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Do you belong to the bunch of people who eliminated salt from the kitchen hoping to solve the perennial issue with body hydric retention but instead, not seeing any positive results?
Then keep reading, there might be few more things you need to know and to do.
Do you agree with me that one of the most common obsession among women is body hydric retention?
I must admit that in my experience of consulting people, there is also a quite significant number of men interested in the topic. Unfortunately, women are the ones suffering the most.
Bad luck? We see later why is that.
The thing is that we find a lot of information around the topic, online and offline, but the more we read, and we try different solutions, the more our irritating hydric retention is appearing and cynically smiling to us every morning.
What happen always to me is that I notice hydric retention on my legs every time I am going for clothes shopping, and I find myself in a changing room full of mirrors all around me and lights which seems to be done exactly to highlight all skin imperfections...
does this happen to you as well?
So annoying...
This year, we promise ourselves, to get rid of it! Therefore, you are here with me today! Let´s get the toolkit ready!Before to enter in detail, I must anticipate that one solution is not working for everyone at the same way!
It might have been too easy otherwise ;)
Please, then stop copying your friend´s workout and diet hoping is giving you the same results; instead, try to deeply understand your body and how it reacts to different situations, and eventually consult an expert.
Hydric retention will probably not disappear forever or completely and this is due to the genetic component influencing its nature. Here we cannot do so much but lifestyle is playing a key role and here we (you) have full control. Furthermore, there are specific conditions which cause hydric retention and those are:
menstruations;
usage of contractional pills or any other hormonal contraceptive;
pregnancy;
hormonal factors;
cardiovascular diseases;
kidney, liver, thyroid or lymphatic system problems.
The first thing to clarify is that hydric retention is NOT synonymous of cellulite: it is instead a consequence of extra cellular water excess.
Definition of hydric retention: the body's tendency to accumulate fluids in interstitial spaces, or spaces between cells.
I said at the beginning that you mainly discover you have problems with hydric retention by looking yourself at the mirror, but this is not the only sign. Here the most common symptoms of hydric retention:
you feel heavy and tired;
your weight slightly increases;
you see your body swallowing mainly in the lower body area and around the abdominal one;
your skin looks or feels tight or shiny;
skin that indents when pressed or does not bounce back after being pressed for a few seconds.
Indeed, a very easy way to check the presence of hydric retention is to press with your finger the area of your body you feel swollen: if a dimple form remains on your skin when releasing the pressure, you have hydric retention.
Another method, more precise, is to execute a Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) To discover more on Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA), check this short post on INSTA.
Women, unfortunately, have higher probability to suffer of hydric retention. What a surprise! Why is that?
This is mainly due to our hormonal set up. We (women) have higher amount of estrogen which are a group of hormones, typical of female organism, secreted mainly by the ovary. They belong to the category of steroid hormones. They have plenty of functions and you can read more about it here.
What is relevant for now is that estrogens incentivize the deposit of adipose tissue in those areas: hips, buttocks, thighs, and abdomen below the navel. This condition makes the blood vessels (capillaries) present in those areas more fragile and consequently more permeable, increasing the release of liquids in the space between blood vessels and cells. In other words, giving origin to oedema (hydric retention).
It is time to understand what kind of lifestyle would be the optimal for preventing and reducing hydric retention. Remember that you can save time by learning and knowing the most effective and efficient solutions for any kind of issues: by following any information, recommendation found offline or online, you will mostly waste time, money, energy and miss to achieve your goal!
So, let's get started by looking closer at what happens in our body when we have hydric retention. Even better, how does the whole thing even start?
Everything starts at the level of blood vessels. In specific conditions and following exposures to certain factors, blood vessels start to become thinner, delicate, and fragile. This happens particularly at the level of capillaries, the smallest blood vessels present in our body. As mentioned before, capillaries will be more permeable, increasing the release of liquids in the space between blood vessels and cells giving origin to oedema (hydric retention).
As you can understand, to avoid and reduce this effect, we will need to bring back vessels "in shape" and reduce all factors causing this change in permeability.
Which are those factors?
Stress
Hormonal contraceptive
Medical drugs
Sedentary life and bad nutrition
The ones mentioned above are the main factors influencing hydric retention conditions (excluding menstruations, pregnancy, cardiovascular diseases, kidney, liver, thyroid, or lymphatic system problems) and we will have a look at each of them separately.
Usually, it is not only one factor causing oedema but instead a combination of them. It is of course your decision on which factors to work on.
I remember when I started using hormonal contraceptives, even though I have always been very active and caring about my nutrition, I gained 4 kg of water in about 1 year. The advantage was that I switched from a scarce breast second size to a generous one. As soon as I stopped using hormonal contraceptives, also due to a related headache, I immediately lost 4 kg and I was back to my breast size.
With that kind of changes, you will see immediately the impact on hydric retention: by working on other factors, the changes might need a longer time to be visible.
Be patient and you will see the results.
In this second part of the article we are getting very practical! Keep reading!
The first thing we need to clarify is that there are no specific exercises against hydric retention!
