Health & Well Being

It’s not just the food and it’s calories that cause weight gain

Many people believe weight gain is the result of too many calories. While this is often true, all weight gain is actually comprised of three components:

1. Fat
2. Water
3. Lean muscle weight

These components, which lead to increased fat and water weight in particular (even lean muscle gain), can vary significantly. As weight is gained these components change depending on the following factors:

• Genetics
• Personal energy levels
• Diet quality and activity levels
• The environment

If you have: a predisposition to gain weight relatively easily; low personal energy (burn out); high food energy intake; low physical activity levels; and the propensity to gain weight over the long term, then as much as 90% of excess weight will be made up of extra fat stores. A small percentage of any gain, however, will comprise of lean weight and water.

When weight is gained over the short term (and all other lifestyle factors are put aside), it won’t just be the food making the difference, it will be the effects of the food. And this is where many dieters get trapped.

For example, a gain in water weight is often due to increased daily sodium intake.

Sodium is mainly found in the fluids surrounding your body’s cells, such as in your blood and lymph fluid. When sodium intake exceeds the amount your body can handle, it builds up within the interstitial areas, causing your kidneys to work harder to excrete a constant rise in daily sodium intake. A build up of sodium may cause your body to hold extra fluids in the blood and around the cells, which in turn contributes to increased blood pressure and excess weight gain from water.

Daily sodium intake will always be high in the standard western diet.

The average diet in the western world is made up of fast, packaged, or convenient foods with a long shelf life – partly due to the preservation effects of sodium. These typically nutrient poor foods generally consist of high salt levels, and salt contains sodium. If your diet is mainly composed of high sodium foods then naturally your sodium intake rises and you quickly gain weight as your body holds on to water. It’s believed many people in the UK and USA may be carrying up to five extra pounds of weight due to high sodium intake.

The opposite effect is seen if you reduce your food intake to lose weight quickly. A percentage of this weight loss will be water as a reduction in high sodium foods means a reduction in daily sodium intake, which in turn results in water loss as the kidneys can now remove excess sodium from the body. This helps explain the yo-yo effects of dieting. Water weight is lost with food reduction or a temporary change in food quality; however, weight is quickly regained when old eating habits return and daily sodium intake rises.

Here’s the reality…

If you’re overeating and you eat something with 200 calories for example, it doesn’t mean you’ll gain .057 lbs of weight (200/3500 calories – the amount of calories in a pound).

If the food you eat is high in sodium (and depending on how your body reacts) you could gain many additional pounds as your body holds on to extra water to keep the excess sodium from negatively affecting cell function. This concept is foreign to many dieters particularly those who eat packaged diet foods, or who unknowingly eat fewer foods high in sodium.

According to Joe Fuhrman M.D (1) an ideal level of sodium is between 600 and 1000mg of sodium per day, what you get from a natural foods diet (unless you’re an athlete, in which case you’ll need more as your need for more food increases). The amount of sodium from a 2000 calorie nutrient rich diet with natural sodium levels is approximately 1/2 mg per calorie.

If you eat a nutrient poor diet, and you’re not eating for health, your sodium intake is likely to be upwards of 2000mg, possibly as high as 5000mg. This is a clear formula for major weight gain, even if the excess calorie intake isn’t equal to the number of pounds gained.

It’s not just food and calories which affect weight gain and your health; it’s the quality of food you eat and its effects on the function and performance of your body.

(1) Reference: Joel R Fuhrman, Disease Proof Your Child, Pg 27 2005 St Martin’s press

JAM is the founder of Nutrient Rich – the most successful way to eat for health, high performance and natural weight loss.