Hello, I'm Monica Reinegel. Welcome to the Nutrition Diva Podcast, where we take a closer

look at nutrition trends and headlines, explain what the latest research means for you,

and answer your nutrition questions. I recently got a call on the Nutrition Diva listener

line from someone who had apparently stumbled across the podcast while googling the answer

to a burning nutrition question, could eating a high sodium soup cause weight gain? They

went on to explain that they'd gained a pound and a half, even though they'd eaten very

little the day before, just some oatmeal, some cabbage, and a small amount of soup, which

they suspected, had been very high in sodium. Now, if you're in the habit of getting on

the scale every morning, 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?

I had a salad for lunch, I skipped dessert at dinner, I should weigh two pounds less. 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 doesn't work that way. It takes a lot longer for dietary changes

to result in fat loss or fat gain. So if you gain or lose even three or four pounds overnight,

most of that is probably due to water weight. Here's the thing, water is heavy, a pint

of water weighs about one pound. So if you were to weigh yourself and then drink 16 ounces

of fluids and immediately weigh yourself again, you'd have gained one pound in about 15 seconds.

A couple of hours later, a lot of that water will be collected in your bladder. So if you

weigh yourself before and after visiting the bathroom, you might be able to enjoy the thrill of

losing up to a pound in 15 seconds. As you can see, the amount of fluid in your stomach and in

your bladder will have a fairly profound yet meaningless effect on your body weight at any given

moment. Eventually, all the water in your body passes through the kidneys, which regulate how

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