Can Drinking Water Help You Lose Weight?
Can Drinking Water Help You Lose Weight?
Sep 2nd, 2009 | By Coach Nancy | Category: Nutrition & Weight Loss
This may seem too good to be true. You may think that if someone’s rate of weight loss is going up after drinking more water it’s because the person drinking the water feels fuller and eats less. And this may be a significant factor but recently I stumbled across an interesting study. Here are the salient points:
After drinking approximately 17 ounces of water, the subjects’ metabolic rates — or the rate at which calories are burned — increased by 30% for both men and women. The increases occurred within 10 minutes of water consumption and reached a maximum after about 30 to 40 minutes.
The study also showed that the increase in metabolic rate differed in men and women. In men, burning more fat fueled the increase in metabolism, whereas in women, an increased breakdown of carbohydrates caused the increase in metabolism seen.
The researchers estimate that over the course of a year, a person who increases his water consumption by 1.5 liters a day would burn an extra 17,400 calories, for a weight loss of approximately five pounds. They note that up to 40% of the increase in calorie burning is caused by the body’s attempt to heat the ingested water. The findings are reported in the December 2003 issue of The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
Now I don’t know about you but even a 5lb weight loss over the course of a year just be drinking more water sounds pretty good to me. And water is good for us in so many other ways (helps our kidneys function better, our skin look better and more) why not drink a bit more water during the day?
I’m going for a glass of water right now!
