Need Help! Water retention after cheat meals on low-carb diet

[anizzle]

Hi,

I've been doing a low-carb diet for the past two months. I slowly lowered my carb intake to about 35-40 grams a day. I took the EC stack consistently during this time. I came from 10.5% body fat all the way down to 5.7% last Friday. So anyways, we went on a little family vacation for the weekend and I ended up having three cheat meals that all involved the consumption of about 100g of carbs. I ate tuna for the rest of my meals, so I don't believe I was too much over my maintenance calories.

When I got back Sunday night I looked in the mirror and noticed a huge change in my ab definition. It looked like I packed on five pounds and my bottom two abs and my obliques looked softened over and bloated. I took out my calipers and it looks like my skin folds for the abdominals and the sup. increased by 2-3mm each. This isn't too big of a deal, but the reason I've been dieting down for the past two months is because I've been away from my girlfriend for two months and wanted to surprise her with a crazy ripped body. I'm flying out to visit her on Saturday night and will be there for two weeks, so I'd really like to get back to how I was before the weekend by then if possible.

So what went wrong? I didn't take any EC over the weekend, so completely stopping the intake of a diuretic will lead to some water gain. Also, since I was on a very low-carb diet, I think the introduction of carbs into my body caused my body to gain water like mad. I think my body has become very carb sensitive because of this low-carb diet.

So, I am wondering what I can do to lose this water weight by Saturday. I cut back my carbs to only 20 grams today. I started up the EC stack again, along with several cups of green tea and a few capsules of Dandelion root. Also, I plan on taking baths with Epson salt to try and pull some water out. My water intake has increased to about 2-3 gallons. I'm also wearing sweats to do my workouts to try and sweat some of the water out. I'm also going to start tanning again as I've heard this helps too. I’m also going to add in another cardio session during the morning in a fasted state. After making these changes, I do look a little better today, but I really want to be back where I was before the trip. Does this plan sound okay?

Thanks for the help!

[mpipes]

Carbohydrates hold 4 times their weight in water, so 3 cheat meals each with 100g of carbs = just over 2.5lbs of extra water. Doesn't matter how sensitive you are to carbs, this is just how much water follows the carbs. Since cheat meals are usually also higher in sodium, that pulls even more water in.

You can sweat most of it off with a single decent workout.

[GForce78NJ]

sweat in a workout or just drink water every second of a day and that will help you lose some water retention

[taf1968]

Yep . . . it can happen. You basically had a "carb-up" and your body sucked up a bunch of water as others have said. Getting back to working out hard and cutting your carbs back down to where you normally have them should get you back down pretty quick.

It's actually probably going to be beneficial to you in the long run to have gotten those extra carbs in if you have been strictly low carb for 2 months. Your muscles need to have glycogen replenished, especially if you are lifting. Even the strict "ketoers" will often do a weekly carb-up (usually doing the first one 2 or 3 weeks into the start of their keto diet). Although your carb-up was pretty mild compared to what a lot of those guys do.

You'll be fine.