The H2O Factor: Hydration Supports Healthy Weight Loss
By Kendall Hopwood, for Revive Your Life
Adequate hydration is vital - do you drink enough?
Not only does water play a vital role in cellular health, cognitive performance, and general well being, it’s also a key component to achieving healthy weight loss and maintaining a healthy weight. Chronic dehydration can trigger misleading hunger cues and food cravings as the body turns to food to satiate its need for water. Staying hydrated is a simple and effective way to manage weight and ensure your body performs optimally on all levels.
Though there is an ongoing debate over precisely how much water should be consumed on a daily basis, there’s no contention over the fact that proper hydration is crucial to good health, including weight control.
Signs and Effects of Dehydration
Though humans can survive at least 30 days without food, the outlook is less than a week when completely deprived of water. Mild dehydration can be the culprit behind a number of physical and emotional ailments including fatigue, muscle weakness, headaches, dizziness, dry skin, irritability, decreased mental performance, anxiety, and food cravings. Further links have surfaced between chronic dehydration and joint pain, allergies, digestive disorders, high or low blood pressure, respiratory issues, acid-alkaline imbalance, cholesterol, premature aging, and some cancers and chronic diseases.
Chronic dehydration is also linked to excess weight and obesity. Luckily though, the adverse effects of dehydration, both short term and long term, can be reversed and better health attained through adequate water consumption. It’s never too late in the game to change your hydration habits; drinking water rather than soda with meals or snacking on foods with a high volume of water-such as watermelon, cucumber, peaches, or celery-can have an immediate and powerful impact on your health and weight.
Water’s Role in Weight Control
Nearly two-thirds of the human body is composed of water. Water is essential for a range of functions from moving nutrients between cells and regulating body temperature to lubricating joints and maintaining tissue health. Moreover, proper hydration is necessary to sustain a healthy weight-and to lose weight-for a variety of reasons:
- Water intake directly affects energy levels. The more energy you have, the easier it is to stay active, uphold an exercise schedule, and maintain a healthy weight.
- Metabolism is affected by water. Drinking plenty of water can boost your metabolism, partly as the body works to raise the water’s temperature to 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. According to Hilary J. Forrester’s report Wise Up on Water, “it has been found that drinking 500ml of water can increase the metabolic rate by 30 percent.” Inversely, chronic dehydration slows metabolism.
- Lean muscle tissue contains approximately 75% water. Water helps to maintain muscle tone, which increases the body’s fat burning capacity. Your metabolism increases by 50-70 calories per pound of muscle you add to your body.
- Dehydration can cause a burning sensation in the stomach that is often misinterpreted as a hunger cue. Staying hydrated helps the body discern between the thirst mechanism and hunger.
- Adequate water intake decreases food cravings as the body doesn’t have to extract water from food sources. In a University of Washington experiment, one glass of water eliminated midnight hunger pangs for nearly all of the dieters involved in the study.
- Water naturally suppresses the appetite and helps metabolize stored fat.
Chronic Dehydration and Weight: Replacing other Beverages with Water
A certain degree of water loss occurs naturally; water is ushered out of the body in the form of urine, sweat, and water vapor. Normal perspiration accounts for the loss of 2 cups of water, plus 2 cups are exhaled as water vapor while breathing. On top of that, the intestines and kidneys use around 6 cups of water a day. These 10 cups of water are necessary for normal bodily functions; add any sort of daily activity and it becomes apparent that more than 10 cups of water per day is ideal to promote and maintain optimal health.
Sugary drinks, excessive caffeine, and alcohol exacerbate dehydration further. Drinking beverages that are high in sugar can actually inhibit the body from absorbing water; though sweet drinks may seem satisfying, they do not provide the same nutritional value as pure water and often pose additional health risks (for example, an increased risk of type II diabetes).
Statistics on the number of Americans who are chronically dehydrated range from 75 percent to 90 percent. According to one study, as many as 63 percent of American adults drink sugar-sweetened beverages on a daily basis. Just one 12-ounce can of soda averages 10 teaspoons of sugar. Substituting the empty calories-and excess sugar-from these drinks with water reduces the risk of dehydration, decreases caloric intake, and aids in weight control.
Tips for Staying Hydrated and Maintaining Healthy Weight
While exercise, nutrition, stress management and a multitude of other factors affect weight, increasing your water consumption and keeping your body hydrated is an attainable goal with a drastic and lasting impact. In addition to increased energy, resilient skin, reduced risk of disease, and relief from joint pain, proper hydration helps control body weight.
Here are some tips for integrating good hydration practices into your daily routine:
- Dehydrated cells will stimulate hunger cues in the brain. Drink water consistently throughout the day and learn to evaluate the difference between true hunger and the body’s attempts to satiate thirst.
- Fill a reusable bottle with water and drink it on your commute to work or during your early morning routine, then continue filling it throughout the day.
- Food mass triggers signals that tell your brain you’re full. Since water is one of the heaviest substances you can put in your stomach, drink plenty of water 20-30 minutes before a meal to avoid over-indulging.
- Reduce the consumption of sugary drinks and caffeinated drinks; balance caffeine and alcohol consumption with extra water intake.
- Drink water before you’re actually thirsty.
- Drink chilled water-your metabolism will receive a boost as your body heats the water internally.
- Replace any flavored, sugary beverages with water. Add sliced cucumber, lemon or lime wedges, or frozen berries to water to for a fresh boost of flavor.
As your body grows accustomed to being properly hydrated, replacing energy drinks or sugary, sweetened beverages with water will become an easier choice to consistently make. Habit formation takes around 3 weeks to become ingrained, so keep incorporating more water into your lifestyle. Not only will you notice a difference in terms of weight, you’ll also reap the infinite other advantages of good hydration.
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[...] with bouts of constipation, try to add prunes or figs to your diet. It’s also important to drink at least eight glasses of water per day in order to keep your digestive system [...]
I always tell my son when he complains of a headache,
that maybe he should drink a lot more water and it will go away.
Dehydration causes that in me too.
got comment on
http://reviveyourlife.com/inspiration-and-wellness/what-are-antioxidants-and-why-do-yo
u-need-them/#comment-358
as topen
camels can manage to survive on desrts without frequent drinking of water… know why?… it is the hump on their back that serves as a storage for water and food nutrients, that is significantly useful during a long hot trip on the desert…
if people can only have this storage hump, we travel around sahara desert without drinking every now and then…
but the reality is, we we’re not camels, we don;t have that hump that can provide us rehydration…. so better be used to drink lots of water everyday for better performance on our daily activities!
just like what has been mentioned on this post, water gives energy so why buy those energy drink where in fact we can readily grab a glass of water right in our kitchen!….
I ever hear 70% human body is a water, so we can said water is our life. I’m always drink 8-10 glass water per day or same with 1.5-2 litre and that’s why i never dehydration.
And also, i’m agree with all you info about the importance of water. Many researcher already find water is so important and secret of water, for example, just read “The Secret of Water” by masaru emoto.
In traditional medical, there is therapy called water therapy. Written that a lot of disease can be cured without medicine but only drink water 2 litre in the early morning.
So guys, now we know the importance of water, drink now…!!!
Great article, I agree that drinking water is a good way to support healthy weight loss. I have several friends that have lost weight through drinking more water and doing regular exercise.