Why is water retention a big deal to you? Are you going up for a contest? If not, its not going to make you look fat. If anything, it will make you look a bit bigger. But the main advantage of CEE is that it requires no loading and that the body asorbs it much better than mono, which leads to better results. Being that you take lower doses of the CEE (2g on workout days, 1 g on off days compared to 5-10g mono) there really is no cost difference.