Drinking water can be an essential component of your weight loss program
02/25/2020 / By Noah Harper / Comments
Drinking water can be an essential component of your weight loss program

Drinking plenty of water can help in a person’s weight loss journey, but they may not understand precisely why this is the case, just that staying hydrated is very important.

While water is an essential element when it comes to health, it doesn’t actually burn fat. When people want to lose weight, they may mean that they want to lose body fat. In that regard, many foods, drinks, powders and pills that claim to be able to burn fat don’t actually work. The only way that your body can burn fat is if you have a calorie deficit.

A calorie or energy deficit is when you consume fewer calories than you burn. This is the only way you can lose weight. This means that you can drink as much water as you please, but if you’re consuming more calories than your body is burning, you won’t lose weight. When you consume more than enough calories for the day, your body has no reason to turn its fat stores into energy.

Why drink water as part of a weight loss program?

While water itself won’t make you lose weight, drinking water can help your program in other ways. For example, many studies have found that drinking water can help you burn calories. Specifically, drinking at least 17 ounces of cold water can increase the amount of calories you burn for an hour. This may be because your body uses calories to warm the water up to your body temperature.

Drinking water can also make you reduce your appetite. A study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that drinking water before a meal helps people reduce the amount of calories they consume.

Lastly, the act of drinking water itself can lead to a decrease in daily calorie intake as well as reduce the long-term risk of weight gain and obesity. This reduced risk is especially true for children.

Water is still necessary

Water is still essential to optimal functioning. Without an adequate supply of water, your liver, for example, will not process nutrients properly and it won’t break down fat, either. The liver produces bile that allows the body to break down fats. Without the proper amount of water in the system, this process doesn’t function normally.

When your body is dehydrated, your blood gets thicker. This thick blood can dog down vital organs. If, for example, the blood is too thick to flow freely through your liver, it won’t be able to deliver vital nutrients and oxygen and impair proper liver functioning. If you want your body to burn calories, you need your liver to be at optimum efficiency, which is why you need to drink adequate amounts of water a day.

Furthermore, water is a necessary ingredient in fat burning. For the process of metabolizing the body’s stored fats, these fats have to undergo a process known as lipolysis. The first step in this process is called hydrolysis, which needs water molecules in order to function. Animal studies have even shown that increased water intake leads to increased lipolysis and loss of fat.

The amount of water each individual needs to drink will vary depending on a number of factors, such as age, body size and the amount of physical activity you go through daily, among other factors. However, it’s generally recommended that, based on studies, drinking one to two liters of water a day should be sufficient, especially if you want water to help in your weight loss program.

Drinking water alone won’t be able to help you lose weight. Adequate water consumption has to be accompanied with a healthy low-calorie diet and moderate exercise. If you have all these three components working together, you’ll be on your way to having a healthier body in no time.

Sources include:

Healthline.com

VeryWellFit.com

JANDOnline.org

MedicalNewsToday.com

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