Drinking a gallon of water a day to assist on burning fat and weight loss

Ikhan704
Ikhan704 Posts: 1 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Has anyone tried this? This is day 7 for me and I haven't seen weight loss. I have dropped my caloric intake as well and I exercise daily. Any thoughts?
«1

Replies

  • Bxqtie116
    Bxqtie116 Posts: 552 Member
    I drink a gallon a day too and while it may not directly be linked to weight loss, it somewhat does cause the water helps to make you feel full. It also helps if you've had something high in sodium cause it flushes it out.
  • atitagain1958
    atitagain1958 Posts: 160 Member
    Burning more calories than you consume is the only way to lose weight, and water is an important part of that process, but you have to drink it in moderation. Although you're exercising a lot and sweating. It's just that drinking too much water can actually give you dangerously low sodium levels, and your neurons need sodium to fire. On the other hand, dehydration can slow your metabolism, and drinking water before meals can help you feel full but it won't help you "burn fat". Make sure you're eating ENOUGH (men should NEVER go under 1800 calories a day and that's counting in your exercise). Below that, your body could go into starvation mode and you won't lose weight. Your exercise will be for naught because instead of burning fat, you'll be burning muscle. I hope this helps!
  • allaboutthecake
    allaboutthecake Posts: 1,535 Member
    I drink a gallon easy or more every day but I'm out in the hot weather riding my *kitten* off on my bike. it keeps me hydrated. :) My weight loss came with sticking within my calorie goal. Not sure if this will help you, but its an opinion anyways.
  • atitagain1958
    atitagain1958 Posts: 160 Member
    cmriverside wrote: »
    atitagain1958 wrote: »
    Burning more calories than you consume is the only way to lose weight, and water is an important part of that process, but you have to drink it in moderation. Although you're exercising a lot and sweating. It's just that drinking too much water can actually give you dangerously low sodium levels, and your neurons need sodium to fire. On the other hand, dehydration can slow your metabolism, and drinking water before meals can help you feel full but it won't help you "burn fat". Make sure you're eating ENOUGH (men should NEVER go under 1800 calories a day and that's counting in your exercise). Below that, your body could go into starvation mode and you won't lose weight. Your exercise will be for naught because instead of burning fat, you'll be burning muscle. I hope this helps!

    I was sort of with you but you lost me at "starvation mode." That isn't a thing. If you are eating less calories than your body uses in a day, weight loss will occur. You don't hold on to weight/fat when you under eat. There can be muscle loss, but there will be weight loss. There will also be fat loss.

    Too much water can lead to electrolyte imbalance.

    1800 is also a guess on your part. No way to know how much anyone needs with as little info as he's given.

    The medical term is Adaptive Thermogenesis. A definition is under Starvation Response on Wikipedia. Here's the link.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation_response

    As for the 1800...look at his profile pic...he's not a small framed man. There are many reputable sites that state that. Here's one...

    http://www.acsm.org/about-acsm/media-room/acsm-in-the-news/2011/08/01/metabolism-is-modifiable-with-the-right-lifestyle-changes

    "Calorie restriction
    How it affects metabolism: Although cutting an extreme amount of calories from your daily diet seems like the pathway to quick weight loss, self-starvation actually slows metabolic rate down significantly.
    How you can change it: Don’t send signals to the body to conserve calories by detoxing or fasting. According to ACSM guidelines, women should eat at least 1,200 calories per day, and men should eat at least 1,800. Small, sensible deficits lead to healthy, long-term weight loss."
  • SLLRunner
    SLLRunner Posts: 12,942 Member
    Ikhan704 wrote: »
    Has anyone tried this? This is day 7 for me and I haven't seen weight loss. I have dropped my caloric intake as well and I exercise daily. Any thoughts?[/quote

    7 days is not enough time to tell if something is working or not. Patience is a virtue.

    You can drink all the water you want, but if you are not eating at a calorie deficit you will not lose weight.

