Salt And Water Retention
Consuming too much salty food or drink may cause some water retention, but not necessarily a lot.
You may be eating more salt than you realise. Lots of convenience foods, and even common foods like bread, contain salt without even tasting salty.
The active ingredient in salt which causes water retention is sodium. Sodium is not just found in salt, it is also in baking powder (used to make cakes) and in flavour-enhancing additives such as monosodium glutamate (MSG). It’s quite hard to avoid consuming excessive salt or excessive sodium if you regularly eat convenience foods.
If you have water retention and are really determined to reduce salt and sodium, then eating unprocessed foods and making as many of your own foods as possible will help. That way you know exactly how much salt is in your food, because you have to add it yourself.
Salt is one of the causes of water retention, but is not the only one. For most people the maximum amount of water retention which they could expect to lose by changing to a low salt / low sodium diet is probably about 2 lbs. However some people are more salt-sensitive than others and may notice that their water retention gets significantly worse if they eat salty food.
If you have any experience of this we’d like to hear from you – do leave us a comment.
Related posts:
