Carbs and Water Weight, Myth or Fact?

[thegoodrebel]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post here though I’ve been reading the forums for a while and gained lots of knowledge from all of you active members (thank you!).

I have a question specific to what people commonly refer to as “water gain” after a carb binge. I hope I’m writing in the right section; I considered the “Fell off the horse” section but this is much less about the fact that I fell (very badly) off the horse and much more about trying to understand this “water gain” business.

In a nutshell, I started Keto in April of 2018 and lost about 40 lbs in 11 month, with all of the ups and downs that are typical of non-linear weight loss. My Keto includes intermittent fasting (with some extended fasts here and there), tracking macros daily (I use CarbManager), keeping carbs below 20 net grams, prioritizing protein and using fat for satiety. Beside the 40 lbs scale victory, one major NSV was overcoming my addiction to artificial sweeteners (I would sometimes go through as many as 20 little packs of splenda per day). I use zero now.

February and March have been tough and I fell off the horse. In February, it happened a couple of times and each carb binge episode lasted a couple of days but this past week, I binged on carbs for a whole week and gained 15 lbs (yes, in one week ).

I’m trying to tell myself what I know are the right things… specifically: what’s done is done, no use in self-loathing now, you know what you need to do to get on the path to health again, and you know you can do it because you have done it before.

What I’m left wondering is whether or not it is true that a lot of scale gain after a carb binge is water. The reason why I’m questioning whether or not any part of this 15 lbs gain is water is because the scale I use (Renpho) measures fat (subcutaneous vs visceral), body mass, muscle mass, water, etc. Now, I understand these measurements are not like dexa scans and they are approximations but one thing that caught my attention is that the water percentage in my body plummeted after this weight gain (see images attached). How can I believe that a lot (or even a little) of the 15 lbs I gained in one week is water if the water percentage in my body went drastically down rather than up?

The same thing happened after the smaller binges in February. Although I only gained a couple of pounds each time, the water % in my body went down… suggesting that after a carb binge not only I did not retain any water, but I lost water instead.

I would love to continue to believe in the “water gain” theory because a) water is easier to drop when you restrict carbs again and 2) the idea of having gained mostly fat for the past week depresses me. But what I see in the charts I’m attaching does not support the water gain theory.

Any insight?

Thank you so much!!

[Ilana_Rose]

Those scales are actually worse than useless as soon as you change any variable. They only sort of give you a basic trend as long as everything is being held sort of constant, such as the sorts of foods you’re eating, the exercise you’re doing, the amount you’re drinking etc.

Here is a fun example. I have such a scale and I went from being sedentary to working out like a fiend four days a week at CrossFit. What happened on the scale? It immediately began decreasing my muscle % and increasing my fat. This went on for over a month before the trend reversed in spite of my eyes and clothing telling me the very opposite. It made me laugh every day at the stupid, useless gimmick I’d bought.

Almost all of that weight you put on is water. And it’s easy to prove it to yourself. Get back on perfect keto and watch the scale weight over the next week or two. Sometimes it will keep going up for a day or two. There seems to be some lag in how water weight is put on. But after that it should drop daily. It does for me every time. Usually by eight days later it’s all gone.

[Aqua_chonk]

A while back, I added some carbs to experiment. I didn’t need the scale to tell me my clothes were tighter from my bra down to my shoes. Yeah, that bad.

Carnivore forever, baby.

[Ilana_Rose]

It’s interesting that you say that. I’ve gone carnivore but slip every few weeks for a few days until I realize how much better I really feel when stricter.

Three time now I’ve noticed the exact same thing. I put on weight when I eat any veg or nuts at all, even though I stay under 20 net grams of carbs. Further, it’s definitely water weight. It immediately begins to fall off on the second day of adherence and is completely gone after a week.

[thegoodrebel]

Thank you for your response, IIlana_Rose.

I hope you are right and I look forward to the scale going down as I return to my keto and to prioritizing proteins.

[Aqua_chonk]

I put on weight when I eat any veg or nuts at all, even though I stay under 20 net grams of carbs. Further, it’s definitely water weight. It immediately begins to fall off on the second day of adherence and is completely gone after a week.

Yup, dead on. It was one of the big clues I was destined for carnivore.

[RobC]

I binged on carbs for a whole week and gained 15 lbs (yes, in one week ).

Some will have likely been fat and some (most) due to water weight gain.
But, something to keep in mind, fast weight gain can be followed by fast weight loss.
Dr. Fung discusses this somewhere (cannot remember where) as he talks about movie stars jumping up their weight for a role and then quickly being able to lose it. His point is that after an extra number of pounds has been on your body for years, it is simply not as easy to remove.

So, hopefully you can get back to where you were soon!

[thegoodrebel]

Thank you, RobC.

Hearing that part of the 15 lbs is water, despite what the scale says, makes me feel even more optimistic about my journey back to keto.

