Drink Up to Slim Down - Does Water Help You Lose Weight?

Does Drinking Water Help You Lose Weight?

Drinking water can help you lose weight, though the amount might depend on other factors affecting your body weight, including genetics, health issues, and behaviors. Although the relationship between water consumption and weight is still being studied, increasing your water intake can be a mechanism for losing weight. A study involving 9,500 people shows there could be a link between staying slim and staying hydrated. Researchers found drinking enough water could be the chief factor in maintaining a healthy weight.

Water is a primary component of organs like the brain, heart, and skin and is also crucial for the life of individual cells. Drinking enough water helps improve your body's essential functionslike digestion, calorie burning, and circulation, which are also important processes for weight loss.

It's important to remember that water consumption is one aspect of weight loss rather than the entire picture. Drinking enough water will likely produce better results when combined with other weight-loss methods, such as improving diet and exercising more.

How Water Positively Impacts Your Weight

Drinking enough water has the potential to help reduce weight and help individuals maintain their health. Here are the top ways water helps you lose weight:

1. Water Wakes Up Your Metabolism

Your body needs water to metabolize carbohydrates and stored fats. Lipolysis refers to this fat-metabolizing process, and hydrolysis is the initial step. Hydrolysis happens when there's an interaction between water molecules and fats called triglycerides to create fatty acids and glycerol. Drinking an adequate amount of water is important for burning stored fat and fat from food and beverages.

A small 2016 review found an increase in water intake increased lipolysis and fat loss in animal studies.

2. Water Fills You Up

When your stomach senses fullness, it sends messages to your brain to stop eating. Drinking water can help fill up some of the space in your stomach, reduce hunger, and create a feeling of fullness. Drinking water before you reach for something to eat can help you reduce or stop unnecessary snacking.

Ingesting more water from water-rich foods can also make you feel full. These foods may contain more soluble fiber, which slows digestion and helps control blood sugar, thus promoting a healthier weight.

3. Water Keeps You Regular

When dehydrated, the body can't properly expel waste. Drinking water helps your kidneys to filter waste and toxins while it retains essential electrolytes and nutrients. Your kidneys retain fluid when your body is dehydrated. Dehydration also causes constipation. Drinking a proper amount of water can help keep things moving to prevent waste from sitting in your body for extended periods, causing discomfort.

Staying hydrated helps your digestive organs do their jobs. When properly expelling waste and retaining healthy electrolytes and nutrients, your body can be better prepared for healthy weight loss.

4. Water Improves Digestion

Water helps your body break down its food, extracting nutrients and sending them throughout the bloodstream to power everyday activities. Water moves through your stomach and intestines, letting your stomach and small intestines absorb vitamins and minerals.

Saliva is the starting point of digestion — and saliva contains water. It provides lubrication for chewing, swallowing, and aiding digestion. Your body relies on enzymes found in saliva during the digestion process to help break food and liquid down and dissolve nutrients and minerals. Your colon extracts water from your stool to help move the digestive system along.

5. Water Supports Healthy Hormones

When you drink more water, you may also be supporting your hormone health. Reduced sugar intake is the key to this benefit. Replacing calorie-rich drinks with plain water and drinking water before a meal to help you feel full can have the cumulative effect of lowering your sugar consumption, which can maintain healthy insulin levels.

The Positive Digestive Effects of Water

The overall positive digestive effects of water include its:

• Promotion of nutrient absorption: Water helps break your food down so your body may absorb the nutrients. Good digestion makes nutrients and minerals more accessible to your body. Water intake during or after you eat can help with digestion. If you drink water immediately before eating, it helps improve your food digestion by preparing your gastrointestinal tract for your meal and improves gastric secretions for adequate nutrient breakdown.
• Softening of stools: Being dehydrated can lead to lumpy, hard stoolsand constipation. Water helps move waste by loosening or softening hardened stools, helping to prevent constipation. Water also helps you digest soluble fiber, helping your bowel make soft, well-formed stools that are easy to pass.
• Promotion of recovery from digestive issues: You lose water with each bowel movement when you have diarrhea. Increasing your water intake helps your body replenish lost fluids.

Drinking water can be beneficial and helpful for digestion. Your body can break your food down better when you drink water. It helps with food digestion by flushing waste from your intestines, helping to relieve constipation. To support the digestion process, along with drinking more water, you should increase the number of fruits and vegetables you consume and cut back on fatty foods.

Since your body loses water through sweating, digestion, and breathing, it's essential to drink water or other fluids and eat foods containing water to rehydrate.

Other Benefits of Drinking Water

While drinking water can be good for weight loss, staying regular, and digestion, there are other health benefits of water as well, including:

1. Supports Strong Teeth

When you drink water throughout the day, you're also helping to keep your teeth strong. If, after a meal, you can't brush your teeth, rinse out your mouth with water to reduce some of the bacteria and acid that can damage your teeth. Some bottled waters and tap water contain added fluoride — some health professionals advocate this to help strengthen your teeth and protect their enamel.

2. Maximizes Physical Activity

Physically active people may sweat more, losing water through perspiration that would have been used in other bodily functions. Drinking water is essential before, during, and after exercise to maintain a proper balance of fluids.

Staying hydrated for physical activity may also boost performance. Physical performance may be hindered if you're dehydrated. Staying hydrated is especially important when you're in high heat or performing intense exercise. Dehydration could have a noticeable impact if you lose even 2% of your body's water content. Athletes can lose up to2 liters of waterthrough sweating. This may reduce motivation, alter body temperature control, make exercising seem harder, and increase fatigue. Participating in physical activity while hydrated can be much more beneficial and enjoyable.

