Revealed: The Truth Behind Salt And Weight Gain

There are many strange theories in the world of weight loss and one of them involves the influence salt can have on your weight. It is said that salt is an agent of weight gain and it should be avoided in order to stay slim. In this article you will learn about the truth behind this theory and what influence salt has on your bathroom scale. Sodium is the thing in salt that has such a profound effect on the human body, so for the sake of accuracy, salt will be referred to as sodium in this article.

To begin with: Sodium does not and cannot make you fat. However, sodium can make you weigh more because of water retention. Obviously this extra weight is only temporary because once the extra sodium is gone the excess water will be gone. It is important to know that extra water does not mean extra fat.

How does this work?

Your body weight consists of fat and lean weight. Water forms a part of your lean body weight. Any excess weight a person has will mostly be in the form of fat, but since water is a part of any living tissue a small part of any excess weight will also be water. Excess water can be due to increased sodium consumption. The exact mechanism by which salt retains water in the body is quite complex, but suffice to say for now that wherever sodium goes, water will go. So in short, where there is more sodium, there is more water. This is why an increased sodium intake will decrease water elimination from the body. The extra water obviously has weight which will show on your scale. Once your body gets rid of the extra sodium, the water will also go.

This is also the reason why too much salt/sodium in the diet will elevate your blood pressure. More water in the blood and around your cells will increase your blood volume and therefore your blood pressure. The recommended daily allowance for salt is about 2.3g, just over a teaspoon.

The opposite of all this is also true. When someone gets on a weight loss program and eats less salt, much of the weight they end up losing is in the form of water and not fat. Their bathroom scale says they weigh less and they continue eating as usual again because the "diet" was a success. This in turn restores the body's salt and with it the water. What is happening here? A yo-yo diet. This is proof that there is no such thing as quick weight loss. If you weigh a pound less from one day to another it is probably in the form of water which you will gain back when you quench your thirst with a glass of water.

Considering all this, one can't help laughing at the guys sweating away in the gym's sauna in an attempt to lose quick weight. Once they step outside the hot sauna and quench their thirst they undo all their hard work. In the long run, salt would not make a difference to your weight as long as you stick to the recommended daily allowance. Just stick to building lean muscle and burning more calories than you consume and you will lose the weight you want, guaranteed.