Drinking Water and Weight Loss - Can drinking water help you lose weight?

Good question. Shortly I’m going to give you a very good answer.

Before I talk about drinking water and weight loss, I’m going to take just a minute to highlight some things about the significance of water…

Water affects every single process in your body.

Here are some boring but important facts concerning you and water:

• about 60-70% of your body is water
• your blood is around 90% water
• your muscles are about 70% water
• your bones are 20% water

• flush out waste,
  
• prevent constipation,
  
• lubricate your joints,
  
• regulate your body temperature,
  
• carry oxygen and nutrients to your cells,
  
• keep tissues (in your eyes, nose, mouth, etc.) moist,

If water affects every process in your body, then it goes without saying that drinking water and weight loss are connected.

Even slight dehydration can:

1) lower your capacity for exercise
2) limit your livers’ ability to convert fat into energy

Back to the original question...

Does drinking water help you lose weight? Absolutely. Read on to find out why…

Dehydration Decreases Physical Performance

Without going into a scientific explanation, dehydration affects the function of your cardiovascular system. This lowers your capacity to do physical work.

I’m not just talking about extreme dehydration either. A small decrease in your body's hydration level can decrease your performance.

For example, mild dehydration can decrease your muscles’ contractile strength. This means you won’t get as much out of weight training as you could if you stay hydrated.

Your aerobic endurance is also lowered by not drinking enough water.

In summary…

Intense exercise helps you lose weight.
Dehydration will lead to decreased exercise intensity.
That means you will burn less calories during exercise.

And that means you lose weight at a slower rate.

Water and Fat Burning

Your liver and kidneys tag team to help keep you healthy. Let’s look at how this relationship affects your weight loss efforts…

One of your kidneys’ jobs is to eliminate waste from your body through urination.

One of your livers’ main jobs is to convert fat to energy.

When you’re dehydrated, your body instinctively starts retaining the water it does have in order to survive.

When this happens, waste in your body doesn’t get properly flushed out and builds up in your system. Your liver then comes to the rescue to try to help with the overload.

This is a good thing, right? Umm, not really.

While your liver is helping out your kidneys with the overload, it can’t effectively do its job of burning stored body fat for energy.

And what’s the result? You don’t burn fat efficiently. That obviously makes it harder for you to lose weight.

See how water and weight loss are connected?

Do you need to drink lots of water to loss weight? No. But drinking enough water will definitely help you lose weight faster!

Now…

How much should you drink?

We learn as kids that we should drink around 64 ounces or eight cups of water a day.

This may be good enough. Or it may not be. It depends on a variety of factors.

You have to consider activity levels. Highly active people need more water than inactive people.

Climate plays a part too. If you live in Texas, you’re probably gonna need more water than someone living in Alaska because you’ll sweat more (unless you sit on your butt under an air conditioner all day every day).

Let’s make this simple…

Drink eight to ten cups minimum. Drink more if you’re highly active and or you sweat a lot.

Now you know - drink water to lose weight faster and to stay healthy.

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