Knowing that, you can already stop following people who are promoting any kind of exercise promising that!
It is instead important to keep moving and be active but not only focusing on the legs and not training till exhaustion: those two situations could even make the hydric retention worst. It is also not recommended to exceed with aerobic exercise because this might rise cortisol level which is a hormone typically increasing hydric retention.
I am pretty sure you are now feeling lost, and you do not know anymore what to do when you hit the gym with the target to reduce hydric retention.
No panic! I am going to give you some clarity!
As mentioned above, one of the first thing to do is to avoid sitting and standing for long time. Keep moving! I know that it is easy to say but hard to do if, for example, your profession is not giving you many opportunities to do so.
You need to create those opportunities and win against the part of your brain pushing for laziness.
Next time you are in the office, avoid the lift, and take the stairs; instead of chatting online or calling a colleague, stand up and walk to his or her desk; during lunch time, reserve sometime for a walk or even a mini workout.
Apart on being active most of the time during your day, great results can be obtained if you know exactly what you should and shouldn´t do in the gym!
It is almost natural to think that if there is evidence of hydric retention on the legs, our training plan shall focus more on the legs! WRONG! Here I give you few tips how to structure your training program:
Tip 1: try to work on total body most of the time. By doing that, you will guarantee an optimal blood circulation.
Tip 2: do not work till exhaustion and therefore do not reach the level of lactic acid production. Keep a good balance between load and number of repetitions.Tip 3: mainly focus on the posterior kinetic chain (glutes, hamstrings, lumbar spine (lower back) muscles and calves) with mono and multi-joint exercises that are stimulating for muscle growth (deadlifts, hip thrust, leg curl etc.);Tip 4: do not forget to do some stretching at the end of your session and eventually remain for 30 to 60 seconds on the ground with the legs up. This position favorites venous return from the periphery to the center and it is useful to maintain it even in the evening after an intense day of work.
Tip 5: take a break! If you train every day without giving your body time to recover, this might cause an inflammatory status worsening the permeability of blood vessels and therefore increasing water retention. Plan time to recover and reduce the intensity of your training time to time.
Furthermore, I would recommend getting a pair of trekking shoes and start walking up to some hills: by walking quickly up to a slope you will engage your calves and all the little muscles under your feet. Those allows to improve blood circulation and avoid the stagnation of fluids at the legs level. The same can be done by including specific exercise for your calves (do not worry, by adding one exercise in your schedule, you will not get claves like a bodybuilder).
Finally, I strongly recommend contacting an expert to plan your personalized training: this is the best thing you can do!
Along with fitness goes obviously nutrition!
Lack of micronutrients and insufficient protein intake increases hydric retention in the body. It is for this reason that consuming the right quantity of proteins, vitamins and minerals is a winning strategy if you want to manage hydric retention.
Remember that a healthy body is a body that is not inflamed, and this can only have benefits in terms of hydric retention. I recommend you reading my blog article Preventing aging and chronic diseases with food where you can learn how to set up an anti-inflammatory diet.
Do not exclude or reduce good (mono-polyunsaturated) fats from your diet, as many hormones are formed from these. It is important to maintain a balance at the hormonal level.
As for carbohydrates, limit the simple and prefer complex ones with a low glycemic index (whole meal pasta, whole meal bread and brown rice, whole grains). This is because insulin fluctuations have been shown to cause or worsen fluid retention.
What about drinking water? Is that correct that the more I drink the less fluid my body will retained?
If you suffer from hydric retention, a very important aspect to consider is hydration.
According to the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority), the amount of water that an adult woman should drink should be around 2 L per day. This data may further vary in relation to temperature, physical activity or presence of conditions that cause dehydration (diarrhea, vomiting, stress). In those cases, it would be better to increase the amount of water introduced.
A good indicator of your hydration status is the color of your urine: if this color is too dark, it means you need to drink more.
Drinking water helps to counteract hydric retention and promotes the elimination of liquids that stagnate in the spaces between cell and blood vessels.
Be careful because the sense of thirst must be stimulated in some way. If we are not used drinking sufficiently, our body will never give us the signal to drink more. We must gradually start drinking more, and gradually our brain will also send us the urge to drink.
I am sure you have grabbed already a glass of water😉
Many of you have probably heard about the fact that consuming food richer in Sodium will lead to hydric retention but I am not sure if you know why. I will explain you in few words because the topic is quite complex, and it would require a bit of biochemistry background.
At the level of the cells membrane there is a pump called Sodium-Potassium Pump: it has the function of transporting Sodium from the intracellular space, where it is less concentrated, to the extracellular space where it has a higher concentration; at the same time potassium is transported from the extracellular (lower concentration) towards the intracellular (higher concentration) keeping the concentration gradients stable. Basically, it maintains a certain balance of Sodium, Potassium and water between the space inside and outside the cell.
By increasing the intake of sodium, this balance is broken, and the pump activates to bring back this balance. Sodium will attract more water from the inside of the cells to the outside: at least until the balance is re-established. Till then, we will have presence of hydric retention. To help that process we can either reduce sodium intake and/or increase potassium intake.
