When You Lose Water Weight, Do You Lose Fat Also? (Explained)

When we set out to lose weight, we want the weight to come from fat. The problem is that it’s difficult to pinpoint where our weight reduction is coming from, particularly at initially. How can you determine whether you’re shedding water weight rather than fat?

When You Lose water weight, Do You Lose Fat Also?. 

1. Signs showing that you lose water weight 

• You’re on a low-carb diet

According to some study, eating a low-carb, high-protein diet is a safe and efficient approach to reduce weight. By low-carb, we mean less than 60 grams of carbohydrates per day.

In fact, according to a research published in the Journal of Pediatrics, obese adolescents who restricted carbohydrates to 20 grams per day while increasing protein consumption lost more weight in three months than those who restricted fat.

However, part of the first weight loss with a low-carb diet is due to water loss—especially if you previously ate a high-carb diet. When we consume carbohydrates, our bodies convert them to glucose.

The glucose molecules are then combined with water molecules to make glycogen, which is stored in our muscles and liver for later usage when we need energy, like during high-intensity exercise.

We store more water as glycogen when we consume more carbohydrates. If you’ve recently gone low carb, expect to lose a few pounds due to water loss.

• You’ve Quickly Lost a Lot of Weight

Sorry to bust your bubble, but most of the weight you’ve dropped after only a week on an ambitious new diet and activity regimen has come from water.

According to experts, normally advocate eliminating 500 calories each day to lose fat at a sustainable pace of one or two pounds per week.

You can’t drop more than a pound or two of pure fat so quickly unless you have a substantial amount of weight to reduce, say, 100 pounds or more.

Cutting calories overall, even if you don’t decrease carbohydrates, encourages your body to utilize stored glycogen for energy—and as you use it, you lose water.

According to the Mayo Clinic, this is why many of us observe considerable weight loss in the initial few weeks of attempting to reduce weight.

Rest confident that as your body adapts to your new eating and activity habits over the course of the first few weeks, the weight you lose moves from water to fat.

Our bodies don’t hold an infinite quantity of water, so once we shed the surplus, there’s nothing more to lose.

I have a lot of people who drop seven pounds in the first week or two of starting a new diet and then lose one pound each week for the rest of the program.

• Your weight varies dramatically from day to day.

Don’t panic if your daily weigh-ins have been all over the place the previous several days. It’s difficult to lose and gain body fat overnight, so you’re probably simply dealing with water weight fluctuations.

If it takes seven days to reduce 500 calories per day to lose one pound of fat, it will take over one day of overeating to gain a pound of fat.

In fact, you’d have to consume 3,500 calories more than your body requires doing so. That’s 5,500 calories if you normally consume 2,000 calories each day.

When you abruptly modify your diet from one day to the next—for example, moving from no carbohydrates to all carbs and back—you swiftly retain and lose enough water to throw off your scale reading.

• Your clothes don’t fit as well as they used to be.

Your clothing will always reveal the truth regarding weight reduction, regardless of what the scale says.

According to Tamir, if you’re merely shedding water, you won’t notice much of a change in how your clothing fits.

Your clothing will feel looser, and you’ll know you’re shedding body fat if you’re losing fat—and inches—around your waist, for example.

Using body fat calipers is another approach to see whether you’re shedding fat or water. These pincers are a simple method to measure your progress and determine your body fat percentage.

Simply pinch a portion of skin about an inch above your right hip bone with your fingers, position the caliper over the skinfold, apply pressure until a click is heard, and verify the tool’s body fat reading.

2. How to burn more fat? 

• Get Plenty Of Sleep

Don’t overlook the importance of sleep in weight reduction! After all, sleep deprivation has been shown to have a substantial influence on our appetite and satiety hormones.

Take, for example, this little research published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition: People ate 300 calories more per day after sleeping for just four hours per night for five nights than they did after sleeping for nine hours’ per night for five nights.

Prioritize the suggested seven to nine hours of sleep every night to keep your fat-loss efforts on track.

• Consume a Balanced Diet

It’s tempting to limit calories and eliminate all carbohydrates from your diet, but Tamir warns that this will only lead to long-term failure.

You can only go on an extreme diet for so long before your willpower breaks out—and this occurs much quicker if you’ve fully eliminated carbohydrates and are too exhausted to exercise.

Instead, stock up on high-quality fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, and fiber-rich carbohydrates like whole grains and starchy vegetables.

Aim for a balanced diet that includes all three macronutrients (fat, carbohydrates, and protein) and a caloric deficit of no more than 500 calories each day.

• Regularly lift weights

Muscle tissue, unlike fat, is metabolically active, meaning it needs energy even while at rest, according to Tamir. As a result, the more muscle you have, the more calories your body uses daily.

Start by adding two to three full-body workouts each week if strength training isn’t currently a part of your program.

The American College of Sports Medicine suggests lifting a modest weight for three to four sets of six to twelve repetitions, with one to two minutes of rest between sets.

3. Final words: When You Lose Water Weight Do You Lose Fat Also? (Explained) 

When you are trying to lose weight, you need to understand the difference between water and fat. Then you should work accordingly to burn the right type of fat accordingly from the body, based on your preferences.