Water Retention and Weight Gain

Water retention and its subsequent weight gain is a particularly bothersome issue for women of all ages, let’s learn all about it.

Understanding water retention
Water or fluid retention is also referred to as edema. It occurs in the circulatory system and may cause bloating, and swelling in the extremities, such as the legs, feet, and ankles.
People who lead extremely sedentary lifestyles with little exercise or those who are bedridden are susceptible to this condition.

Edema can also be indicative of kidney disease or heart failure, so if you have a severe case of it, or a severe sudden onset, get emergency medical care.
For the non-severe varieties, that cause swelling, bloating and discomfort and there is no underlying medical condition, making changes in your diet and exercise habits can help.

Why does Water Retention Happen?
When the body retains water, it means that there is extra water around in the tissues that lie between the cells in the body. There are several reasons why this could happen, including the following:

• Carbohydrates—carbohydrates increase water retention, this is why bloating often occurs after a carb heavy fast food meal and may wake up with an extra five pounds on the scale, all in water weight. Let’s start with the carbohydrates. Every one gram of carbohydrate requires three to four grams of water in order to store and process it. In order to translate that into a familiar language, say you eat a medium potato. You’ll get 37 grams of carbs, which needs 110-150 grams of water. That’s about 5 ounces, just below a half pound. On a moderately high carbohydrate diet, the average person will eat around one and a half pounds of water weight just from the carbohydrates in the diet. If you stop eating carbohydrates, you’ll lose that pound right away.
• High levels of salt in the diet is also responsible for excess retention of fluids and if salt is present in every processed meal you eat, you’ll retain even more fluids.
• Sex hormones—this is especially true for women. Water retention gets more complicated for women. Most women will retain water during their menstrual cycle. In general, 92 percent of women will have water retention in the week before their menstrual period starts. Once menstrual bleeding actually begins, the water weight drops off once again. Some women will have persistent water retention, even after their period. During your period, there are notable changes in your hormone levels, which lead to an increased amount of potassium and sodium in your system.
• Cortisol—chronically high levels of the stress hormone cortisol is a problem for many reasons, and water retention is one of them. It is difficult to say how much cortisol will increase water retention. It can also increase body fat so that the weight you gain from cortisol is probably both from fat and water. If you’re stressed out and feeling puffy or bloated, some of that is probably from water.
Your body is able to retain enough water to equal about 5 pounds per day, depending on the kind of foods you take and the amount you consume. 

If you add up all those causes of water retention, you can easily get ten pounds of fluctuation from just water. This is especially true for premenstrual women or from anyone who just ate a high carbohydrate dinner. 

PMS and water retention
PMS or premenstrual syndrome is a common cause for water retention in many women. There have been no exhaustive studies that link water retention with premenstrual syndrome. However, lack of essential vitamins and minerals and added salt are triggers for the retention of water in some women.

A British researcher suggested that low blood sugar during PMS could lead to water retention. She argues that low blood glucose levels cause the body to retain water by releasing adrenaline. This signals the body to release more blood sugar. Once the glucose leaves the body, the cells are then filled with water leading to weight gain and bloating.

Recognizing water retention
Water retention is marked by an increase in weight of about 2-5 pounds per day. This is a common sign of swelling, which is characterized by having a bloated abdomen. 
Sometimes your clothing can be too tight. Many women who have this problem complain of pain in the swollen areas of their bodies, particularly the feet and ankles.

Key Steps In Reducing Water Retention
• A crucial step in dealing with water retention is to eat less salt, and avoid processed and junk foods, which are high in salt. Read food labels and avoiding processed food products. Try putting the salt away so you won’t be tempted to use it. The use of calcium supplements with your meals can lessen the risks of retaining fluid. 
• Increase magnesium intake, one study found that  women who took 200 mg of magnesium every day, had less retention during PMS and other studies have shown similar results. You can get magnesium naturally from whole grains, nuts, green vegetables, and dark chocolate.
• You might want to consider working out during your menstrual period to avoid water retention and weight gain. Exercise will increase the blood flow to your kidneys for excretion. 
• Make sure you remain hydrated throughout the day by drinking a lot of fluid. 
• Other ways to reduce water retention include natural diuretics such as lemon water and grapefruit. 
• It also helps to eat 5 to 8 smaller meals throughout the day, instead of 3big meals. 

