I have a Newb Question

Rorah

Mooooooo
Hi all, I was just wondering, everyone says that in your first week of Cambridge Diet you usually lose a lot of weight, but at least around half of that weight is likely to be water loss. I just wondered, how can that be, when we are drinking 3-4 litres of water a day?! :confused::confused::confused:
 
because ur body is constantly being hydrated, it has no need to store the water in ur body.. which is why its imporant to stick to the water intake rule :) Xx
 
I was told its because the first think your body uses when it has not immediate food source is your glycogen supplies - which are largely made up of water After it has used them it starts burning fat which is when you go into ketosis(ketones are what gets produced when your body burns fat) - similarly when you stop dieting your glycogen stores are the first things your body replenishes before turning excess requirements to fat.
 
Thanks guys! Makes a little more sense now!
 
And you need to drink the water to flush the ketones out which are toxic. Also, the more water you drink the better your bad breath (that the ketosis gives you) will be.

Also, people get a lot of water from the food they eat... and you aren't getting any food (much less the water from it).

MM
 
Setas has it right. :)

When we eat a diet that contains carbohydrates, we store some of that carbohydrate (in the form of glycogen) in the liver and muscles so that there's a ready supply of fuel for muscular activity. Every gram of that glycogen is bound to approx. four grams of water - so when you burn a gram of glycogen you lose five grams of weight (1g carb + 4g water).

1g of carbohydrate = 4 calories.

Most adults store around 2000 calories' worth of glycogen = 500g of glycogen.

So when you've burnt that 500g of glycogen you'll have lost 2000g of water with it: a total of 2.5kg (5.5 pounds).

So in the first week of the diet (assuming you don't cheat), up to 5 and a half pounds of your loss can be attributed to the loss of water weight. Anything else you lose in addition will be fat loss (in theory, anyway :)). Of course, this doesn't take into account any other ideas your body might have about water retention, for example, if it's TOTM, etc. :rolleyes: so the whole loss might not show up straightaway.

The depletion of glycogen stores happens on most calorie restricted diets, actually (which is why you get a bigger loss in the first week on any lower calorie diet) - but on diets where you're still having carbs, the store isn't depleted quite so much.

MinnieMel

And you need to drink the water to flush the ketones out which are toxic. Also, the more water you drink the better your bad breath (that the ketosis gives you) will be.

Also, people get a lot of water from the food they eat... and you aren't getting any food (much less the water from it).

Very true!
 
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