Here the link to one of my blog article related to that topic.
But please do not eliminate completely sodium because as you just learnt is essential to maintain a good functioning of your body.
1 g of salt contain 0.4 g of sodium and our intake of salt should not be more than 5 g per day, according to WHO.
Did you noticed that when you are in a stressful period (due to professional or private reasons) your belly often is blowing, you cannot sleep properly, you exercise, but your body is not taking any advantage out of your training (you might even lose muscular mass), you eat in a different way?
There is one small thing which is causing all of that and this is the stress hormone cortisol!
Can you imagine? A little molecule running around your body is creating such a mess. Amazing!
Cortisol is a hormone which is essential for our health. It regulates glycaemia during physical activity and diet, and it has an anti- inflammatory action. What is problematic is a chronic high level of cortisol and often that is due to stress.
I recommend reading my Blog article where I explain a bit more in details the topic of cortisol and stress including some tips how to manage stress.
It is advisable to follow a lifestyle that controls the production of this hormone. I will give you here a list of things you can do to control cortisol. It might be challenging to follow all of them, but I suggest picking up at least few, and start to implement them in your daily routine:
Resting:
Sleeping at least 8 hours, lack of rest is a very stressful condition.
Do not reverse the day cycles, so go to bed in the evening and wake up early in the morning, the biological rhythms are marked by light, reversing them alters the production of cortisol.
If possible, take a 30-minute rest early in the afternoon: so called afternoon nap ;)
Diet:
Eating small, frequent meals, possibly eating every 3 hours, to avoid hypoglycemia, which in turn causes the release of cortisol.
Consume low glycemic index carbohydrates at least 2/3 times a day to avoid hypoglycemia and / or insulin spikes.
Consume carbohydrates after training, as intense physical activity consumes sugars and leads to hypoglycemia, which stimulates the release of cortisol.
Having breakfast with carbohydrates as soon as you wake up, after fasting at night the body must re-stabilize the blood sugar that drops in the night.
Do not fast, as food deprivation leads to hypoglycemia, as well as catabolizing muscle mass.
Take fruit and vegetables and possibly a complex of antioxidants, as free radicals can damage cells and trigger inflammatory states that lead to the release of cortisol.
Eating fatty fish or taking omega-3 supplements as an imbalance between omega-3 and omega-6 fats leads to chronic inflammation that favors the release of cortisol.
Drink 2 liters of water a day: in addition to favoring the elimination of toxins, possible states of dehydration are avoided, which is a very stressful condition for the body.
Sip water during and after a workout for the same reason as the previous point.
Workout:
Avoid long workouts, as the release of cortisol is proportional to the duration of physical activity.
Keep a day of rest after an intense workout, as the muscle microtraumas induced by training, activate an inflammatory response that if excessive causes the release of cortisol, therefore training a body still tired from the previous workout can favor the release of cortisol.
Good habits:
Do not neglect diseases as any pathology promotes the release of cortisol.
Reduce the frenetic pace that can stress the body.
Try to reduce anxiety and excessive agitation.
Avoid using drugs and alcohol.
Protect yourself from the elements:
Avoid extreme climates, or at least cover up when it's cold and look for cool places on hot days.
Protect yourself from the sun, as excessive exposure to sunlight damages the skin, overheats the body, and triggers an inflammatory response.
I know it is a lot of things, but for a good purpose!
As mentioned at the very beginning, some hormones are causing hydric retention: we have seen the case of cortisol but there is another group of hormones having same effects. Those are estrogens: female hormones.
Estrogen is a category of sex hormone responsible for the development and regulation of the female reproductive system. They promote the development of female secondary sexual characteristics, such as breasts, and are also involved in the thickening of the endometrium and other aspects of regulating the menstrual cycle. In males, estrogen regulates certain functions of the reproductive system important to the maturation of sperm and may be necessary for a healthy libido.
Some of the consequences of estrogens activity are:
increasing of fat storage in some body parts such as breasts, buttocks, and legs but decreased abdominal and visceral fat (androgenic obesity).
increasing of salt (sodium).
increasing of cortisol release.
Those three consequences will lead to hydric retention.
This also explains why birth control pills, based on estrogens and progesterone, are causing hydric retention.
Finally, drugs.
Unfortunately, some drugs help us treating diseases, but with the side effect of increasing hydric retention. Among these, a part of the contraceptive drugs we mentioned above, the hypotensive ones, the anti-inflammatory drugs (such as cortisones) and those based on hormones.
Those drugs could bring to alteration of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (hormone system within the body that is essential for the regulation of blood pressure and fluid balance), increased sense of hunger due to the drug which can lead to weight gain and therefore to hydric retention. Generally, this effect is experienced when it is used for a long time.
That was a long article, i know!
I wanted to give you a full overview on the main aspects related to Body hydric retention: from definition, root causes to possible solutions or strategies to reduce the problem.
If that was too much and you need something handy to keep with and read time to time just to refresh the most important points and solutions, i leave you this FREE DOWNLOAD GUIDE
I see you in the next article!
Take care,
Valentina
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