5 Healthy Tips for Weight Loss

Eating healthy is a vital component of slimming down. Dietary fads that focus on eating one type of food (for example carbohydrates) or totally eliminating others (such as fats and sugars) never last because for your body to stay healthy it takes many of these foods, however in moderation.

5 Healthy Tips for Weight Loss are:

a) Understanding what to eat

b) Knowing when to eat

c) Understanding how much to consume
d) How to simplify your purchasing

e) How to correctly prepare your food intake

There is so much information available on what to eat that we occasionally get so confused we quit before we get started. Understanding what to eat isn't as difficult as it seems. The key is within the food pyramid. The majority of your diet plan (Six to seven servings) ought to be made up of grains (the bottom of the pyramid). These include wholegrain breads, cereals, rice and pasta. Next are fruits and vegetables which will provide the fibre, vitamins and essential minerals that the body needs. The closer the vegetables and fruit are to their natural state, the more nutritious they will be (processing removes nutrients). Dairy and protein (milk, cheese, meat) are what is necessary for strong bones and muscles. Maximize nutritional impact by selecting lean cuts of meat for your 2 -3 daily servings. The top the pyramid is oils and fats, meaning they should be consumed sparingly. Full of flavor, but low in nutritional value, select unsaturated fats, nuts and vegetable oils.

Knowing when you should eat is one thing we all know, becasue it is something our parents told us, eat when you're hungry and stop when you are full. Unfortunately, this really is one of the most difficult items to control. Because of busy schedules and existing bad eating habits a lot of us often eat by the clock, breakfast at 7, lunch at noon, dinner at 6pm, whether we're hungry or not. A whole lot worse, is that we often snack constantly (or regularly) between meals, so rather than three balanced meals, we are more likely to eat Five to six unbalanced ones.Just how much to eat is equally as big an issue as knowing when to eat. Today things are super-sized, value-sized and pretty much over-sized. Two daily servings of meat are not much since an amount is just 2 oz. A typical restaurant steak is at least 8oz, that is twice your everyday requirement. The same goes for virtually all the foods we eat. A serving of salad dressing (from the fat and oil group) is just 1 tbsp, not the more than 1/4 cup we unknowingly pour on in the salad bar. Understanding portion control is essential to maintain a healthy diet.

Get some Weight Loss Tips for 2017

Simplifying your shopping might seem at odds using the need to eat a wide variety of foods to maintain a well balanced diet but it's not. The more ingredients you include in a recipe, the more processed foods and empty calories you add to your diet. By continuing to keep recipes simple, not only will meals taste better, but they will also be filled with all of the nutrients your body needs, provided you do not cook it out of them.In addition to choosing healthy food, how you cook them will determine just how much nutritional value you end up, which is why it is also important to know how to properly prepare the foods you consume. Although raw carrots are the most nutritious, does it matter should you boil or steam them before serving as a side dish? Boiling removes all of the carrots essential vitamins, which end up discarded using the water, while steaming maintains their color, texture and nutritional value. So how you ready your meals are just like essential as what you're preparing.If you bear in mind these five simple tips, you'll be on your way to eating healthier and losing weight.

Diet and Energy Tips

Weight Loss Success With The Power Of 2

How do you rate the difficulty of dieting and losing weight on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 meaning it's very easy for you and 10 meaning it's really hard?

The average difficulty rating seems to be around 8. That's an unscientific, anecdotal based estimate.

If you "failed" at diets in the past and look at your next weight loss attempt with trepidation, it's most likely because you have a high dieting difficulty self-rating.

Unfortunately, diets, of necessity, force you to do things, eat foods, and eat in certain ways that are outside of your norm. Plus, you probably need to eat less than you're used to and if you don't do that right you get hungry and grouchy and hate the whole experience.

Dieting means you need to change your routines if not your habits which is always a challenge.

When you add it all up, dieting causes a lot of stress and pushes your personal difficulty rating off the charts.

The Power Of 2

One good way to help relieve a lot of the stress and move that difficulty rating from an 8 (or whatever yours is) down in the 3 to 4 range or even less, is to use the Power of 2 by finding a good dieting buddy.

Depending on your personal "how-to-diet" preferences, especially if you're socially oriented, finding a buddy or even a group may be the very foundation of your success. Your own personal missing link to weight loss success.

