The Story Of The Waterfall Diet

Posted by Linda Lazarides on April 10, 2009 under Misc | Read the First Comment

Back in the 1980′s I trained as a Nutritional Therapist. I learned all about recommending balanced diets, vitamins and minerals, weight loss programs, and helping people with problems like irritable bowel and chronic tiredness.

But when I started working as a practitioner, I found that helping people to lose weight wasn’t as easy as I’d been led to believe. The people who consulted me had already tried every imaginable diet. They’d done low-calorie, detox, low-fat, low-carb, food-combining; dieting plus jogging and swimming, dieting plus gym. But they were still overweight. Many had been turned away by their doctor. I heard tearful, angry stories that “My doctor more or less accused me of stuffing myself with chocolate”. One woman was on the verge of desperation, eating less than 1,000 calories a day, jogging for half an hour every morning and going to the gym twice a week. But she still weighed 180 lbs and her weight was still slowly creeping upwards.

I’m the kind of person who doesn’t like to let people down. I believed my clients when they told me they were working hard at their dieting; but that meant I had to discover something for them that hadn’t been part of my training.

My Quest Begins

One thing that a lot of my clients seemed to have in common was that their weight would go up and down quite dramatically in the course of a single day. Some would also complain of problems like swollen knees or painful breasts. Some had been diagnosed with arthritis and were on long-term painkillers. Others had tight and bloated tummies. I wondered if they could be suffering from hidden water retention. I asked them if their doctor had mentioned this, but everyone said “No”.

But this was all I had to go on. Only water retention can make someone’s weight go up and down by 4-5 pounds in the course of a single day. I started looking for all the information I could find to do with water retention. This was in the days before the Internet was around. Whenever I could I would travel to the Science Reference Library in central London, and spend a day finding out everything I could about water retention and its causes. This is a giant library, with thousands of medical journals going back many decades.

An Amazing Discovery

After several visits I made a truly stunning discovery. There are two very distinct types of water retention. Like most health professionals, I was familiar with one type, which is the swelling caused by a tired heart or faulty kidneys. In these cases there is too much water in the blood as well as in the tissues. This kind of problem is best treated with diuretics – medicines which stimulate your kidneys to work harder.

But then I discovered that there was another type of water retention. Like the first type, this can cause bloating, or swollen legs and ankles but may also be distributed all over the body, causing general weight gain. This is sometimes known as “idiopathic edema”, which means edema of unknown cause. I prefer to call it “Type 2 water retention“.

What Causes Type 2 Water Retention?

Fired with excitement, I trawled through hundreds of volumes of the “Index Medicus” looking for medical articles which might give me clues. It soon became clear that with Type 2 water retention, there is not necessarily a lot of water in the blood. In fact it is possible for your tissues to be bloated with water, and yet for your blood to be dehydrated. Some doctors warn that with this type of water retention it could be damaging to take diuretics.

Water is constantly being exchanged between your smallest blood vessels, and the spaces between your cells. Water collects in your tissues when it leaves your blood to bathe your cells but cannot get back again. As it collects in your tissue spaces, your body gradually expands (and gets heavier).

My next task was to find out why the water doesn’t return. One reason is congestion of the lymphatic system. The lymphatic vessels should act like an “overflow” to return it. But they can get overloaded.

Another important factor is histamine. If you’ve ever had a rash, insect bite or hay fever, you know that histamine makes your tissues swell up with water. That’s because histamine makes your smallest blood vessels leaky. If your whole body is making too much histamine, water leaks out of your blood and may stay in your tissue spaces.

Too much histamine in your kidneys is very damaging. Scientists in France have been researching how histamine and inflammation in the kidneys can be triggered by abnormal reactions to foods. This type of kidney problem is known as Nephrotic Syndrome. It becomes very hard to urinate, and your body swells up with water.

Type 2 water retention can also be caused by eating a Very Low Calorie Diet. One of my clients (“Barbara”) was a vegetarian who had been dieting on and off since she was 13 years old. When she consulted me, she was 24, and weighed 175 lbs. Her total food intake was truly shocking: a grapefruit and black coffee for breakfast, a dry cracker with lettuce and tomato for lunch (no dressing), and plain steamed vegetables for dinner. She ate nothing else at all…. ever, but still her weight was slowly creeping up.

All in all, I found seven separate causes of tissue water retention. The sad fact is that so many people with water retention don’t realise their problem is water. They think it’s fat, and go on a fat-loss diet. Then they end up eating too few calories and so their water retention problem gets worse. They may lose a bit of weight at first, but then the weight-loss levels out and they can’t get any further.

I Design The Waterfall Diet

Taking into account all these seven causes of water retention, I put together a plan of action that could get rid of as many of these causes as possible. First you have to identify which of the causes apply to you, and this involves a procedure to find your “safe foods”. I tried the program on my clients, and was truly amazed at the results. “Jennifer” started Phase I of the program on Thursday June 12th 1997 and I had no idea what result what we would get. But when she returned on Thursday June 26th Jennifer told me the wonderful news that she had lost 14 lbs in 10 days. “After about 2 days I just started urinating constantly” she said. “My bladder was always full, but my clothes started getting looser.” The many trips to the bathroom eased off around the 7th day, but the water and the excess weight did not return.

I wondered what should I call the program. In view of the trips to the bathroom “The Waterfall Diet” seemed most appropriate. Soon I had tested it on many more clients, written down all the details, and my book entitled The Waterfall Diet was published in 1999 and instantly became a best-seller in the UK.

Does The Diet Work for Everyone?

If your weight goes up and down by more than a pound or two in the space of a single day, then water retention is a definite possibility. But I don’t want to get your hopes up unduly. Not everyone will lose 14 lbs in just a week. About 30 per cent of people with Type 2 water retention lose 10 lbs in 7-10 days on this diet. You might be retaining just a couple of pounds of water, but that couple of pounds could be cooling down your metabolism and preventing fat loss.

Another benefit of the Waterfall Diet is it can help to confirm whether or not your tissues are retaining water. If you follow the diet carefully without achieving any water loss, then (if your doctor agrees) you probably don’t have water retention.

If you want to try the Waterfall Diet, the book is available from Amazon.com or from Amazon.co.uk, or you can download an E-guide.