THE 411 📲……Your on the  program, sticking to the guidelines, watching what you eat, not cheating, and losing pounds every week. Then, that day inevitably arrives: you’re invited to dinner at a friend’s house; a surprise guests bring over wine and snacks; you decide that you can take a day or two off to enjoy some fun foods and beverages. Then… the next day, you feel puffy, bloated, tired, and fatigued. You check your weight on the scale, it increased dramatically!

It may be one or two pounds but could add up to even more! What is going on inside your body, and why does this happen so quickly?

So, you’ve felt that bloated, overly stuffed👀 feeling after you eat foods that are highly processed and are full of sugar and salt. Why does this happen? It’s mostly due to water weight.

Eating Foods with High Salt/Sodium🍟 –a necessary ingredient for many bodily processes, regulation of your blood pressure and the function of your nerve cells. Excess salt intake,  causes the body to retain water. When sodium levels are high, the body begins to conserve water. This is to dilute the amount of salt in your body. The excess salt in your system that is not used by your cells is kept outside of them, circulating around your body. It is not being used and needs to be removed. Eating salty foods will cause you to become thirsty and feel the urge to drink water. You may urinate more frequently; however, the sodium will take longer to leave your body and you can remain feeling puffy for a couple days. The body can only process and eliminate so much sodium at once.

Consuming Too Much Sugar/Carbohydrates –🧁Carbohydrates are considered fast energy sources because they can be broken down and used very quickly. Normally, the human body is a sugar-driven machine: carbohydrates are consumed, then broken down into glucose and used as energy, or stored in the liver and muscle tissue as glycogen. Glycogen is created when glucose molecules are linked together in a chain. Glycogen also contains water. Chemically, each gram of glycogen contains 3-4 grams of water. That means that for each gram of glycogen your body retains, you’ll be retaining 3-4 grams of water as well. Overeating or drinking sugary foods will cause the glycogen and accompanying water weight to spike in your body, which translates into extra pounds on the scale.