Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - What Causes Water Retention and How to Get Rid Of It

Episode Date: March 29, 2018

You’ve counted every calorie and checked them twice.You’ve logged every step and rep, every day. You’ve bought every supplement that might possibly help.And you’re still not losing weight.What the hell? You know how a calorie deficit works and you’re not overeating.You know how to prevent “metabolic damage” and aren’t starving yourself.And you know you’re working way too damn hard in the gym to see the same dismal sight in the mirror and on the scale every day.Well, when the “obvious” reasons for a weight loss plateau are eliminated, the culprit is often water retention. And when water retention is the problem, it’s important that you address it correctly.If you do what most people do–exercise even more and eat even less–you’ll likely make the problem even worse.The emotional firestorm of anger and frustration will burn even hotter…and the only hope for extinguishing it will likely become a long, greasy binge.I don’t want that to happen to you.So in this episode, I’m going to break it all down: what causes water retention, what works for getting rid of water weight and what doesn’t, and more.Let’s get to it. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

This episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my newest supplement, which I'm very excited about, which is a 100% natural nootropic or brain booster called Ascend. Now, unlike many nootropics, Ascend doesn't target just one aspect of your mental capabilities at the expense of others. And it also doesn't rely on stimulants, which can produce immediately noticeable effects, but can also undermine critical brain functions

and of course result in unwanted side effects. Instead, Ascend contains clinically effective dosages of five different nutrients that have been scientifically proven to support and enhance your focus, memory, mental speed, creativity, mood, and overall brain health. So if you want a healthier, creativity, mood, and overall brain health. So if you want a healthier, happier,

and higher performing brain that allows you to think faster, focus deeper, and feel better, then you wanna head over to www.legionathletics.com and try Ascend today. And just to show how much I appreciate all of you podcast peeps, use the coupon code podcast at checkout, and you will save 10% on your entire order. And lastly, you should

also know that I have a very simple 100% money back guarantee that works like this. You either love my stuff or you get your money back, period. You don't have to return the products. You don't have to fill out forms. You don't have to return the products. You don't have to fill out forms. You don't have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans. So you really can't lose here. Head over to www.legionathletics.com now, place your order and see for yourself

why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet. And if for whatever reason, they're just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot. Alrighty, that is enough shameless plugging for now, at least. Let's get to the show. Hey, Mike Matthews here from Muscle for Life and Legion Athletics. And in this video podcast, we are going to talk water retention, specifically what are the most common causes of water retention or at least excessive water retention and what can you do about it. And if you're wondering why you should care about water retention, it's simply because

the more water that you're holding and specifically the more subcutaneous water that you're holding, the more water that you're holding under your skin, the fatter and puffier you look, regardless of your body fat percentage, because this has nothing to do with body fat. And it also can really mess with you when you're cutting, because you can be in a situation where you're actually losing fat steadily, but because of excess water retention, you don't see that on the scale. And you may not even see it really in the mirror as much as you would expect to again because of that subcutaneous water making you look fatter. So let's get right to it. The three most common causes of excessive water retention are elevated cortisol levels, sodium

and potassium imbalances, and not drinking enough water. Now let's look at each of those separately. You've probably heard of cortisol. This is a hormone that your body produces in response to stress and low blood sugar levels. It's produced by the adrenals and almost every cell in your body has receptors for cortisol. So that means that it can affect your body in many different ways. It can affect blood sugar and fluid different ways. It can affect blood sugar and fluid retention levels. It can affect how you metabolize your food. It can affect various aspects of the nervous system and more. And under normal conditions, cortisol doesn't result in excessive water retention. But if cortisol remains too high for too long, you are going to hold more water than usual.