    How can you be sure you are eating at a calorie deficit? In other words, do you weigh your food and log everything you eat? Do you log exercise and, if so, is it cardio and/or weight lifting?
  • SLLRunner
    SLLRunner Posts: 12,942 Member
    atitagain1958 wrote: »
    Burning more calories than you consume is the only way to lose weight, and water is an important part of that process, but you have to drink it in moderation. Although you're exercising a lot and sweating. It's just that drinking too much water can actually give you dangerously low sodium levels, and your neurons need sodium to fire. On the other hand, dehydration can slow your metabolism, and drinking water before meals can help you feel full but it won't help you "burn fat". Make sure you're eating ENOUGH (men should NEVER go under 1800 calories a day and that's counting in your exercise). Below that, your body could go into starvation mode and you won't lose weight. Your exercise will be for naught because instead of burning fat, you'll be burning muscle. I hope this helps!

    This is inaccurate information.
  • diannethegeek
    diannethegeek Posts: 14,776 Member
    Ikhan704 wrote: »
    Has anyone tried this? This is day 7 for me and I haven't seen weight loss. I have dropped my caloric intake as well and I exercise daily. Any thoughts?

    If you've drastically changed the amount of fluid you're drinking, I'd think you're more likely to see some fluctuations until your weight balances out. But that's just my two cents.

    1. If it's been less than 3 weeks or so, don't sweat it! Normal fluctuations happen and unfortunately sometimes we stall for a week or two even when we're doing everything right. Give your body some time to catch up with the changes you're making.

    2. If you aren't already, be sure that you're logging everything. Sometimes people forget about things like veggies, drinks, cooking oils, and condiments. For some people these can add up to enough to halt your weight loss progress.

    3. Consider buying a food scale if you don't already have one. They're about $10-$20 dollars in the US and easily found at places like Amazon, Target, and Walmart. Measuring cups and spoons are great, but they do come with some degree of inaccuracy. A food scale will be more accurate, and for some people it makes a big difference.

    4. Logging accurately also means choosing accurate entries in the database. There are a lot of user-entered entries that are off. Double-check that you're using good entries and/or using the recipe builder instead of someone else's homemade entries.

    5. Recalculate your goals if you haven't lately. As you lose weight your body requires fewer calories to run. Be sure you update your goals every ten pounds or so.

    6. If you're eating back your exercise calories and you're relying on gym machine readouts or MFP's estimates, it might be best to eat back just 50-75% of those. Certain activities tend to be overestimated. If you're using an HRM or activity tracker, it might be a good idea to look into their accuracy and be sure that yours is calibrated properly.

    7. If you're taking any cheat days that go over your calorie limits, it might be best to cut them out for a few weeks and see what happens. Some people go way over their calorie needs without realizing it when they don't track.

    8. If you weigh yourself frequently, consider using a program like trendweight to even out the fluctuations. You could be losing weight but just don't see it because of the daily ups and downs.

    9. Some people just burn fewer calories than the calculators predict. If you continue to have problems after 4-6 weeks, then it might be worth a trip to the doctor or a registered dietitian who can give you more specific advice.
  • atitagain1958
    atitagain1958 Posts: 160 Member
    THIS IS MY LAST AND FINAL POST...30 years ago I was taking in 1000 calories a day and working out at the gym 3 times a week. I wasn't losing weight. I thought, gee wiz what do I have to do? I mentioned it to my doctor at a routine visit and I was told my body was in STARVATION MODE or ADAPTIVE THERMOGENESIS as what was written on my chart. He told me to go up to 1200 calories a day. I thought he was crazy and expected to GAIN weight. It made no sense to me. However, I started to lose. So, I'm a firm believer. I don't need to read any study. I experienced it FIRST HAND! What's better than that? I was just trying to help...you all can do whatever you want. Good luck to all of you.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
    Ikhan704 wrote: »
    Has anyone tried this? This is day 7 for me and I haven't seen weight loss. I have dropped my caloric intake as well and I exercise daily. Any thoughts?

