water retention.

[Nate Dogg]

Can anybody tell me the best thing to rid exess water retention tabs or anything?

[ChiTown2Diego]

I'd stay away from diuretics.

Let's cover a few things first...
Not hydrating yourself adequately or consuming a lot of caffeine/alcohol can cause your body to go into storage mode holding fluids. Begin by doing away with caffeine/alcohol and making sure you're drinking plenty of water (water not gatorade, juices, etc). How easily can you pinch your skin and separate up away from the muscle beneath? The easier you can do this the better hydrated you are.

There are a lot of factors to consider when it comes to your nutrition but I'm going to pretend you're on a somewhat healthy diet:

People will tell you to decrease sodium but what they don't know is that a decrease in sodium and/or water will have your body go into overdrive producing Aldosterone (a hormone) which acts to conserve sodium and fluid for bodily functions. Now if you go the opposite direction and have a period where you're water and sodium consumption is through the roof, aldosterone will be put on hold and will cause your body to excrete excess fluids/sodium. Exactly what you want! Depending on your activity level/size/weight, we're talking about consuming at least gallon of water a day or likely more and about a gram of sodium per liter.

[Don-Felix]

Swelling

Can anybody tell me the best thing to rid exess water retention tabs or anything?

What do you mean by excess water? In a healthy person, your kidneys and urinary system take care of that. If you experience swelling, especially in your hands and feet, that would be excess water and more of a question to discuss with your doctor than here on the forum. In the worst case this can be a sign of heart problems. Excess water of that type is often treated with diuretics, which kind of work by forcing your kidneys to excrete more water. But careful, if nothing is wrong with you and you decide to use diuretics for cutting weight, you don't only risk health issues and side effects but also sanctioning by the doping agencies. Diuretics are a banned substance...

If you just mean cut some water weight by "getting rid of excess water", I would suggest saunas, sweat suits etc. Make sure to properly rehydrate as you are intentionally dehydrating your body. To perform at it's best, your body needs all that water though...

Hope that helps.

[Don-Felix]

Sorry, didn't see someone had posted while I was posting. Seems like we agree on the key points though...

[BrooklynBomber]

Uhmm, the first step would be to cut carbs. Every one gram of carbs attracts 2-3 grams of water, so you might figure out how much water you get. Then, steady state fasted cardio also helps.
I am not a huge, huge fan of overheating your body with sauna suits, because not most people can recover from it adequately. Try to clean up your diet first, introduce cardio second and then go to more extreme methods if that does not bring desirable results.