Now, why might your cortisol levels remain too high for too long? Well, in most cases, it is either due to chronic stress. So just too much stress too much of the time results in chronically elevated cortisol levels. And also too little sleep is another very common cause. chronically elevated cortisol levels. And also too little sleep is another very common cause. If you sleep too little for too long, eventually your resting cortisol levels just get very high. Dieting can also increase your cortisol levels. Research shows that a prolonged calorie deficit can actually dramatically raise the resting cortisol levels. And what happens when your cortisol levels are chronically elevated for

whatever reason is, at least as far as water retention goes, you just hold more water and a portion of that is going to be directly under your skin. This, by the way, is why many people have experienced the whoosh effect, as it's called, when they are dieting, which is after an extended period of time of restricting calories, being strict on their meal plan, they have a cheat meal. They eat a lot more calories than they normally would. Let's say it's at dinner. They have a really big dinner and they eat a bunch of carbs as well, which of course spikes insulin levels, which then helps bring down cortisol levels. So let's say that person has that meal at night and then they usually will notice that they wake up to pee a couple times extra that night. and then they look

noticeably leaner in the morning, and they don't quite understand why. Well, what happened is that big influx of calories and carbs helped bring cortisol levels down, which then allowed the body to shed water. And again, a portion of that is going to be subcutaneous water, which then just makes you look leaner. Okay, so let's move on to the next point in the list here, which is sodium and potassium imbalances. Sodium is a mineral of course, and it is well absorbed by the cells and it brings water in. And that's why when you eat a very high sodium meal, sometimes you'll find that you look extra bloated the next day because you are holding more water than usual. And it takes a little bit of time for your body to correct that. Now, potassium is a mineral that has the opposite effect in the body, so at least in the cells, whereas sodium sucks water in, potassium pumps it out. And this is why research

shows that restricting potassium can increase fluid retention. So the bottom line here is if your sodium and potassium intake are all over the place, so if you're very high, most people are too high in sodium and too low in potassium, and that in and of itself is bad for many reasons, and increased water retention is one of them. But also if your sodium and potassium intake fluctuates a lot, so if you're maybe very high sodium one day and then you're lower sodium the next day, and then your potassium intake is up and down, up and down, you are going to see a lot of fluctuation in your water retention as well. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help

spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Okay, so the third most common cause of excess water retention was dehydration. And this one is pretty simple. If you're not giving your body enough water through the beverages that you're

drinking or the food that you're eating, it's going to do things to hold on to the water that it is getting. It accomplishes this in a few different ways, including releasing hormones like aldosterone and vasopressin, which increase water retention through various physiological mechanisms. Okay, so if those are the most common causes for increased water retention, what should you do about them? Well, let's start at the top with cortisol. How do you bring your cortisol levels down to a normal range if they are too high too much of the time? Well, I've worked with thousands of men and women over the years and the three most common causes I've seen of chronically elevated cortisol levels are one, eating too little, eating too few calories, you know, being too aggressive on their cuts, usually maintaining a very large calorie deficit. Two, doing too much exercise, which usually goes

hand in hand. Usually you have people that are borderline starving themselves and doing a lot of exercise and a lot of cardio in particular. And research shows that if you do too much cardio, and especially if you combine it with an aggressive calorie deficit, that can really jack up your cortisol levels. And three, not sleeping enough. And when you combine all three of those things, which again, many people do, the results can be pretty disastrous. So the solutions here are pretty obvious. When you are cutting, you want to make sure that you're not eating too little.

I recommend using a calorie deficit of 20 to 25%. I do not recommend going higher than that. And you can go lower than that if you don't mind having it take longer. And if you're not sure how to calculate your calories, if you're not sure how to figure out how many calories you're burning, or at least approximately how many you're burning and approximately how many you should be eating and then how to turn that into a meal plan, just click on the link up here and you will go to an article that I wrote that breaks it all down. Now, as far as how much exercise is too much, there are many different factors in play here, but a good rule of thumb I think is when you're cutting, I don't recommend any more than four to

