Water Retention And Salt
Being what I considered a healthy and active person, I couldn’t understand what was happening with the skin on parts of my body - especially my legs. It wasn’t until I made a big change that I really saw the difference, and I realise now that what I had was probably a mild case of water retention. I’m looking into that more in detail today, especially focused on one ingredient that might have been the culprit.
I hated my legs for so many years.
I was working out, eating healthily, doing all I could (I thought). I was in good shape, nothing was wrong really, but whenever I caught glimpse of my legs in a mirror or in a photo on a day I’d dared wear shorts or a skirt, my heart dropped. They didn’t fit with who I felt I was. Bloated and bumpy, and not nice to look at. It’s really hard for me to share this, actually. It’s something I feel quite sad about not being able to change sooner.
But the happy news is that I now finally love my legs. The love came before the change though, and I think that is important. Instead of hating my legs and shouting “why can’t you look nice!” I decided to work with them (thank you, yoga!) and gently stroke them and say “thanks for carrying me around!”. You don’t have to “fix” every “imperfect” part of you to be able to love it, and bumpy, bloated body parts also deserve all the love. But the look of them have changed - and it came once I stopped focusing on the legs and started learning more about health and nutrition overall - and made one big change.
On my journey of from-scratch cooking and with a goal of feeling as good as absolutely possible in my body, I had made some even more drastic changes than before recently; a huge change was massively cutting down on salt.
Salt is much like sugar in our diet. It’s not a bad food. We need salt! The problem? Ready made food, restaurant food, takeaways, stock, sauces and snacks contain way too much of it, because it’s a cheap and quick way of making us experience our meal as "delicious”. So accumulatively, most of us just consume way more than we need.
I started getting my own body used to less and less salt every day - it certainly is a habitual thing, and you can cut down on it without realising much of a difference. I’ve got down to a very tiny amount of salt in my cooking now, with many of my meals containing absolutely none. Now, if I have something from a restaurant, I notice how incredibly salty it is! (I also only have real salt, like sea salt, not low sodium alternatives. Cutting down on sodium can be good, but these substitutes often bring other stuff to your body that isn’t very nice. More on this in a later blog post.)
Suddenly - I started noticing something happening to my legs. The skin was smooth as anything, it almost looked photoshopped compared to before! I could see those quad muscles that I’d been working so hard on; the bloating wasn’t covering them. It was like those legs from before had just been a bad dream and I had woken up with the legs I felt I deserved to have. And they have stayed like that now for a long time!
In my research for this blog I had come across water retention - a term I was familiar with, but didn’t really know that much about. I didn’t think that was something I would have. But reading about water retention and how it appears on the body, and what causes it (guess what - at the top of most list is salt!), I am understanding now that this is what was probably happening for me. I wish I’d known this sooner! And it’s funny that after all those years of wishing I could fix the problem, I fixed it when I stopped trying.
Water retention is, as the name suggests, your body holding on to water. It is caused by too much salt, alcohol or refined carbs. It can also be caused by a lack of magnesium, potassium or Vitamin B6 in the body. I think it’s likely that many people who have water retention can point to this list and see that they are ticking many of the boxes, as a diet with too much salt will also often be a diet with too many refined carbs, and maybe not quite enough magnesium or potassium. I’m happy to know that I’m continuing to offer recipes that cut down on the unhelpful ingredients and add to the useful nutrients listed above. So if you are cooking along with me you are hopefully on the right path for your body!
I will come back to water retention in the future and look more at the other causes I mentioned briefly here, as we are all unique - you might be suffering with water retention even though you have cut down on salt. One size does not fit all and there could be other issues going on for you too. If you are suffering badly with what you suspect is water retention, there could be a problem with your kidney or your heart, so don’t hesitate to seek medical attention if you are concerned.
The last thing I will say about this for now is that this isn’t really about a success story of “fixing the ugly skin on my legs”. Though the aesthetic appearance was a concern for me; my main issue was always that I had a feeling that my body was showing me I wasn’t quite at the health levels I thought I were. And now that I feel better, I look better too - it is all connected. And the way we feel on the inside is always the main focus of The From Scratch Body.
How is your salt intake? Have you had a problem with your body in the past that you fixed with a dietary change? Post on Instagram and tag me @TheFromScratchBody and use the hashtag #TheFromScratchBody so I don’t miss it!
