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<\/p>\nYou may have heard of the whoosh effect.<\/p>\n
This buzzy weight-loss term supposedly describes a phenomenon in which fat cells fill with water, feel \u201csquishy\u201d for a bit, then \u2014 whoosh! \u2014 release all that water so you drop a few pounds seemingly overnight.<\/p>\n
If that sounds like a made-up term, that\u2019s because\u2026 it is. Here\u2019s what you need to know about this persistent fitness myth.<\/p>\n
The exact origins of the whoosh effect are unclear, but in a 2009 blog post, author Lyle McDonald shared an excerpt from his book, The Stubborn Fat Solution, in which he explained the concept of the whoosh: \u201c[Y]ou\u2019ll be dieting and dieting and doing everything correctly with nothing to show for it. Then, boom, almost overnight, you drop 4 pounds and look leaner.\u201d<\/p>\n
The excerpt goes on to explain that in McDonald\u2019s college years, a professor \u201cthrew out the idea\u201d that when fat cells are emptied of triglycerides, they temporarily fill with water instead.<\/p>\n
When this happens, your body becomes \u201csquishy,\u201d and you experience a plateau in weight loss.<\/p>\n
Eventually the cells release the water, which \u201cwhooshes\u201d out, causing you to drop a few pounds seemingly in one trip to the bathroom.<\/p>\n
The idea of the fat whoosh caught the attention of Reddit keto boards around 2014.<\/p>\n
Then pseudo-health bloggers (and anyone else hoping to get clicks and views) hopped on the bandwagon, claiming that the fat whoosh is a legit, science-backed weight-loss phenomenon.<\/p>\n
It may sound plausible \u2014 especially if you\u2019ve struggled with a weight-loss plateau \u2014 but there\u2019s no truth to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a lot of quackery out there about weight loss, and the whoosh effect is definitely in that category,\u201d says Andrea N. Giancoli, MPH, RD.<\/p>\n
There isn\u2019t much in the way of whoosh effect science.<\/p>\n
In one study of 27 obese men and women, published in 2003, subjects who lost about 14.5 percent of their body weight in nine weeks appeared to gain water in their fat cells.<\/p>\n
However, the subjects maintained that water during a year of follow-up \u2014 it didn\u2019t \u201cwhoosh\u201d away.<\/p>\n
Some bloggers cite the Minnesota Starvation Experiment \u2014 a 1944 study on the physical and psychological effects of semi-starvation \u2014 as proof that a cheat meal can trigger the whoosh effect.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are totally misusing the study,\u201d says Tim Church , MD, MPH, PhD, professor of preventative medicine at Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t a weight-loss study. They starved people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other articles claim that drinking alcohol can trigger the whoosh effect by dehydrating you. But again, there is no scientific proof.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeer is 95 percent water,\u201d Giancoli notes. And the calories from alcohol can quickly add up, which won\u2019t help you lose weight.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Short answer: No. \u201cAs your fat cells become smaller, they are not getting refilled with water and then collapsing,\u201d Giancoli adds.<\/p>\n
The actual science of fat loss is that, as you lose weight, fat breaks down into carbon dioxide and water.<\/p>\n
Most of that is exhaled as carbon dioxide, Giancoli explains. The rest is excreted through water \u2014 which could be urine, sweat, or breath vapor.<\/p>\n
Some people mistakenly think they\u2019ve experienced the whoosh effect, because they briefly hit a weight-loss plateau before losing a few more pounds.<\/p>\n
But there could be many reasons for this \u2014 like changes in your salt intake or alcohol intake, following your meal plan more closely, or hormonal fluctuations in women.<\/p>\n
The real science is that the whoosh effect is \u201cphysiologically impossible,\u201d Giancoli says.<\/p>\n
And Church agrees: \u201cTens of thousands of data points show there is no such thing as a whoosh effect,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You may have heard of the whoosh effect. This buzzy weight-loss term supposedly describes a phenomenon in which fat cells fill with water, feel \u201csquishy\u201d for a bit, then \u2014 whoosh! \u2014 release all that water so you drop a few pounds seemingly overnight. If that sounds like a made-up term, that\u2019s because\u2026 it is. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3689,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ozhelp.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}