You're Not Fat. You're Retaining Fluid.

1. Up two pounds, and the coach said she was lying

Tessa signed up for the eight-week challenge at her gym in January. Six weeks in, she'd eaten 1,200 calories a day, walked 10,000 steps a day and hadn't touched bread. At the Saturday weigh-in she was up two pounds.

The coach read the number out loud, looked at her over his clipboard and told the whole group, "The scale doesn't lie. Be honest about your weekends." Eleven people looked at her.

She sat in her car afterward and cried with the engine off.

2. 1,200 calories a day, and her ring still wouldn't turn

No bread, no sugar, lemon water, apple cider vinegar shots, fiber powder, the 5am cardio class. The scale swung five pounds between morning and night. Her stomach was smaller when she woke up and pushing on her waistband by dinner.

Her wedding ring wouldn't turn by afternoon, and her socks left deep red lines around her ankles. Cutting calories burns fat. It doesn't touch water the body is holding on to, and that was what the scale kept weighing.

3. The dietitian at her car window: "That's water"

Lorraine from the 5am class knocked on her window. She's been a hospital dietitian for 20 years. "Nobody puts on fat eating 1,200 calories a day," she said. "Two pounds up on that is water.

Your body holds water around what it can't clear. Lead and cadmium come in on rice, chocolate and protein bars, and your gut hangs on to a little every day.

Your body keeps it packed in fluid, in your belly, your face and your ankles. Get it out and the water goes with it."

4. Ten drops from Lorraine's gym bag

Lorraine pulled a bottle of Trace out of her gym bag and handed it to her. Cleansed zeolite, a volcanic mineral shaped like a tiny cage, cleaned first because raw zeolite comes out of the ground already full.

In the gut it grabs heavy metals and toxins and carries them out, and the water the body was holding around them goes too. Shilajit puts 70+ trace minerals back.

Ten drops in water in the morning and ten at night. "Keep eating the way you're eating," Lorraine said.

5. Week 6: Down 11 pounds, jeans buttoned after dinner

The first week the scale didn't move, and she was more regular. In week two it dropped four pounds, and it stayed down when she weighed again at night.

In week three her wedding ring turned on her finger and her socks stopped leaving lines. In week four a second grader at the front counter asked if she'd cut her hair. She hadn't. Her face was thinner.

By week six she was down 11 pounds, her stomach was flat at bedtime and her jeans buttoned after dinner.

6. Back on the same scale in April

In April the gym started a new challenge. At the first weigh-in the same coach looked at the number, then at her, and asked what she'd changed. "Same food," Tessa said.

"Same weekends." One bottle is 60 days: 10 drops in a glass of water, morning and evening. If your belly isn't flatter and the scale hasn't moved, reply to your order email within 60 days and get every dollar back.

Bottle opened or not, nothing to ship back.