Fight sport athletes, runway models and other people with time-sensitive weight goals sometimes practice rapid water-weight-loss methods to reach those goals. Since your body water represents approximately 75 percent of your weight, this can make a big difference in the scales on a very short term. However, this kind of weight loss carries risks and disadvantages that almost always outweigh the benefits.
Methods for Water-Weight Loss
"Water-weight loss" is another way of saying "dehydration." As your body loses its water, you lose weight. Sweating and elimination, without eating or drinking to replace those fluids, are the primary methods for attaining rapid water-weight loss. Some of the specific techniques include restricting fluid consumption, sitting in saunas or heated rooms, working out while wearing heavy or waterproof clothing, and taking diuretics or laxatives.
Dangers of Water-Weight Loss
Dehydration is bad for you. Early symptoms of mild dehydration can include thirst, fatigue, irritability, dizziness and nausea. As the dehydration worsens, you may experience more severe versions of the same, plus muscle cramping and feelings of confusion or disorientation. Severe dehydration can lead to organ failure and even death.
Duration of Water-Weight Loss
Rapid water-weight loss isn't just bad for you -- it's not even permanent. When you lose weight by burning fat, that fat is no longer a part of your body. It's gone forever -- or at least until your next cheesecake. Water-weight loss may make a difference on the scales today, but it goes right back on as soon as you re-establish a healthy level of hydration. This is one reason combat athletes use this technique: It allows them to "make weight" for competition and then add mass quickly for an advantage in competition.
Weight Loss and Lifestyle
Another disadvantage of using rapid water-weight loss is that it doesn't address the main factors of being overweight. Putting on extra pounds happens when you exercise too little and eat too much of a poor diet. If you build new habits of activity and nutrition, you will lose weight and keep that weight off. The water-weight method does nothing to help you establish healthy habits and in fact can lead to establishing unhealthy eating habits as you binge and purge with the rhythms of your weight-loss needs.
References
- Vanderbilt University: Weight Issues in Wrestling
- "Body for Life;" Bill Phillips; 1999
- "The Four Hour Body"; Timothy Ferriss; 2010
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