Does Drinking More Water Help You Lose Weight?

"Does Drinking More Water
Help You Lose Weight?" In my video series
starting with "How to Get the Weight Loss
Benefits of Ephedra Without the Risks," I noted how drinking water
affects the release of the adrenal hormone
noradrenaline, making it the safest metabolic
booster for weight loss, and recommended drinking
two cups (0.50 L) of cold water on an empty stomach
a few times a day, ideally before meals, as a form of that
negative calorie preloading, as I discuss in my video
"Evidence-Based Weight Loss." But what about just
staying hydrated in general? In a national survey, one of the weight control
practices most associated with successful weight loss was
"Drink plenty of water." But it was also associated with unsuccessful attempts
at weight loss.

It's just one of the most
popular weight loss tips across the board, both in the mainstream media and a common recommendation given to patients
by their physicians. But does it work? Can we just add water? About a dozen studies have been
published on the matter, and overall, there does appear to be
a weight-reducing benefit to increased water consumption. What's the obvious confounder,
though? Confounding factors, also
known as "lurking variables," are some third element that ends
up being the true explanation for a supposed link
between two things. Here's a textbook example: There may be a tight correlation between ice cream sales
and drowning deaths, but that doesn't mean
ice cream causes drowning. A more likely explanation is that there is
a lurking third variable— like hot weather, summertime— that explains
why drowning deaths are highest when ice cream consumption
is at its peak. So, what might be
a confounding factor that offers
an alternate explanation of why those who drink more
tend to lose more weight? Maybe it's because
those who drink more water tend to drink less soda.

So maybe the reason more water is associated
to more weight loss is because
there's a third variable, a confounding variable, like less soda consumption
connected to both, and that's the real cause. The primary reason
that the CDC, USDA, American Medical Association, American Diabetes Association,
American Heart Association, and American Academy
of Pediatrics all recommend drinking water
for weight management is as a replacement
of beverages with calories. Even replacing
one sugary beverage or beer with water per day is associated with a lower
incidence of obesity over time. American children and
adolescents drink so much soda that replacing all
sugary beverages with water could result in an average
reduction of 235 calories a day.

And what about exercise? That's another obvious
confounder candidate. After all,
who drinks lots of water? Those who spend hours
working out. So, it's no wonder
water drinkers might be slimmer. A study
of dieting overweight women took both soda and exercise
into account and still, however,
found a benefit associated with increased
water consumption. Over a year, those who drank
at least a liter of water a day lost about five more pounds
(2.30 kg) on average than those who didn't.

The researchers were able
to control for physical activity and intake of other beverages,
but what about other foods? It turns out that
those who drink more water also tend to eat
more fruits and vegetables, greens and beans,
and whole grains, and less total sugar,
and less fast food. No wonder
they're a healthier weight. To control for dietary factors, the scientific world had
to bring out the big guns, Harvard's big cohort studies that followed
the diets and health of more than 100,000
doctors and nurses for decades. They were able to control
not just for other beverages and lifestyle factors such as
exercise, smoking, sleeping, and TV watching, but a wide range of healthy
and unhealthy food intakes from fruits and vegetables
to meat and candy consumption. They were the first to show that "increasing water intake per se was independently
and significantly associated with less weight gain"
over the long term.

Consumption patterns
in these studies were by self-report, though. Participants were just asked to fill out detailed
questionnaires about their diet. For more
of an objective measure, researchers directly assessed
people's hydration status by assessing their blood
and urine concentrations. In both adults and children, the more hydrated people were, the less likely they were
to be obese. Spot-checking urine from
nearly 10,000 men and women, researchers found that
nearly half of obese individuals were walking around
under-hydrated compared to fewer than
one in three individuals who were normal weight
or lighter. The problem with
snapshot-in-time studies is that you don't know
which came first. Did under-hydration
lead to obesity, or did obesity
lead to under-hydration? At a heavier weight,
you actually need more water. The daily water requirements of a man of average height
weighing 210 pounds (95 kg) may actually be four cups
(0.95 L) more than the same man
at 160 (73 kg) pounds.

And who's more hydrated? Those who eat
more water-rich foods like fruits and vegetables. There's that specter
of confounding again. The only way to prove
cause-and-effect is to put it to the test
in an interventional trial, which I'll cover next..

As found on YouTube

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