six hours of weightlifting per week and one to two hours of HIIT cardio per week. So high intensity interval training. And that's, if you're going to be doing HIIT, I recommend no more than one to two hours a week. And if you're not going to be doing HIIT, if you're going to be doing LIS, I recommend no more than three-ish hours per week. And if you're going to be going very low intensity, like walking, you can get away with a bit more. You could get away with probably five or six hours per week of walking in addition to the weightlifting without overwhelming your body. And that's, again, assuming that your calories are set up correctly. And then from there that your macros, your macronutrients, your protein, carbs, and fats are set up correctly as well. So assuming you have

your diet where it needs to be, you can do a fair amount of exercise. You can lose fat rapidly anywhere from let's say a half a pound to a pound and a half per week, depending on various things, you know, where you're at and your compliance and so forth. I also recommend that you take a deload week every so often, which is where you reduce your volume or intensity. It can go either way. I've tried it both ways. These days, I actually prefer to keep my intensity high. So I still work with heavy weights. I just do a lot less volume. I cut my volume in half for the week, basically. So they're short, easy workouts, but it just gives your body a break. You could just take the week off and do

no lifting, but you're probably going to come back a little bit behind in terms of reps on your big lifts. And, you know, if you're in a routine, it's nice to just keep your routine. I work out first thing in the morning. I enjoy it. It's a good start of the day. And if I'm going to be deloading, then at least, you know, yeah, I don't get my normal workout high, but at least I get something. It's better than just sleeping in. Now, if you're not sure how to deload or how frequently you should deload, click the link up here to go to an article that I wrote on it. And you can also have a high carb meal every so often, a refeed meal, as it's generally called. This is especially useful when you're cutting. Again, when your body is under more stress and your cortisol levels are already going to be higher than usual,

you can once a week or twice a week, if you are very lean, looking to get very, very lean. But most people, I would say, start with just once every seven to 10 days, dramatically increase your carbohydrate intake. So take your calories, increase them by 20 to 30% and get your protein that you need to get. Let's say it's around a gram per pound for the day. And then you want to have your dietary fat intake basically be as low as possible. So you can eat as many carbs as possible. So that may be, if you're a woman that maybe is as much as three or 400 grams of carbs for the day. And if you're a guy, maybe double that. That can really work wonders for dramatically lowering your cortisol levels.

Okay, so let's move on to sodium-potassium imbalance. How do you correct that? Well, as I mentioned earlier, most everybody has too much sodium and too little potassium. So we're going to have to bring the sodium intake down and bring the potassium intake up. Now, I recommend that we stick to the USDA's recommendation of about 2.3 grams of sodium per day, which is the amount of sodium found in just a teaspoon of table salt, which helps you understand why so many people have way too much sodium because it is very easy to have too much of, especially when you're also eating prepackaged foods, deli meats and stuff that are just very high sodium foods. Now you may actually need a bit more sodium than that, especially if you're exercising frequently

and sweating a lot and just click the link up here. Assuming I can still put links up here. I know there's a limit as to the number you can, but if you click the link up here, you will be taken to a video that I recorded on sodium intake in particular. So just check that out if you want to learn more. Now, in terms of bringing your sodium down, there are a few things you can do. First, you want to be wary of canned and prepackaged foods because they are often loaded with sodium as a preservative. Same thing goes for deli meat. You also want to be more aware of your use of table salt. Again, if you're shooting for about a teaspoon,

probably a teaspoon and a half or so of table salt a day, you need to be paying attention to how much you are salting your meals. You also want to pay attention to seasonings and sauces that you're using because they can be very high in sodium. And cheese as well can be very high in sodium. For example, just one ounce of American cheese contains 500 milligrams of sodium. That's quite a bit. Okay, potassium. Now, many people don't know this, but insufficient potassium intake is actually one of the most