3. Hydrated Skin

Water is essential for healthy skin, promoting better hydration and keeping dryness and irritation at bay. While increasing water consumption won't eliminate wrinkles, it will help keep your skin hydrated from the inside out. A topical moisturizer can maximize the benefits of drinking water and lock hydration in place.

4. Lubricates Your Joints

Cartilage, found in the disks of your spine and your joints, contains up to 80% water. Being dehydrated long-term can decrease the shock-absorbing ability of your joints and lead to joint pain, which means it's important to stay hydrated.

5. Hydrates Brain Cells

Since your body is made up of a high percentage of water, everything, including your brain, needs adequate amounts of water to function properly. Staying hydrated helps prevent cognitive problems related to dehydrated brain cells.

6. Regulates Body Temperature

Water stored in your middle skin layers comes to the surface of your skin as sweat when your body starts heating up. It cools your body as it evaporates. When there's not enough water in your body, heat storage can increase, and you can't tolerate heat strain as well, according to some scientists. Having enough water can help decrease physical strain while exercising if heat stress occurs.

7. Reduces Headaches

If you're suffering from migraines, a lack of fluids could trigger an episode easily. If you don't get enough fluids, headaches are more likely to last longer. Also, it can impact how you concentrate, leave you feeling anxious and moody, and cause short-term memory problems.

8. Helps Deliver Oxygen to Your Body

Over 90% of blood plasma is water, and your blood is the vehicle that delivers oxygen throughout your body, including your tissues, muscles, and organs.

9. Emotional and Mental Benefits

Water also has emotional and mental benefits. A 2019 study found dehydration has several adverse effects, like reducing vigor and decreasing short-term memory and attention. In contrast, rehydrating improved study participants' attention and mood. You may also get headaches and feel fatigued when you haven't had enough water. A 2018 study found dehydrated participantshad higher rates of depression and anxiety.

When Is the Best Time to Drink Water for Weight Loss?

The best time to drink water for weight loss is in the morning, before meals, and around your daily exercise. Planning when to drink water helps you get the most out of your weight loss efforts, and these daily events may be the best opportunity.

Enjoying a glass of water in the morning helps you start your day hydrated. Since water helps you feel fuller, drinking some before meals is another good strategy for weight loss. Ensure you hydrate before and after exercise to maintain energy and replace water lost through sweat.

How Much Water Should I Be Drinking?

It's essential you drink enough water each day, not only to stay slim and maintain regularity but also for your overall health. Most healthy individuals remain hydrated by drinking fluids like water when they feel thirsty. For some individuals, fewer than eight glasses of water daily could be enough. Others may require more.

How much water does the average, healthy adult who lives in a temperate climate require? Individual water intake needs vary, so the best way to find out how much you should be drinking is to consult with your doctor. However, six to 10 cups per day is the generally accepted advice, depending on your health needs. This includes water intake from other drinks and food. Around 20 percent of daily fluid intake typically comes from food, with the rest from beverages.

Factors Influencing Your Fluid Intake

Although water consumption is important, every individual's needs are different, and how much water you'll require will depend on various factors, including:

• How active you are
• Where you live
• Your overall health status
• Whether you're breastfeeding or pregnant

No certain amount fits everyone. Knowing more about your body's particular need for water will help you determine the amount of water you should drink daily.

• Exercise: If you're exercising or performing any other activity that causes you to sweat, you need to cover the loss of fluid by drinking extra water. Be sure to drink water before you work out, as well as during and after. If your exercise session is intense and lasts over an hour, you can replace lost electrolytes by drinking a sports drink.
• Environment: Humid or hot weather can cause you to sweat, requiring extra fluid intake. You can also experience dehydration at high altitudes.
• Overall health: Your body experiences fluid loss when you have diarrhea, fever, or vomiting. Replenish this fluid loss by drinking more water, or follow a doctor's recommendation of drinking oral rehydration solutions. Urinary tract stones, bladder infections, and other conditions may increase your need for fluid intake.
• Breastfeeding or pregnancy: Pregnant women or those breastfeeding require extra fluids to maintain hydration. A pregnant woman should drinkbetween eight and 12 extra cupsof water or other fluid per day. Women who are breastfeeding generally require even more.

The Importance of Drinking Clean, Contaminant-Free Water

Water quality is another essential factor to keep in mind when planning how much water to drink. Contaminated water can cause a myriad of health problems including:

• Gastrointestinal illnesses
• Neurological problems
• Reproductive issues

Contaminants in water can include:

• Lead
• Disinfection by-products
• Microplastics
• Forever chemicals (PFOAs)
• Arsenic
• Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)
• Microbial contaminants
• Other contaminants

While the water leaving a treatment plant and making its way to your home must meet very strict safety standards, this doesn't meanyour drinking waterwill be free of all germs and contaminants after traveling through miles of pipes to reach your home. It merely means there is a low statistical probability that contaminant levels won't pose any serious risks to your health.

Slim Down With Filtered Water

A superb way to reduce contaminants in water and slim down is to use a point-of-use drinking water system from Multipure. It provides filtration for your drinking and cooking water.

You can use Multipure systems and bath products inside your home, in your yard, or on the go. By incorporating Multipure's industry-leading solid carbon block filters into your life, you can reduce contaminants that affect the appearance, taste, and quality of your drinking water making the water you are drinking the best water possible.

Multipure offers many products, including drinking water systems, products for your bath and shower, whole house systems, and more. We even have products for your garden or yard. To learn more about Multipure systems, browse our product page.