The Mystery of Rapid Weight Gain and Leaky Gut
Short Term Fast Weight Gain in Leaky Gut
In reality you can’t lose 2lbs of body fat per day, nor can the average sized person gain 2lbs of fat in one day. So where is that short term weight gain coming from? Unless you consistently are binge eating it’s difficult to gain weight quickly. Yet many of us, including me, have experienced 5 or even 10lbs in less than a week. If it’s not all fat then what is it? Well it’s unlikely muscle gain, so most of it is water weight. By the way just a liter of water is about 2.2lbs. ‘Leak Gut’, discussed later, can cause temporary water weight gain.
Water Weight Can Come From Inflammation
Most of us think of inflammation as a result of an injury, for instance, spraining your ankle and it becomes swollen and enlarged. The type of thing can happen during the digestive process – the gut gets ‘inflamed’ and is seen in ‘Leaky Gut’. There are many reasons the gut can become inflamed and as a result hold water. ‘Voila’ instant weight gain after eating. Depending on what triggers this inflammation it may last a few hours or a few days!
So here’s the deal – eating foods your body doesn’t like creates inflammation and water weight gain!
Eating these inflammatory foods for 3 to 5 days in a row will maximize your short-term water weight gain. Unfortunately you’ve never heard about this before, or at least how to remedy the situation, and this results in long-term weight gain.
Here’s my story to better understand the process. My reaction is more severe than most persons. I have 3 categories of foods my body is highly sensitive to. I went on vacation for 3 days only, after maintaining a 30lb weight loss for 6 months, when I got back I weighed myself and shockingly had gained 10lbs. What?? Yes 10lbs. I thought this is impossible to gain that much weight so quickly especially because I wasn’t even over eating. However, for 3 days in a row I had a quesadilla in Mexico everyday with guacamole. Yum. My body didn’t agree, because yeast, wheat and dairy are my 3 groups of food that my gut is sensitive to. After several trial and errors I found that I could consistently gain 8 to 10lbs on days of eating my inflammatory foods. I would also look obviously bloated holding and extra 3 or 4 liters of water plus a little fat. I would only gain about 1 or 2lbs of fat. This cycle of gaining short-term water weight repeats every 2 or 3 months if you continue eating inflammatory foods on a daily basis. Ultimately it also slows your metabolism down, so that even if you eat less calories you don’t tend to lose weight. So over a couple of months instead of just water weight you now have difficult to lose fat weight.
I have tested this theory out several times and seen it repeat in myself and in my dieter clients. So the best and easiest way to maintain your great weight loss is to discover your inflammatory foods and avoid them or cycle them in on infrequent occasions.
What Can I Do About It
I will cover more detail in future blog post on ways to remedy this situation. One of these easiest ways to start is we use a laboratory test in our office to test the reaction of 88 foods and spices for food sensitivity, which is different than allergy testing.
The next most helpful test is to determine if you have a situation called ‘Leaky Gut’ or IPS. This is where damage to the lining of the gut allows for undigested proteins, like gluten, to come into contact with the cell wall trying to be absorbed before it is completed broken down. So this large protein now is interpreted by the body as a foreign protein, i.e. like a virus or bacteria. Your body’s immune system launches a response which includes creating inflammation to wall off the area – thus inflammation in the gut and temporary water weight gain.
Contact our office on ways to treat ‘Leaky Gut’ and reduce your overall reactivity to foods in general.
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