common nutrient deficiencies here in the West. The Institute of Medicine recommends that we get about 4.7 grams of potassium per day. And as of research that was published in 2010, the average American gets only 2.64 grams per day. Now, this isn't particularly surprising because the best sources of potassium are the types of foods that many people don't really want to eat, like fruits and vegetables. And this mineral imbalance contributes to water retention or increased water retention, but it actually gets a lot worse than that. According to a 2011 study conducted by scientists at the CDC and Harvard University, the people with the highest ratio of sodium to potassium intake were nearly twice as likely to die of a heart attack and 50% more likely to die

from all causes than the people with the lowest ratio. Now, while I know it is annoying to have to pay attention to yet another thing in your diet, it's very important. You really want to make sure that you are getting enough potassium and not having way too much sodium. You want to make sure that that ratio is where it needs to be because it impacts your health in many different ways. And the good news is it's very easy to do. If you just set it up properly, if you just take a look at your meal plan and really look at the sodium in the different foods that you're eating, which you can find on a website like Calorie King, for example, if you're eating prepackaged things. And if you are not eating any prepackaged foods, then it's very easy because for

the most part, you are adding sodium. You're adding salt to your meals. That said, again, there are, if you're using seasonings, if you're using sauces, you want to look at them. So if you just kind of assess your diet as it is right now in terms of sodium and potassium intake and see what you need to adjust to bring the sodium probably a little bit down or if nothing else, to just prevent it from going up or going way up. And then you're probably going to have to make some changes to bring your potassium intake up, mainly if you're just eating potassium rich foods. In the past, I have supplemented with potassium. That's fine. You can do that, but I already take enough pills and powders as it is. I'd rather just make sure that I'm eating enough of the

right fruits and vegetables to get enough potassium. So anyways, once you get it set up, then you just follow the plan. You don't have to track your sodium potassium intake day to day. It doesn't matter that much. If your sodium goes way up one day because you go and have a cheat meal at a restaurant, it's not a big deal. Your body can deal just fine with that. Again, the problem is when you have a chronic imbalance. If you have an occasional imbalance because of whatever reason, it's really not a problem. So long as 80% of the time, your sodium is around where it needs to be, your potassium is around where it needs to be, you're good to go. Okay. So last is water. Going to go through this quickly because this video is dragging on as usual. The long story short here is the Institute of Medicine recommends

that we drink about a gallon of water per day. And we can get some of that from our food. Research shows that about 20% of the average person's water intake comes from the food they eat, but that means that we're going to have to still drink a fair amount of water. So what I do personally is I shoot for about a gallon of water drinking per day. I don't drink soda. That's all I drink is water, so it makes it pretty easy. I have a one liter flask, a metal flask at the office, and I just make sure that I drink four or five of them by the end of the day. And if you want to learn more about this, if you want to learn why we need to be drinking this much water and what types of water are best to drink, what types of filtration

are best and so forth, just click the link up here and you will be taken to either a video or a podcast or an article, one of the three that will break it down. And if I've run out of links and I can't put up there, it'll be down in the description. and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email

at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my newest supplement, which I'm very excited about, which is a 100% natural nootropic or brain booster called Ascend.

Now, unlike many nootropics, Ascend doesn't target just one aspect of your mental capabilities at the expense of others. And it also doesn't rely on stimulants, which can produce immediately noticeable effects, but can also undermine critical brain functions and of course result in unwanted side effects. Instead, Ascend contains clinically effective dosages of five different nutrients that have been scientifically proven to support and enhance your focus, memory, mental speed, creativity, mood, and overall brain health. So if you want a healthier, happier, and higher performing brain that allows you to think faster, focus deeper, and feel better, then you want to head over to

www.legionathletics.com and try Ascend today. And just to show how much I appreciate all of you podcast peeps, use the coupon code podcast at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order. And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100% money back guarantee that works like this. You either love my stuff or you get your money back, period. You don't have to return the products. You don't have to fill out forms. You don't have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans. So you really can't lose here. Head over to www.legionathletics.com now, place your order and see for yourself why my supplements have

thousands of rave reviews all over the Internet. And if for whatever reason they're just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot.