Drinking More Water – Double your weight loss
Can you lose weight by drinking more water? Can drinking more water really double your fat and weight loss?
It’s a paradox: water is the most important nutrient.
But the focus is instead on the latest superfoods and diets.
Yet water is everywhere. It is unbeatably cheap and perhaps the most effective of all fat burners.
The only thing missing from the food dinosaur is the sex appeal of the “next big thing.”
Fit people are habitual drinkers, habitual water drinkers.
If you want to get leaner and stronger, you can drink enough – like a top athlete.
Why you should drink more water regularly
You can have your diet under control and have found the perfect balance of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. Be well supplied with vitamins and minerals.
All of this is of little use to you if you are dehydrated.
Every athlete knows how much more performance is possible, how better you feel, and how faster you regenerate when adequately hydrated.
Water is the cheapest, easiest, and most effective way to optimize your metabolism and get the most out of your body.
Logical.
After all, you are mostly made of water:
- Water makes up 60-70% of your body weight.
- Your blood is over 90% water.
- Your muscles contain over 70% water.
- Even bones are 20% water.
Not only metabolism is impossible without water, but everything that makes life worth living:
- Water regulates your body temperature.
- Water transports nutrients to where they are needed.
- Water is part of your body cells.
- Water takes over the removal of pollutants.
- Water lubricates your joints.
- Water enables thinking, digestion, breathing, blood circulation, nutrient absorption, and elimination of what your body no longer needs.
When metabolism requires water, it is obvious that without drinking water, losing weight is impossible.
In the next section, you’ll learn why drinking water makes weight loss a breeze.
Can you lose weight by drinking more water?
Most health experts don’t bother with how much water would be optimal for your metabolism to function perfectly.
Many doctors would probably be happy if their patients at least met the minimum requirements to avoid deficiency symptoms and illnesses.
The current recommendations are also designed for ordinary people who walk just over 4,000 steps a day.
But those who stay on the move more than their fellow humans have become sedentary.
Now, of course, you could experiment: How little water can you handle before your fat metabolism stagnates?
Or you search for the optimum, with which it runs like clockwork. Maybe even better than ever.
Unfortunately, there are still no reliable statements from the scientific side as to the amount of fluid you drink at which you optimally break down fat.
The fact is:
Whether you are just making up for a deficiency or are optimally cared for, it makes a difference. This applies to water as well as to all nutrients.
It is also a fact that water can help you lose weight in many ways. Some have pretty a fantastic effect.
Here are 3 of those mechanisms.
#1 Lose Weight by Drinking More Water – The Energy Effect
Drinking water can cause your body to burn more calories.
Some studies suggest:
· A German study concludes that the metabolism of adults is boosted by 24-30% for 30-60 minutes when they drink cold water.
· An Israeli study conducted with children comes to a similar conclusion: calorie expenditure at rest increased by 25% for more than 40 minutes.
So far, scientists have not agreed on what exactly causes this effect.
Some speculate that it is because your body has to heat the water by 3-4 degrees, which costs energy. Others think cold water could stimulate the central nervous system or boost cellular metabolism.
The exciting question is, of course: How big is this short-term effect?
How much faster can you lose weight by drinking cold water?
It helps, although the impact isn’t all that great.
The Israeli researchers predict an additional weight loss of 1.2 kilograms per year if you drink cold water regularly. At best, you can expect 5 pounds a year.
Key Facts #1 – Lose weight by drinking cold water
While the cold effect isn’t a silver bullet, a few ways to lose weight are as easy as a few extra glasses of cold water a day. A packet of butter is 250 grams of fat.
The 4-10 packets less on your hips are a gift. You don’t want to miss that.
#2 Lose weight by drinking more water – The satiating effect
You can speed up your fat loss by drinking water before or during a meal.
While water isn’t an appetite suppressant because it doesn’t affect your hunger hormones, it does take up space in your stomach that you can’t fill with caloric foods.
Scientists have studied this effect well:
- In one study, subjects drank half a liter of water half an hour before breakfast. Calorie intake dropped by an average of 13%.
- In a second study, participants drank half a liter of water before each meal and lost 2 kilograms more than the comparison group in 12 weeks.
- In a 12-month study, subjects drank more water than before, causing them to lose significant fat and gain weight. The participants consumed less caloric beverages because they drank more water.
Key Facts #2 – Lose weight by strategically drinking water
Studies show that you can lose more fat if you drink half a liter of water before and during a meal.
#3 Lose weight by drinking more water – The replacement effect
If you want to eat healthily, you decide to eat some things less often.
How do you put that into practice – leave it out?
Imagine your groceries make up the team in a football tournament, and you are the team coach.
You see how one of the players ruins his team’s good work over and over again.
Victory is a long way off.
So you send him to the substitutes’ bench.
But now you have one player too few on the field. That doesn’t necessarily make things any easier.
Simply cutting out foods isn’t always the best strategy.
Such a gap is just crying out to be filled again.
It’s good when you make an intelligent decision that strengthens your team.
Water is a reliable substitute that plays surprisingly well in many situations, especially regarding high-calorie drinks.
