Stored in the liver and muscle cells, glycogen is hydrated with three to four parts of water. (It's essentially hydrophilic or "water loving" and fat is hydrophobic or "water hating.") So, when you lose weight quickly, you lose glycogen stores, but that leaves the liver and muscles greedy and wont to hold onto any bit of glucose consumed and its accompanying water. Here's how to stabilize or lose water weight, according to Tara.
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How to Lose Water Weight - WomansDay.com (blog)
