Is Water Weighing you Down? Learn the Power of Dehydrating your Body
5 min
©JGITom-Grill
Do you struggle with annoying water retention? We’ll show you how to shed unnecessary water weight quickly, while staying healthy.
Are you a competitive athlete? Do you need to dehydrate your body quickly and over the short term in order to reach a certain weight? Click on Chapter 6 in the table of contents below and find out how athletes prepare for competitions!
Reduce water retention: Figure out the causes
Once you notice that your body is storing more water, it’s time to find out what might be causing it. For example, pregnant women, the elderly, and women going through menopause tend to have more problems with water retention. Women’s hormone levels can also lead to water retention during their periods.
Problems with water retention can also be caused by diseases such as heart or kidney ailments. Combined with the wrong diet and too little exercise, water retention becomes even worse.
What all these causes have in common is that the water is stored in particularly frustrating places like your thighs, bottom, belly, upper arms, and ankles, in most cases.
This sounds like a paradox, but it’s the truth. If you want to get rid of extra water your body is holding onto, you’ve actually got to drink lots. The best choices? Water or tea. And if you’re looking to change up your flavors, we’ve got recipes for you. How about a sparkling raspberry peach iced tea? It packs refreshing hydration and protein into one delicious, powerful punch.
Why does your body need water?
An adult human’s body is 70% water on average, and every day we lose some of this water by sweating and breathing. Water transports various substances within our bodies, while also serving other functions. It makes sure that our blood flows, removes harmful substances, and helps our brain work properly, just to name a few.
Remember a few days when you didn’t drink enough water? Over the course of the day you probably noticed that you couldn’t perform as well in your workouts or concentrate while studying, and you ended up with a headache. These are all signs of dehydration.
Reduce water retention with your diet
Several different methods can help you get rid of excess water weight, but just eating certain foods is usually enough. All you have to do is incorporate these foods into your daily routine for a few days.
Important reminder: It sounds like a contradiction, but if you want to reduce water retention, you have to make sure you get enough fluids.
We’ve already covered how getting enough water is essential for your body to function properly. If you aren’t drinking enough, your body will try even harder to store water for an emergency. But if you’re getting enough water, it will break down excess fluids faster.
That’s why we recommend eating natural foods with high water and potassium content. Cucumbers, melons, pineapples, strawberries, and asparagus are perfect for reducing water retention. Artichokes, onions, garlic, carrots, avocados, potatoes, and rice can also help. Then there’s potassium-rich foods like nuts, including hazelnuts, cashews, peanuts, and almonds, as well as dried fruit like apricots and bananas. Always on the go? We get it. Toss a pack of Organic Nuts & Berries into your bag on your way out the door.
Warning: Potassium should only be consumed in small amounts and in the form of natural foods.
On the other hand, if you want to reduce water retention quickly and effectively, you should also definitely avoid some foods, including not only alcohol and caffeine, but also salt. Everyday table salt is mostly made up of sodium, which has a strong water-binding effect.
Reduce water retention with different teas
If you want to provide your body with additional support, just pick the right drinks! Many varieties of tea are supposed to help reduce water retention, like nettle, parsley, birch leaf, horsetail, dandelion, ginger, and green tea.
Other methods for reducing water retention
In addition to a balanced diet, there are also other ways you can reduce excess fluids.
1. Reduce water retention with lymphatic drainage
If your body’s water retention is so extreme that it’s already causing pain, lymphatic drainage can be helpful. In this process the relevant tissue is stimulated with a special technique. In contrast to massage, this technique is very gentle on your tissues and stimulates the lymphatic channels responsible for the removal of excess fluid. Talk to your doctor or health care provider before starting with this method.
2. Shed excess water with a foot reflexology massage
A reflexology foot massage can also help activate the lymphatic system, as well as the liver and kidneys, helping the body reduce water retention by itself.
3. Reduce water retention with moderate cardio exercise
While one-sided physical stress, such as sitting for long periods and standing without moving much, can also lead to water retention, moderate cardio exercise is perfect for reducing it. Cycling, in particular, also has the advantage of being particularly easy on your joints. The entire body’s circulatory process is activated during cardio exercise. On the one hand, you’re just sweating out the water, and on the other, your body is also transporting and using it more effectively within the body.
4. Get rid of excess fluid with a fascia roller
Happen to have a fascia roller at home? Perfect! When you start rolling out your muscles, you’re also stimulating your lymphatic system. This activates the body’s own drainage mechanisms in a way that’s similar to lymph drainage.
Shedding water weight for competitions
Unlike those fighting abnormal water retention, athletes such as bodybuilders and martial artists, whose competitions are divided into different weight classes, use different techniques to try to lose a few hundred grams, sometimes even kilos, in a very short time.
While your body breaks down fat very slowly, it can lose one kilo of water relatively quickly. But you should be aware that this weight loss isn’t for keeps, and that it usually shows up again on the scale just one day later.
In order to shed water weight, many martial artists like to work out in special sweat suits and a little extra clothing. After they’re done training, they head to the sauna. Before a competition they have almost nothing to eat and only a little water to drink, if any.
Bodybuilders usually approach shedding water weight in a very systematic way. They follow a precise diet plan that tells them exactly how much protein, carbs, fat, and water they can consume. With these plans they manage to maintain maximum muscle volume, while bringing their water retention to a minimum.
Important reminder: These methods for shedding water weight are only very short-term solutions to reducing your weight and water retention. They are not recommended for people who do sport as a hobby,.
Conclusion
- First, find out what’s causing your water retention.
- Drinking enough is essential for reducing water retention.
- Foods with a high water and potassium content are helpful.
- Alcohol and caffeine cause you to retain even more water.
- Table salt is mostly sodium, which makes your body store even more water.
- Various types of tea help the body reduce water retention.
- Lymphatic drainage, foot reflexology, moderate cardio exercise, and massages with a fascia roller stimulate the removal of water from your body’s tissues.
- Methods used to shed water weight before competitions only have short-term effects.
More knowledge from foodspring:
- Hydrating Foods: How to eat your water
- Dehydration: What happens when you don’t drink enough?
- Getting thirsty? Here are our best tips to drink more water every day
- Why Watermelon May Be The Best Summer Fruit
Sources for this article
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