Water retention in ED recovery is very normal and it will pass in time. Water retention is a sign of healing. For example if you hit your knee it may swell up because it retains water. Your body retains water to undo the damage. The same way if you come from past of eating disorders you can have a lot of damage in your body, i dont mean so much visible damage, but damage inside your body and organs. You may have developed kidney problems, osteopenia or osteoporosis, your metabolism is slow and so on. Everything travels better and faster if there is more fluid in the body so thats why our body swells up and its called edema or water retention. It will take different amount of time for everybody to get over it, but it will come down eventually. So many people relapse in recovery because they think its actually fat gain. yes if you are underweight or too low wight for your body you will gain fat too in recovery and its a good thing or you may even overshot your set point weight temporarily thanks to your past of restriction. But if your body recovers in time water retention will come down too. For our body its physically impossible to gain more than few hundreds of grams of fat in a day. But many people can experience gaining 2, 3, 4 or even 5 kg of weight gain overnight so its a clear sign it is not fat, it physically cannot be fat, it can be water, more food in your system and so on, but not fat. Some of the symptoms of water retention are: - you gain weight really fast, like several kg in a matter of days. - you have uneven weight gain, like you feel you especially gain weight only to your stomach or thighs. - you feel swollen - your skin hurts - you feel heavy - you may have prints on your skin from the pillow when you wake up or just prints on the skin when you remove some clothing like socks for example - bloating is also related to water retention, but i will do a separate video about bloating too! So how to get rid of water retention? You cannot get rid of it just when you decide, your body will decide when it is time to let it go, when your body heals and it will take time. For some people it may take just few months, for some it will take a year. It all depends also how consistent you are in your recovery. And water retention can also come and go, for some days you feel very swollen, and some days you are not. Its all normal but it will pass if you commit to eating enough calories, skip exercising and eat everything and never restrict in your recovery then you may recover a lot quicker, but if you keep on yo-yo-ing between recovery and the restricting for few days and so on, then your recovery will take longer. For me it was also like that. I learned everything in recovery by myself, nobody told me in the beginning of my recovery what exactly should i do, so i kept on restricting for some days and then not restricting, for some period i started to overexercise again and this all slowed down my recovery process, but i eventually got through it. And the recovery happened a lot quicker when i commited to eating enough calories, skipped exercising, let go of all restriction and so on :) And by restriction i also mean purging, u should not use any way to get rid of the food in your system or burn calories or anything like that. And do not drink too little or too much water, just drink when your thirsty.Avoid stress too and just rest! So the best way is to just let your body heal and rest and eat enough, so your body can recover quicker and not slow it down by restricting for few days and so on. And another important thing - do not weight yourself, it will just make you anxious and may trigger you to relapse and dont measure yourself also. Calories and how much you need: https://youtube/watch?v=SRrZkcmfUgc&list=PLfGOS_FvydWe-ktd4C5wA8hARLLj6q2Ay See all the Eating Disorder Recovery Speed Course videos here: https://youtube/playlist?list=PLfGOS_FvydWe-ktd4C5wA8hARLLj6q2Ay
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 11:14:09 +0000