Water, Water Everywhere
Dehydration can kill, which is why humans have a built in thirst mechanism. If the body gets low on water you get thirsty, and go looking for something to drink. In today’s modern society, people often drink things that have no water content, or are even diuretic (causes you to urinate more than normal) like soda. Even with those problems, natural thirst will cause you to drink enough not to die, but that’s hardly our main concern. The question is, is drinking water relevant to weight loss, and how does it help?
When the body is dehydrated it tends to hang on to stores of adipose tissue (fat) and your kidneys function at a reduced rate. In addition, drinking water forces your body to use up energy, mostly to raise it’s temperature, though some is involved in processing. A study was done to determine just how much energy was consumed in this fashion, it turns out that the answer is approximately 1.414 kcal per ounce of water drank. So if you drink 80 ounces of water in one day that would come out to about 113 Calories. This may not sound like a lot, but when you’re watching every calorie like a hawk already, this can be an additional 5%-10% improvement on your calorie deficit, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.
So how much is enough? Well, the short answer is that more is better, within reason. I’m sure you’ve all heard the story of the radio contestant in California who drank so much water so quickly she died of Water Intoxication and Hyponatremia (severe sodium depletion). The standard is usually 64 ounces plus eight ounces for every 25 lbs you’re overweight. Here’s a fancy formula for the mathematically inclined:
Water ounces = (64 + ((weight - (lbm * 1.1)) * 0.32)
lbm is lean body mass, and if you don’t know how to figure it out, we’ll be talking about that in a future article. So if the subject weighed 243lbs with a lean body mass of 182lbs, he would need to drink 77.6 Ounces per day, which if you were paying attention earlier, would work out to 109 Calories daily. More than this is fine, I would not recommend consuming more than double your daily requirement though, 155.2 Ounces would be the max in this case.
Normally you’re not going to count any liquid towards that total that isn’t pure water, though if you wanted to use a zero calorie flavor additive that should be fine. When you first start increasing your water consumption, do so slowly, adding about 20 ounces a day or so until you reach your goal. You will experience a hyperactive bladder at first until you can get used to the new intake level so be aware. When you’re properly hydrated your urine should come out clear most of the time. If your solid waste starts coming out as liquid most of the time, you’re over-doing it.
As a side effect, drinking this much water won’t leave you very thirsty for other beverages, often making it easier to hit your calorie targets.
Tags: Water