I recently visited two old aquaintances who are now quite obese. Oe of the things that struck me is how swollen their feet and ankles were.
Thinking back on my own weight-loss trajectory a couple of years ago, I had the common experience of dropping weight rapidly on a low-carb diet--21 pounds in the first 28 days. "Mostly water weight," people say, dismissively.
Well, perhaps. But does anyone understand the mechanism? Yes, I know that glycogen holds 2-3 times its weight in water, but what could that account for at the outside, perhaps 7 pounds? That still leaves 14 pounds in 28 days. If it were fat, it would have to be a burnoff of 1800 calories a day (and I had a sprained ankleduring that period, so I could only walk very short distances and had to do so with a cane. It was probably the most sedentary period of my life.)
So we have to assume that some of it was water. But why was I holding so much extra water, and why, beyond the glycogen, does it fall off so fast with low carb intake? And, reflecting on my aquaintances, what is it about high carbohydrates that seems to generate edema? (These people's feet weren't "fat," but they were so swollen they were tight.) it also seems like this water loss is a good thing, and might account for the quick drop in blood pressure so many people have on low-carb diets. But what is the mechanism?Any ideas?