And even if you're not ordinarily the social type, at least giving the Power of 2 dieting buddy idea a try can't hurt.

As in any good partnership, if you find a good, compatible match for your dieting buddy, you will: 

• Help each other overcome your dieting weaknesses
• Support each other in maximizing your dieting strengths
• Give each other both the rational and emotional support needed for success
• Encourage and "cheer lead" each other during tough times

The Power of 2 in dieting, if done correctly, will give you exponential success.

How To Choose A Dieting Buddy

There are 5 steps to choosing an exponentially powerful dieting buddy: 

1. Pay attention to how you like to do things. You'll discover your natural, inborn, innate preferences, strengths, traits, and characteristics. See how you can use your preferred behavioral style in conjunction with and in support of your diet - regardless of the diet you choose.


2. Make sure your buddy knows, understands, and will support your dieting behavioral preferences.


3. Learn your buddy's traits and characteristics - and his/her dieting behavioral dieting preferences, too. They may be the same as yours or may be radically different.


4. Make sure you know, understand, and will support your buddy's dieting behavioral preferences.


5. Agree with your buddy, in advance, how you are going to help and support each other. Exactly how you do that in reality will evolve over time. It will take some testing, trial, and error. But, if you start with at least a loose agreement on how to help and support each other, it will go a long way to helping both of you reduce your dieting difficulty rating and lead quickly to easier and more successful weight loss.

Example

Let's say you're the type of person who does everything at a fast pace, you're socially oriented, creative, and love fun, adventure, and being spontaneous. You don't like structure, routine, or boredom. You're also impatient and expect quick results.

You can see right off the bat that any sort of highly structured diet is a challenge for you. That doesn't mean you can't do it. Quite the contrary. You can be successful on a highly structured diet. If you take into account your natural traits, characteristics, and preferences, and, in a sense just plug them into the diet, you can make any legitimate diet work for you.

So let's now assume you find a dieting buddy with the same traits and characteristics as you. The two of you can support and help each other find ways to spur each other's creativity, make your dieting fun, and challenge each other to find ways to insert some spontaneity and flexibility without deviating too far beyond the bounds of your diet.

Or, maybe you find a dieting buddy who is quite different. Someone, let's say, who has tremendous patience, loves routine and structure, follows rules, is detail oriented, and just likes consistency and stability.

As long as the two of you really "get" each other and respect your differences in life and in dieting styles, are willing to admit your own dieting downfalls or weaknesses, and committed to get involved in each other's dieting efforts with openness and honesty, you'd make a great dieting buddy pair...better than someone who is just like you.

You'll help your buddy to get motivated...to get moving with the diet...to take some risks. You'll encourage her to stay with the diet when it's hard for her. You'll show her how to have a little fun with it.

In turn, she'll help you see that yes, you can have quick results, but "quick" in terms of reality. She'll model some patience for you. She'll help you stick to your dieting routine when you start feeling it's too restrictive. She'll give you an outlet for your emotional frustration when you start having that inevitable sense of boredom with the whole thing.

Finding a random dieting buddy where you don't know and understand each other's traits, characteristics, and dieting behavioral preferences, however, can prove disastrous. If you don't have a good sense of how you should go about dieting or how your buddy should go about dieting, it's impossible to help and support each other in positive and constructive ways. It could easily raise your dieting difficulty.

But, when you choose someone and can really get in tune with each other's best and most effective approaches to dieting and losing weight, you'll significantly reduce your dieting difficulty rating and greatly increase the ease and success of your weight loss efforts.

The Power of 2 can be quite dramatic.

Copyright - 2011 - Dexter Godbey - All Rights Reserved

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Detox With Colon Cleansing Diet Tips

It seems as if every time we get to looking, there is another colon cleansing, "energizing" weight loss program which will detox your system, cut the fat and help you to drop the weight. People offer colon cleansing diet tips to help those people who are suffering from problems such as fatigue and sluggishness from excess weight. If you've ever tried one of these diets and failed it's no surprise because these diets can be difficult to stay on. That's why before you try your next cleansing diet, you need to have good solid information which will not only help you to get through the actual diet, but also help you to transition back into normal life without undoing all the good you've done.

The first thing you need to know about a colon cleansing diet is that you have many different options. There are herbal cleanses, fiber programs, diets and fasting and oxygen cleanses. So, you need to know what type of detox and colon cleansing diet you want to go on. For many first timers, the fiber programs are the gentlest and offer good results, but if you're looking for something more intense, you might want to consider a specialized diet. One of the most important colon cleansing dieting tips which should never be ignored is to determine your age and total health before you consider one type of colon cleansing diet over another. If you tend to become very weak when you don't have food after a couple of hours, for instance, you may want to rule out fasting, which could have very negative side effects for you.

You should also know that you can choose how quickly you want your detox diet to work, because some are very intense, but work quickly, while others are gentle and slow, so it's up to you. For instance, if you will have the time to dedicate to an intense approach, you may choose to just get your colon cleansing diet over and done with.

Another very important colon cleansing diet tip is to begin a pre-diet routine by changing what you eat for a few days. Each of these programs will include instructions as to what you should be eating before you begin so that you can attain optimal results with your colon cleanse diet without negative side effects such as cramping and discomfort. You should always do what's right for your body, though and don't pick a colon cleanse diet which is too harsh or you could become very sick from the very same toxins which you are trying to rid yourself of.

Most of these programs recommend that you cut out all processed foods between 3 and 5 days before you begin your colon cleanse diet and eat about half of your daily calorie allowance in fresh fruits and veggies. Another colon cleansing diet tip which is very often recommended is to cut out all the dairy products from your diet. You should also consider eliminating meats and breads from the diet as well, since they can cause your body to form mucus in the system.

Once you begin, make sure to pay attention to the colon cleansing diet tips and advice from professionals and don't get discouraged if you don't achieve your full desired results on the first try. Instead, stick with the first one and repeat again in the recommended amount of time for best results.

Jennifer Johnson provides information and resources on many natural treatments and therapies. To reclaim your health in 10 days or less and detox with colon cleansing diet tips, visit 'Alternative Medicines Guide' http://medicinesnaturally.com/category/reviews/master-cleanse-review/

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Atkins Diet Tips - 6 Powerful Atkins Diet Tips

In this article you will find six useful Atkins diet tips.

It is no surprise that the Atkins diet spreads around the world like wildfire to help you out with your weight loss battle.

I give you seven tips to get more results from the Atkins diet.

Atkins diet tip 1 # 1 Get protein from lower fat sources

If you want to apply the Atkinson diet effectively you must eat foods that contain low fat.

Examples of some lower fat sources are chicken, olives, pasta dried fruits and so on.

Atkins diet tip 2 # Drink water.

Whether you like it or not if you follow the Atkins diet you have to drink water.

Drinking water is necessary to keep your metabolism active.

Try to link at least eight glasses of water in a day.

Atkins diet tip 3 # Take a picture

It is important thay stay motivated.

Take a picture of yourself before you follow the diet and share it with your partner, friends, colleagues and family members.

Now every time you want to quit with the atkins diet look at the picture and see how far you have come?

Atkins diet tip 4 # 4 Try a low fat carb fruit dessert.

No good meal without a dessert. However if you want to lose weight pay attention.
Do not cakes, ice creams or giant pieces of apple pie.

Yes they are very tasteful but if you do this say goodbye to your fat burning efforts.

Instead try a low fat carb fruit dessert. Well here are some fruits you can eat and believe me they are almost as good as apple pie perhaps sometimes even better.

Try this out melon, pears, grapefruit, blueberries, strawberries.

Atkins diet tip 5 # Make your diet public

You want to follow a diet but you are a little bit unsure what people will think about you.

Don't be afraid dieting is not a crime. Instead tell people about your plan to follow an Atkins diet plan.

In fact telling your friends, partners and co workers will increase your accountability.

Atkins diet tip 6 # Choose the right Atkins diet book.

Well I keep it simple the best books related to the atkins diet are the books from Dr Atkins himself.

Of course there are other great diet books written by others too.

Don't forget to do research about it you it is better to spend fifty bucks on useful information that ten bucks on crap information.

I'm sure these atkins diet tips will help you to lose more weight

However if you're not sure about it ask a doctor or diet specialist for help

The medical industry is scamming you.
A weight loss expert is revealing it all in his free report. Visit my blog to get your instant copy of it, hurry up while it is still free.
If you want to learn much much more about weight loss visit my 
weight loss tip website

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How to Lose Weight in A WEEK | Effective Diet to Lose Weight in a Week

Lose Weight Quickly with these effective diet tips