Would a hypothetical consequence that might play out years or decades in the future be more compelling than whatever actual consequences are playing out right now?
Sometimes questions that appear to be about nutrition are actually about something else entirely.
Nutrition Diva is hosted by Monica Reinagel. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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I’m Monica Reinagel. Welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast, where we take a closer look at nutrition trends and headlines, explain what the latest research means for you, and answer your nutrition questions.
I recently got a call on the Nutrition Diva listener line from someone who apparently stumbled across the podcast while Googling the answer to a burning nutrition question: could eating high-sodium soup cause weight gain?
They went on to explain that they had gained a pound an a half, even though they’d eaten very little the day before—just some oatmeal, some cabbage, and a small amount of soup, which they suspected had been very high in sodium.
If you are in the habit of getting on the scale every morning, you’ve probably noticed that your weight can vary wildly from day to day—in ways that sometimes seem unfair. “How could I have gained two pounds overnight? I had a salad for lunch and skipped dessert at dinner. I should weigh two pounds less!”
It’s tempting to think whatever we did or didn’t eat yesterday should show up the next day on the scale. But it doesn’t work that way. It takes a lot longer for dietary changes to result in fat loss (or gain). If you gain or lose three or four pounds overnight, most of that is probably due to water weight.
Water is heavy. A pint of water weighs about one pound. So if you were to weigh yourself, drink 16 ounces of fluids and immediately weigh yourself again, you’d have “gained” one pound in about 15 seconds. A couple of hours later, a lot of that water will be collected in your bladder. Weigh yourself before and after visiting the bathroom and you can enjoy the thrill of “losing” up to a pound in 15 seconds.
As you can see, the amount of fluid in your stomach and bladder will have a fairly profound (yet meaningless) effect on your body weight at any given moment.
Eventually, all the water in your body passes through the kidneys, which regulate how much water is either retained or eliminated in order to maintain the right amount of fluids and concentration of electrolytes. Eating a lot of salt, for example, can cause the kidneys to keep more water in circulation, in order to dilute the extra sodium.
So, yes, eating a salty meal can lead to a temporary increase in body weight. But that doesn’t represent changes in your fat stores. That’s going to have more to do with how many calories you take in and burn over the long term. And, as I said, those changes are going to show up over a longer time frame.
That’s the answer to the question that the listener asked me. But after listening to the message again, I heard something that I think needs to be addressed. There were some red flags, which signaled that this was not actually a question about sodium or water retention, but something more serious.
Red flag #1 was the fact that the listener reported eating only oatmeal, cabbage, and a small amount of soup over the course of an entire day—which is not enough calories to sustain an adult human.
Red flag #2 was the description of a relatively small amount of weight gain (a pound and a half, or half a kilo) as “serious weight gain.”
Red flag #3 was the listener’s self-described “desperation” to find out what caused this minor fluctuation in weight.
Taken together, these red flags suggest someone dealing with disordered eating and distorted body image. Disordered eating is unfortunately quite common and can be very serious—which is why I want to take this opportunity to bring this out in the open. But disordered eating is not primarily a nutrition issue; it’s a mental health issue. And May is Mental Health Awareness Month, so the timing is perfect.
For anyone listening today who may hear themselves in this discussion, please know that however isolated you may feel with these sorts of thoughts or worries, or how desperate the situation feels, you are not alone and help is available. If you’re not sure whether or not this is really a problem for you, the National Eating Disorders Association has an anonymous screening tool you can access at nationaleatingdisorders.org. More resources, including an Eating Disorders Helpline are also available at ANAD.org. Just click on “get help”.
Just this morning, I got an email from a listener that struck me as another case where the question being asked was not really the issue at hand.
This listener wanted to know how to send a food item to a lab to have it tested for possible contaminants.
“It involves a particular candy that I eat far too many of every day… It's like an anti-stress medication for me,” they wrote. “But if I found out that it was very high in heavy metals, for example, maybe that would help me cut down.”
I think the cost of sending food samples for toxicological testing is probably going to be more than you’d be willing to spend. But do we really need something like a heavy metal scare in order to decide that we’d benefit from limiting our consumption?
The fact that you’re willing to go to such lengths and expense to limit your consumption of this candy suggests that this is already creating some sort of problem for you. Maybe it’s uncomfortable to feel that you can’t control your actions. Maybe all the sugar makes you feel crappy. Or you’re concerned about the impact on other risk factors such as your blood sugar or weight or triglycerides.
Would a hypothetical consequence that might play out years or decades in the future be more compelling than whatever actual consequences are playing out right now?
From a purely practical perspective, when there’s a food that I find difficult to resist or am prone to overeat, I generally don’t keep it in the house. I just find it easier to exercise my self-control once at the grocery store than to battle my willpower every night at 8 pm.
But there was something else that struck me about this question—and maybe you heard it too: the part about the candy being anti-stress medication.
Candy (or wine or chips or whatever it is for you) may provide a temporary distraction from whatever stress you may be feeling. But it obviously doesn’t address the source of the stress (whatever it may be). And it doesn’t really reduce the stress you are feeling in response. In fact, to the extent that you find yourself Googling food testing labs, it sounds like it’s adding more stress.
In the most recent episode of the Change Academy podcast, I was talking about solutions that don’t fit the problem—and I think this is a perfect example of that. There’s a mismatch here, between the the problem (in this case, the stress) and the solution that’s being applied (in this case, candy). I suspect that strategies for managing and mitigating stress would be more useful than sending the candy away for analysis.
(If you could use some support on this issue, I have a program on overcoming stress and emotional eating, which you can learn more about at https://weighless.life/stress.)
We have time for one more listener question:
“Could you talk about the strategy of drinking alcohol with a meal to control blood sugar spikes, to use on an occasional basis? For example, when you're out for a meal and cannot immediately get up to walk around.”
If you heard my last episode with diabetes educator Jill Weisenberger, you might recall that Jill mentioned taking a 20-minute walk after meals as an effective way to improve blood sugar metabolism. Specifically, it helps increase the cells’ sensitivity to insulin, which helps to clear sugar out of the blood and into the muscles and other tissues.
Although we didn’t talk about it in our conversation, low levels of alcohol consumption (less than 5 drinks a week) are also linked to improved insulin sensitivity in longitudinal studies. People who report low to moderate alcohol consumption over time also have a reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes. However, it’s not clear that having a drink with a single meal would have an immediate impact on your blood sugar after that meal.
More importantly, alcohol also comes with very clear and significant health risks. I don’t think it’s ever worth drinking alcohol for the alleged health benefits. If your goal is blood sugar management, I suggest focusing your attention on the content of the meal (things like portion size and amount of refined carbohydrates), taking a post-meal walk when you can, and not worrying about the occasional situation when that’s not possible.
This is Monica Reinagel, the Nutrition Diva. If you have a question you'd like me to answer, you can email me at nutrition@quickanddirtytips.com. You can also leave me a message at 443-961-6206.
Nutrition Diva is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast and is supported by a fantastic team, which includes our Director of podcasts, Adam Cecil, audio engineer Nathan Semmes, Davina Tomlin runs our marketing and publicity, Holly Hutchings is our Digital Operations Specialist and Morgan Christianson is our Podcast Operations and Advertising Specialist. Kamryn Lacy is our intern.
Thanks for listening!
What is water weight? (Nutrition Diva podcast)
Weight Fluctuation: How much is normal? (Nutrition Diva podcast)
Why your attempts to solve the problem keep failing (Change Academy podcast)
Pre-Diabetes: Is it really a lifestyle disease? (Nutrition Diva podcast)