Will Drinking Water Help You Lose Weight

Will Drinking Water Help You Lose Weight

The Set Up Story

Way back in my extended college education days I worked at a popular pizza joint close to campus.  This was one of those places on a corner right across from the campus that had a school enrollment of 25,000.  The pizza place had a great bar as well so it drew big crowds during lunch and over the weekends.  Many times during Friday or Saturday night rush I was running the ovens.  Which meant that I was cooking about 20 pizzas simultaneously for about 6 hours.  Which means I sweated.  A lot.  And back in those days I didn’t drink no stinking water.  I chugged ice tea and soda while I was working and sweating so hard.  One of my good friends that I worked will told me one time she had lost 10 pounds by mostly drinking water.  Since I never drank water I asked her “will drinking water help you lose weight?”.  And she went on to explain how.

Being young and invincible I never thought about that stuff.  For the 5 years I worked at the pizza place my primary diet consisted of pizza, soda, and beer.  Every once in a while I threw in an ice tea to mix things up.  When your young you mostly don’t care about “what’s good for you”.  At least I or the friends I hung around with then did.  But as we become older and sometimes wiser we learn about things that are good for us.  Like our good friend water.  But will drinking water help you lose weight?

Why Is Water So Important To Us

So we are always told to drink a lot of water.  And that water is important to our bodies.  But why?  Here’s some of the reasons:

Humans are made of 60% water and 90% of our blood is water.

It helps lube your joints.  Cartilage, which is found in joints and your spinal disc contain about 80% water.  Long term dehydration can lead to pain in your joints.

Forms mucus and saliva.  Keeps the mouth, nose, and eyes moist.  It also helps keep the mouth clean.

Helps keep your skin healthy.  When you skin is dry you are much more susceptible to skin disorders and wrinkling.

Helps regulate your body temperature and helps maintain your blood pressure.

Your airways like it.  When your body becomes dehydrated the airways get restricted in order to minimize water loss.  As such this makes your allergies or asthma worse.

Helps prevent kidney damage.  Insufficient water in the kidneys can lead to kidney stones and other bad stuff for the kidneys.

Makes your workouts better.  Several studies have shown that staying hydrated during strenuous exercise can help performance.

Lowers the chance you’ll have a hangover.  Remember that alcohol dehydrates your body.  If you are smart and drink a lot of water while drinking it will reduce the chance of a hangover and usually make it not as bad.

How Much Water

Health officials are mostly aligned that you should drink eight 8 ounce glasses of water a day.  This is 2 liters or half a gallon.  It’s also known as the 8 X 8 rule.  After further research I found in numerous articles that the 8 X 8 rule is pretty arbitrary.  As in there isn’t specific research that says drinking 64 ounces of water a day will keep you healthy.  It’s more that you need to stay hydrated and this is enough water to keep most people hydrated.

The thing is if you feel thirsty, you’re dehydrated.  So drink water.  If you aren’t thirsty, you’re probably okay.  Or you can be like me and drink about 12 cups of water a day and take a stroll to the restroom about once an hour.  But it works for me, gets me up out of my desk for a stretch.

Drink when you are thirsty.  Drink more when you do strenuous exercise or are out on a hot day, that type stuff.  Keep putting the liquid in throughout the day when you want to.

Now let’s answer will drinking water help you lose weight.

How Does Drinking Water Help You Lose Weight

Water is a natural appetite suppressant.  The reason is because when your stomach senses that it is full, it sends a signal to your brain to stop eating.  Having water in your stomach makes your brain think you’re at least partially full.  Therefore you aren’t as hungry.  Drinking a glass of water before you eat helps curb your hunger.  In a 2014 study 50 overweight women drank a glass of water before every meal for 8 weeks.  This was in addition to their regular water intake.  They all experience weight loss, drop in body fat, and appetite suppression.

Drinking water helps reduce your overall liquid calorie intake.  If you drink soda, juice, tea or other similar liquids you’d be surprised at how many calories you put away in liquid form.  There are 150 calories in one 12 ounce can of coke.  And we all know 12 ounces seems small these days.  I see a lot of people carrying around 44 ounce sodas from a popular convenience store around these parts.  Those have just over 500 calories in them, and a that’s accounting for ice.  Holy moly!

Water helps you burn fat.  Water is essential for metabolizing stored fat and carbohydrates.  Drinking enough water is critical for burning off from both food and drink as well as stored fat.

Putting down the water helps you burn calories.  In a study done in 2014 12 people who drank 500 ML of cold water experienced and increase of 2% – 3% of calorie expenditure.

More Ways Water Helps You Lose Weight

Water helps remove stuff from your body.  When your body is dehydrated it can’t do as good a job getting rid of waste, as in urine and feces.  Obviously you want to keep moving this stuff on through in the most expedited fashion.  Also keep in mind that when you can’t get rid of waste you feel bloated.  And anyone who’s felt bloated knows that when the bloat goes away, you literally reduce the inches around your waist.

Water increases your metabolism.  This seems kind of funny but it’s true.  When you eat or drink anything your body has to work to process those incoming calories.  This is done through a process called diet-induced thermogenesis.  This process works the same when you drink water.  Pretty cool, right?

Drinking water helps boost your overall energy level.  When our energy levels are high everything works at an increased level.  Our workouts are better and harder, we are more productive at work, and really in general we just get more done.  Remember that water makes up 70% of our bodies.  When the water is flowing into our bodies it nourishes our cells and and keeps our muscles chalk full of oxygen and nutrients.  This helps us stay focused and moving.

Water has no calories!  How about that?  Something that you eat or drink that has zero calories.  Now that’s not gonna help you lose weight directly BUT……….in a round about way it will.  When you are drinking lots of water as an overall game plan it reduces the chance of you putting something else into your body that does have empty calories and isn’t that good for you.

Drink Up

I believe we can safely say we’ve answered the question will drinking water help you lose weight.  The short answer is YES.

Water is great for our bodies in so many ways.  Now we know that it can also be an effective tool in weight loss as well.

Don’t worry about measuring out how much water you drink.  Just keep a glass or container with you whenever possible.  I have a big freaking insulated gigantor mug for water at home.  I have a real nice insulated one for my truck when I’m hauling around town.   And I have one on my desk at work that I refill frequently.

Chug A lug!

Mat A.

The MUG in the picture below is for when I’m real thirsty, it’s 100 ounces!