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Stay Hydrated
By Bob Greene, bestselling author of The Best Life Diet.
Some people wonder whether we really need to drink so much water. I, for one, think we do. Everybody should drink at least six 8-ounce glasses (48 ounces) of water a day, and it’s particularly important if you’re trying to slim down.
What Water Does For one thing, all physiological processes — including digestion and burning calories — work better when the body is adequately hydrated. Ironically, a lot of diets, especially low-carb, high-protein diets, are geared toward making you lose water. That’s why they offer such rapid results (that’s also one of the reason why when you go off them, you gain weight so quickly — the water simply comes back). But it’s not water you want to get rid of. It’s fat, and from a fat-loss standpoint, dehydrating yourself really works against you. If you’re dehydrated, you’re not going to burn calories at an optimal level, and that’s going to make it hard to lose body fat.
Drink More, Eat Less Some recent research from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill also suggests that people who drink an average of six and a half cups of water during the day consume close to 200 fewer calories per day. The water drinkers in the study tended to have healthier eating habits and drank less soda. It’s impossible to say if it was the water itself that quenched their appetites and made them less likely to eat, but I do think it shows that drinking adequate amounts of water goes hand in hand with healthful eating.
Get 48 If you’re following a diet that’s high in fruits and vegetables, that’s also going to help you stay hydrated, but I still recommend drinking at least six glasses of noncarbonated water a day. And that’s especially true if you consume a lot of caffeine, because caffeine causes water loss. There’s no reason to go overboard — if six cups of water is good, 12 cups isn’t necessarily better (unless it’s a very hot day and you’ve been exercising hard) — but it’s smart to get at least the minimum for both physiological and practical reasons. Consider, for instance, that drinking water is distracting. If you’ve got a water bottle in your hand, you’re going to feel less inclined to dip your fingers into a bag of chips. And although water isn’t as filling as good, it still dampens the appetite for a little while, and that can help you forgo some of the calories you may have otherwise consumed.
Dangers of dehydration There are times you may feel as though your body is craving food when it’s in fact craving water; that’s one of the risks of being dehydrated. Dehydration also makes exercising harder. When you work out, your muscles actually hold on to water, a sign that they need to be hydrated to meet the demands you’re placing on them. When you short them of water, you’re preventing them from operating at full capacity and upping the likelihood that you’ll fatigue yourself faster as you exercise. What’s more, your body needs extra water to cool itself off through perspiration while you’re working out.
Keep in mind that other beverages shouldn’t take the place of your 48 ounces of water. No matter what else you drink, have your water too. Get used to having a glass at every meal. If it’s really hard for you to drink so much unflavored liquid, try herbal iced tea, carbonated waters, or some of the flavor-infused waters on the market now. Just a squirt of lemon, lime, grapefruit or even a little tangerine juice can help plain water go down a little easier too.
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