Can Drinking Water Help You Lose Weight?

One of the most common situation that I find among workout-o-holics out there is that everyone has so many preference in regards to what helps them lose the extra pound around the waist apart from working out. Some talk about a super-strict diet regime that consist of you eating food that might as well be newspaper for weeks. Some talk about a list of supplements that they take on a daily basis to help boost their metabolism rate. Some even talk about the countless hours they sit in a sauna so they can "sweat it out".

While most of this is true, the one thing that people ALWAYS tend to forget is the essential factor that a glass of water can play in losing weight.

[Don't mind Darth, he's just watching my water intake for me.]

Fact is that your daily intake of water is ABSOLUTELY essential in helping you manage your weight. Despite the fact that it does not contain any "magical" proportions that would whizz the weight away, it does help in controlling your diet and help in your push during your workouts. 

Question is, how?

Firstly one should understand that your recommended daily intake of water you need to be taking when trying to transform yourself is at least 2.5 liters a day, which would amount to about 8 - 9 glasses of water a day.

What happens then?

Here are 5 facts that would happen when keeping up to this routine

1. Water Helps Control Your Cravings Within the Day

One of the biggest difficulties that one would have when going on a diet is your craving. Imagine this scenario, that you just start yourself on a diet and all you can think about, after the first day, is the triple scoop chocolate ice cream, smothered in a layer of chocolate syrup.

9 times out of 10, the body confuses itself from hunger and thirst and the normal reaction that people usually have on this is to eat rather than to drink. Which then ruins your diet.

Drinking water on a regular basis helps prevents false cues for hunger. So then next time you get them midday cravings, get a glass of water and see if you still crave for something fatty after 30 minutes.

2. Keeping Yourself Hydrated Helps You Push Harder When Working Out

There is a good reason why most trainers need to make sure their clients keep themselves hydrated during their workouts, just to avoid you over resting when working out.

[It can get pretty sweaty in the workshop]

One of the most common things that stops you from working out or even slow you down too much in the gym is dehydration when working out. The simple science is that exhaustion can be caused from dehydration especially when exerting yourself. So drink up and don't use this to excuse yourself from finishing your set!

3. Regular Water Intake Helps Jump Start or Boost Your Metabolism Rate

One of the biggest downfall of your body when coming to a certain age is your metabolism rate tends to decline over time. Long gone were the days where you could eat and entire cow and yet gain very little weight.

Recent studies have shown that people having a regular intake of water per day showed up to 30% increase in the metabolism rate as compared to those who does not. Who would have thought...

4. Water Can be the Best Replacement for Sugary Drinks

I know so many out there are extremely reliant on premixed drinks (aka coffee, tea, sodas) which most of them time is chock loaded with sugar, you'd be wasting what you gain away from your cardio. Believe it or not, one of the biggest culprit for sugary stuff entering your body is actually from your drinks.

[Amount of sugar you have per drink]

When replacing these drinks with water, this is the amount of sugar intake that you are avoiding, which makes A WORLD of difference when it comes to your diet.

5. Avoid Overeating During your Meals with a Glass of Water

When going out to eat, we sometimes tend to overeat our portions of food, and it does pose as a major problem. Many have suggested a neat trick, by drinking a tall glass of water BEFORE going for your meal would help you suppress the tendency to overeat, thus ruining your diet altogether.

So go for that tall glass of water first. You know you want to...

So in conclusion, I really cannot stress out the importance of water during training in this post, as you can see how it would really effect the small things that might ruin your effort all together.

Bear in mind, I am not one to propagate starving yourself for the sake of your diet. As per my previous post, there should be no reason at all that you should have to starve yourself into a skeleton. Keeping yourself fit through a healthy diet is what we want to gain here and what you want to supplement that with is a steady flow of water intake.

On another note, do pose any fitness and sports related question to me here and I will ensure that those questions will be answered.