Hello and welcome to the Nutrition Diva Podcast. I'm your host Monica Reinagal.

This week's episode was suggested by Highting, who asks,

what exactly is water weight?

It's a phrase that gets thrown around a lot,

and I would love to know what we're talking about. How and why do we gain and lose

so much water? Well this is a terrific question and if you're in the habit of getting on the scale every morning, a practice which is linked with healthier body weights over the long term, by the way,

well then you've probably noticed that your weight can vary wildly from day to day in ways that sometimes seem unfair.

How could I have gained two pounds overnight, you might think?

I had a salad for lunch and skipped dessert at dinner.

I should weigh two pounds less this morning.

It's tempting to think that whatever we did or didn't eat yesterday should show up the next day

on the scale, but it just doesn't work that way. As Dan Arielli pointed out in our

recent interview it takes a lot longer for dietary changes to result in actual fat loss or

gain.

If you gain or lose three or four pounds overnight,

most of that is probably due to water weight.

Our bodies contain a lot of water, but we're not just giant water balloons. Water is held in a variety of places in the body. Now, some of these don't change very much from day to day. Our bones, for example, are, believe it or not, about 30% water, but that stays relatively constant.

Other compartments, such as our stomachs and our bladders can hold relatively large amounts of water, but on a very temporary basis.

And here's the thing, water is heavy. A pint of water, or for that matter, beer weighs about

one pound. If you were to weigh yourself and then drink 16 ounces of fluid and immediately weigh yourself again, you'd

have gained one pound in about 15 seconds.

And then a couple of hours later, a lot of that water will have collected in your bladder. So if you weigh

...