I should also add that this past week of carb binge was motivated by recovering from surgery and therefore being home 24/7 and in pain. I had brachioplasty (arm lift) and breast lift (to remove excess skin due to losing over 100 lbs back in 2016) on Friday March 1st and I was not prepared for the amount of pain I was going to experience during recovery.

I’m still in pain but it’s more manageable. I wonder if surgery might have also added a few lbs, especially considering that I have been barely able to sleep more than 4 hours per night due to the discomfort in my arms.

All in all, it was just a very bad perfect storm… surgery, pain, sleep deprivation and, unfortunately, lots and lots of unhealthy comfort food.

I would usually jump on a fast to reset my system but I cannot fast after surgery due to the importance of protein for wound healing. What I will do instead is the Protein Sparing Modified Fast and eat lots of protein and not much else.

[Ilana_Rose]

Your body is healing so there is probably significant inflammation which will probably add to water weight. I wouldn’t worry about it. Get back to keto and I bet you see it disappear in short order. In fact, you may even have a metabolic uptick due to being in a post surgery hyper-metabolic state, so I REALLY wouldn’t worry about much fat gain. Hope you feel better soon!

[RobC]

Hi @thegoodrebel,

If you use an @ sign in text a list of people will pop up and you can choose the right one.
Then, they will (if the site is working properly) get a notification that they were mentioned.
Otherwise, your text might never be seen by the person it is directed at.

I hope the post surgery pain lifts and you can get back to 100% again soon!
Also, congratulations on the 100 pound loss - that has got to be a very difficult thing to do.

[ava_ad0re]

For every gram of carbs that you eat, your body requires 3-4ml of water to store it within your fat cells, so yes, water weight really is a thing.
I could have written your story, down to the 40lbs fat loss, then falling off the wagon in February and gaining 15lbs.
Just get back on that horse and keep going.
Throw those scales out, they are useless and will derail you based on bullshit results.

[PaulL]

What I’m left wondering is whether or not it is true that a lot of scale gain after a carb binge is water

Apparently, any glucose or glycogen in muscle will attract water into the muscle. I have seen specifications of how much, but no references to textbooks or scientific studies. Carbohydrate that doesn’t go into muscle gets converted into fatty acids and stored in the adipose tissue (fatty acids are not water-soluble, so they don’t import water into the adipose). I suppose that weight gained by one person could have a different water content from the same amount of weight gained by someone else. Those impedence scales are notoriously inaccurate in their estimates of body composition, so I wouldn’t even bother trying to figure out what their readings mean. How are your clothes fitting? That would be a much more relevant question, IMO.

Another relevant factor to consider is that eating enough carbohydrate to raise serum insulin above your threshold level not only causes the storage of glycogen and fatty acids, it also causes the kidneys to slow the rate at which they excrete water.

[OldDoug]

I would love to continue to believe in the “water gain” theory because a) water is easier to drop when you restrict carbs again and 2) the idea of having gained mostly fat for the past week depresses me. But what I see in the charts I’m attaching does not support the water gain theory.

Rebel, we don’t store that much carbohydrate - around 500 grams or 1 lb of it (as glycogen), so perhaps twice that in weight when we account for the water molecules attached. I don’t know how much else water we would store from eating carbs. Inflammation? Perhaps.

Processed food - if that was substantially involved for you - tends to have a lot of salt, and as far as water weight gain, I usually suspect salt the most - our bodies seek to maintain a certain concentration of salt and other electrolytes, and will retain water to compensate for taking more in. I’ve seen it swing by as much as 10 lbs. in one day, going from a LOT of salt to none the next day.

[RedThain]

Yes the water weight gain is real. The last 2 vacations the family took I went ham and had all the carbs and desserts I wanted for the week. Both times I gained 11 and 14lbs and within I week of being back and on track I lost that extra weight.

[BryanS]

Here is an example journal paper that states a 1:3 glycogen to water ratio is “well accepted.”

http://pilarmartinescudero.es/Feb-Mayo2015/2015%20Muscle%20H2O%20to%20glycogen,%20Fernandez,%20EJAP%20eprint.pdf

[Abi34]

@thegoodrebel , I’ve seen in places on the internet that say that every gram of carbs consumed, attracts and holds 3 grams of water. That could certainly account for at least some of the weight gain from your comfort food binge. If you’re not moving around much from surgery you won’t burn sugar much either. Also, the stress of surgery often seems to make people’s blood sugar read high for a while even if blood sugar and insulin levels are usually very low. I bet it’s not one thing but a combination of factors that affected the scale weight…all the best for your recovery!

[thegoodrebel]

Thank you again everyone for the encouragement!

I’m 2 days back into Keto (prioritizing proteins over fat) and down 6 lbs; so that’s 6 out of the 15 lbs I gained last week… I guess it was lots of water after all.

I did definitely gain fat too but it’s so good to see the water number drop fast. I know the fat will take longer but at least my mind set is back to positive.