What Is Water Weight and How Do We Let It Go?

When it comes to weight loss, one of the main places that many of us tend to target is our belly. We’re all familiar with the terms associated with “belly fat,” such as belly bloat, water weight or swelling. In order to try to “beat the float,” or trim down the excess weight around your midsection, you may find yourself doing hundreds of crunches a day, working out at the gym for hours on end, or endlessly experimenting with different diets in an attempt to lose the belly fat.

Here’s the secret – water weight is real and it can live in your belly. However, if you’re attempting to get rid of it using conventional methods, you’re likely to end up frustrated. In this groundbreaking new video from IPEtv, Marc David, unveils the truth around water weight. Join us as we uncover the four common reasons why you’re most likely carrying around extra water weight and what you can do about it.

Greetings, my friends. I’m Marc David, founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. Here’s what we’re going to talk about: what is water weight and why do we hold onto it? So the question is this thing we call water weight, is it actually real? How does it get there? And how do you let it go?

Now, I think this is especially compelling these days as so many people trying to lose weight. And so many people are trying to lose a handful of pounds from their belly. And usually when we are hanging onto water weight…By the way, water weight is real. We oftentimes hang onto water weight around the midsection, which is really around and inside and enervating all our digestive organs. So water weight is real.

Now, think of it this way. The adult human body is about 60% water. An infant body is about 75% water. Kind of what that means is we dry up as we age, so to speak. But that’s another story. That’s why it’s good to drink water. Now, many people are carrying around extra water in the body. And oftentimes we’re going to think of this as swelling. Many people call it bloating.

So here’s the deal. The body will literally hang onto extra water when it feels the need for protection or when it’s fending off certain organisms, certain bacteria, certain virus, certain disease conditions. There’s a swelling. Water brings metabolism. Water brings protection. Water brings cushioning.

Water helps organize so much chemistry in the body.

It’s a defense response.

Even emotions can cause us to retain more water. So when our emotional metabolism get stagnated, when I’m holding onto anger or fear or stress or resentment or anxiety and I’m not digesting it fully, it’s easy for that to show up in the body as bloating.

Now, once again, this is in part the body’s survival mechanism. It puffs us up to make us look bigger during a time of threat or survival. So when I’m feeling emotionally tense or scared, I hang onto water. Water is emotion. It’s going to puff me up. It’s going to make me look bigger.

But it also alerts us. Swelling and bloating is a divine symptom. It’s a smart symptom. It’s body wisdom saying, “Hey, check this out. You’re bloated. What does this mean?” Now, many people are carrying around extra water weight, again, that concentrates in the region of the gut. And they think it’s belly fat. And they’re trying to lose the last two or three or four or five pounds of belly fat.

For a lot of people, what they’re really carrying around is water weight.

Why? Here’s four of the common reasons why we could be carrying around water weight around the midsection. Number one, food allergies. So the most common food allergies, by the way, are gluten sensitivity—found mostly in wheat—corn, soy, dairy. Those are the big ones. Second, food sensitivities. They’re not exactly the same as food allergies. There’s a different mechanism in the body. But there are all kinds of different foods that might set us off.

Number three, gut dysbiosis. Oftentimes the healthy bacterial balance in our digestive tract, the gut microbiome, it can be disturbed because of antibiotic use, poor diet, not enough probiotic rich foods. That will cause bloating. Number four, stress. That’s going to cause bloating. We will literally just swell up in our midsection whenever there’s stress, anxiety, fear. Not everybody, but a lot of people.

So here’s a great idea. One great remedy is to go on an elimination diet. Look it up. Go on an elimination diet. Eliminate for just two weeks wheat, corn, soy, dairy. Get rid of the sugar. Get rid of the alcohol. Get rid of the caffeine. Let your body find its natural state. See what happens when you eat a very simple, easy-to-digest, hypoallergenic diet.

And last, my friends, once you clean up your diet, time to start cleaning up your inner world.

I want you to check in with your emotional metabolism. Check in with how you process what goes on in your inner world. What are you hanging onto that you’re not speaking, that you’re not releasing, that needs to be communicated? Where are you holding back the truth? Where are you holding back your authenticity?

Because when we’re holding back the truth, when we’re holding back authenticity, when we’re holding back the flow of truth and of life, we bottle up because water is a flow. And the water gets bottled up inside the body. And it’s going to bottle up inside the gut. Why? Because it gets your attention because nobody wants to have a big belly.

So all of a sudden you have to look and go, “Wow, what does this mean? What is it telling me? And it’s a symptom that says, “Look at your life. Look at your diet. Look at your inner world.” How perfect is that that bloating is teaching us to wake up and pay attention? Because when you start to do better food metabolism and better emotional metabolism, the body naturally cleans itself out. It finds its natural weight.

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