Where you used to have a soft drink, you now say: “I’d rather have a glass of water.”
In just a few weeks, you will have established a new positive habit — an invisible script to help you lose weight faster.
Small adjustments often make the biggest difference in the long run.
A glass of orange juice is 100-150 calories. If you rely on water instead, you can lose 5-7 kilos of body fat in a year alone.
Key Facts #3 – Lose weight by drinking water instead
Replace liquid calories with water. Even small adjustments have an immense effect in the long term.
Yes, drinking water helps you lose weight in two ways:
1. Drinking cold water increases your energy expenditure for a short time.
2. If you drink water before or during a meal, you eat fewer calories overall because the water in your stomach fills you up faster.
Can you drink too much water?
Health organizations do not make recommendations for a maximum amount to drink.
Presumably because “water intoxication” is extremely rare.
The disease usually occurs in competitive athletes who replace massive fluid losses – for example, after an endurance competition – with water that does not contain any vital electrolytes.
This can lead to overhydration. The sodium level in the blood drops to a dangerous level, leading to life-threatening brain swelling.
Outside of endurance sports, however, hyperhydration is extremely rare.
Dosing is unlikely unless you’re a marathon runner or a water-drinking contestant.
Still, it’s not a good idea to go to extremes when drinking, along with “In with it until you’re gone.”
A good idea is normally 3-4 liters of water a day. Plus, what you sweat out during exercise or other exertion.
You can easily determine how much fluid you lose during exercise by weighing yourself before and after.
If you want to specifically manipulate the water balance in your body, for example, for a photo shoot, you can use these guidelines for correct drainage as a guide.
In the next section, you will learn a simple drinking strategy to help you lose weight.
How easy it is to lose weight: A simple 5-step strategy
Of course, you can drink water whenever you want.
And there are some times when drinking water is perfect for weight loss.
A plan will help you turn a new behavior into a habit.
The proper habits are your autopilot, getting you where you want to go while your mind is free for other things.
The following 5 steps will tune your drinking autopilot for fat loss:
1. After waking up: Drink water immediately when you wake up in the morning. Overnight you lose a lot of liquid through breathing air and sweat.
A cold glass of water before breakfast will help you start the day well and control your energy intake at breakfast.
I start each day with a tall glass of water with Organifi green juice before I even brew an espresso.
For some of my clients, placing the water prominently before bedtime has helped, so they can’t forget it in the morning.
2. Before training: Drink about half a liter of water 2 hours to 20 minutes before your workout. So you can start well hydrated.
3. When training: Most sports nutritionists recommend about 200-250 ml every 15 minutes. Natural water is the best sports drink when your workout lasts up to an hour.
Some bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts use special amino acid drinks during the training. If it should help, which hasn’t been proven, then it’s fine-tuning at best.
If you eat enough protein otherwise, you can do without it.
An electrolyte and energy drink can be useful if you do long-distance endurance sports and train for significantly more than an hour.
4. After training: The goal is that you compensate for the training-related loss of liquid by drinking directly afterward. You can get a good feel for the right amount by weighing yourself before and after.
For every half a kilo that the scale shows less, you can estimate half a liter of water.
5. When you sweat: Breaking a sweat, perhaps because it’s hot, is the universal signal that you should drink, even when you’re not training.
On non-training days you need less water than on training days. 3-4 liters of water per day is a good rule of thumb.
A glass of water in the morning is obligatory even on rest days.
Remember that you don’t have a workout these days that reminds you to drink something.
Meals are good signals to drink something. Here are two of the world’s easiest fat loss methods:
- Drink a large glass of cold water before eating.
- Drink plenty of water during the meal (instead of high-calorie drinks).
What about alcohol? Here, too, the dose makes the poison. Learn more in this article on alcohol and weight loss.
If you are one of those people who tend to forget to drink water, you should read on now.
Bonus tip: How to make it impossible to forget to drink
In fitness coaching, I usually address the topic of drinking water in the first appointment. Many people find it difficult at first to make drinking water a habit. (I felt the same way.)
You can usually find the simplest solution if you ask yourself this question:
How can you create framework conditions that make failure impossible?
This bonus tip comes from one of my clients. FIT Strong & Healthy bottle is a 32 oz glass carafe you can place on your desk where it is visible.
Two scales are printed: one for the morning and one for the afternoon.
They remind you to drink 250ml of water every hour.
Brilliant.
You can buy them in different versions on Amazon.
Drinking More Water – Conclusion
Can you lose weight by drinking more water?
Yes, drinking water helps you lose weight in two ways:
- Drinking cold water increases your energy expenditure for a short time.
- If you drink water before or during a meal, you eat fewer calories overall because the water in your stomach fills you up faster.
Sometimes it’s fun to watch other people in a café, restaurant, bar or playing sports.
Take a close look: those who (probably) look good drink more water than everyone else. Take this quiz to find out about your drinking habits and what can help you to change them.
And they prefer zero-calorie beverages to soft drinks or vanilla chai lattes.
In the gym, the successful athletes have a water bottle with them.
All coincidence?
Or maybe these people know something that others don’t?
If you ask me: Cheers!
With cold water, of course!
