Water

[henryh]

Will drinking lots of water help me lose body fat?

[bruteforce]

It won't hurt any. Eating fewer calories will help more. It is possible, though difficult, to drink so much water that you deplete your body's electrolytes. This is less than ideal.

[Iron Troy]

Yes it can. It will help to fill you up and also flush toxins out of your body.

[TitanCT]

water does a lot things like Iron Troy said, it can also speed your metabolism. water does a lot of amazing things for your body.

[Tannhauser]

Originally Posted by henryh

Will drinking lots of water help me lose body fat?

No. Eating fewer calories than you consume will make you lose body fat. Just drink when you're thirsty.

[ONpump17]

If you use it to fill yourself while doing an intermittent fast it will.

[elijah]

Originally Posted by Tannhauser

No. Eating fewer calories than you consume will make you lose body fat. Just drink when you're thirsty.

^^ this is the answer.

[5kgLifter]

Originally Posted by henryh

Will drinking lots of water help me lose body fat?

Drinking sensible amounts of water in order to keep your body properly hydrated will help it function optimally; it will prevent headaches caused by dehydration, permit you to workout at a better intensity (1-2% dehydration can reduce the intensity at which people are able to workout/perform physical tasks), and lots of other things to boot, i.e:


For the heart and circulatory system, though, thinner, more watery blood might be better.

Some threads of evidence suggest that people with thicker (or more viscous) blood have higher chances of developing heart disease or having a heart attack or stroke. The more viscous the blood, the harder the heart must work to move it around the body and the more likely it is to form clots inside arteries and veins.


Is blood like your waistline — the thinner, the better?

[big valsalva]

Originally Posted by Tannhauser

No. Eating fewer calories than you consume will make you lose body fat. Just drink when you're thirsty.

I wholeheartedly agree with your first sentence, but just think about the second sentence for a moment. Your body is what, 60% water? You've got to keep it hydrated to help it function properly. The feeling of "thirst" is NOT an indication to drink. It is a panic cry. By the time you feel thirsty, the situation is critical. Best not to let yourself get thirsty. Water is a good way to stay hydrated. Fruit juices are also good. Milk too, but not a first choice. Coffee and alcohol, nope. A rule of thumb that I've heard is to take your weight in pounds, and divide by two. That's how many ounces of water you should drink per day...just to maintain a healthy, balanced, optimally functioning body. If you exercise, then drink more. So a 200 pound person should drink a MINIMUM of 100 ounces of water. Tough to do. I have a difficult time, and can't very often get it done.

Back to the original post. In and of itself, I don't know. If you use water to keep your stomach full so you don't eat so much, then yes. I have heard, and I think there's some truth to this, that if you drink ice cold water, your body has to expend extra calories to warm it up to body tempurature. So it could help build up a caloric deficit.

[Tannhauser]

Originally Posted by big valsalva

You've got to keep it hydrated to help it function properly. The feeling of "thirst" is NOT an indication to drink. It is a panic cry. By the time you feel thirsty, the situation is critical. Best not to let yourself get thirsty. Water is a good way to stay hydrated. Fruit juices are also good. Milk too, but not a first choice. Coffee and alcohol, nope. A rule of thumb that I've heard is to take your weight in pounds, and divide by two. That's how many ounces of water you should drink per day...just to maintain a healthy, balanced, optimally functioning body. If you exercise, then drink more. So a 200 pound person should drink a MINIMUM of 100 ounces of water. Tough to do. I have a difficult time, and can't very often get it done.

.

With respect, I couldn't disagree more. I have indeed thought about the second part of the statement and have been arguing about the water consumption myth for some years. I've done so on MAB before.

For my money, it's one of the more pernicious bits of nonsense that has slipped - largely unchallenged - into the health industry. It began with the wonderfully named Dr. Batmanghelidj, who must have some sort of record for the number of people he has successfully made paranoid about something they have absolutely no need to think about.

Certainly, under some circumstances, it might be possible to outstrip the thirst trigger. It would be prudent to keep your fluid intake up, for example, if you're walking any distance in the heat or working construction. But for most people in temperate climates, who aren't being fantastically active, their usual drinking patterns are going to be plenty to satisfy their needs. I suggest that anyone who is worried keeps an eye on the colour of their urine. If it's orange or brown, maybe it's time to drink something. Other than that, stop worrying: thirst isn't like the oil light on your car (you know, by the time it's on, the damage is done).

There's absolutely no evidence that healthy people need to hit some sort of arbitrary target for water consumption. Homeostatic mechanisms are a physiological marvel, and cope incredibly well at conserving water. Someone in temperate climates stands more chance of overwhelming these by over-consumption.

As a bit of weak-sauce anecdotal evidence, I sip water in the gym -because I sweat buckets - and on a work day, I drink 5-6 cups of tea/milk. That's it. I've never had any symptoms that I could reasonably attribute to dehydration.

P.S. It's another myth that tea and coffee dehydrate more than they dehydrate.

P.P.S. Just because the body is composed of 60% water - or whatever it is - doesn't mean that you need to think about topping it up more. By that logic, we would need to ensure we're breathing x number of times a day, as we're composed of 65% oxygen atoms (by mass).