    Thoughts:
    It's only 7 days - be patient. Give any changes in routine at least a month to see the real trend not short term fluctuations.
    If you have only just started an exercise routine you may have some fluid retention from muscle soreness.
    Drinking extra water doesn't make you lose weight - apart from the additional walks to the bathroom burning a few calories!
    If that's significantly more water than you need you may upset your electrolyte levels.

    Thirst works perfectly well for majority of people as an indication of hydration levels, colour of your pee is probably your best guide if you feel the need to monitor something your body naturally regulates, you get hydration from all sources not just water.
  • kitkatlp
    kitkatlp Posts: 93 Member
    sijomial wrote: »
    Ikhan704 wrote: »
    Has anyone tried this? This is day 7 for me and I haven't seen weight loss. I have dropped my caloric intake as well and I exercise daily. Any thoughts?

    Thoughts:
    It's only 7 days - be patient. Give any changes in routine at least a month to see the real trend not short term fluctuations.
    If you have only just started an exercise routine you may have some fluid retention from muscle soreness.
    Drinking extra water doesn't make you lose weight - apart from the additional walks to the bathroom burning a few calories!
    If that's significantly more water than you need you may upset your electrolyte levels.

    Thirst works perfectly well for majority of people as an indication of hydration levels, colour of your pee is probably your best guide if you feel the need to monitor something your body naturally regulates, you get hydration from all sources not just water.

    That piece of advice looks very sensible to me. :wink:
  • stevencloser
    stevencloser Posts: 8,911 Member
    atitagain1958 wrote: »
    cmriverside wrote: »
    atitagain1958 wrote: »
    Burning more calories than you consume is the only way to lose weight, and water is an important part of that process, but you have to drink it in moderation. Although you're exercising a lot and sweating. It's just that drinking too much water can actually give you dangerously low sodium levels, and your neurons need sodium to fire. On the other hand, dehydration can slow your metabolism, and drinking water before meals can help you feel full but it won't help you "burn fat". Make sure you're eating ENOUGH (men should NEVER go under 1800 calories a day and that's counting in your exercise). Below that, your body could go into starvation mode and you won't lose weight. Your exercise will be for naught because instead of burning fat, you'll be burning muscle. I hope this helps!

    I was sort of with you but you lost me at "starvation mode." That isn't a thing. If you are eating less calories than your body uses in a day, weight loss will occur. You don't hold on to weight/fat when you under eat. There can be muscle loss, but there will be weight loss. There will also be fat loss.

    Too much water can lead to electrolyte imbalance.

    1800 is also a guess on your part. No way to know how much anyone needs with as little info as he's given.

    The medical term is Adaptive Thermogenesis. A definition is under Starvation Response on Wikipedia. Here's the link.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation_response

    As for the 1800...look at his profile pic...he's not a small framed man. There are many reputable sites that state that. Here's one...

    http://www.acsm.org/about-acsm/media-room/acsm-in-the-news/2011/08/01/metabolism-is-modifiable-with-the-right-lifestyle-changes

    "Calorie restriction
    How it affects metabolism: Although cutting an extreme amount of calories from your daily diet seems like the pathway to quick weight loss, self-starvation actually slows metabolic rate down significantly.
    How you can change it: Don’t send signals to the body to conserve calories by detoxing or fasting. According to ACSM guidelines, women should eat at least 1,200 calories per day, and men should eat at least 1,800. Small, sensible deficits lead to healthy, long-term weight loss."

    Adaptive thermogenesis is a small effect on your metabolism that happens when you lose weight, it has nothing to do with starvation.
    It can NOT make you stop losing weight at a sustained deficit.

    It reduced resting metabolism by less than 5% or an average of 60 calories of their prediction in this study after 8 weeks on less than 500 kcal.
    http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/97/5/990.long

    "Although adaptive thermogenesis acts in response to energy restriction to slow weight loss, subjects with the greatest adaptation had the greatest weight loss. This supports the suggestion that compliance with and the energy restriction itself play a role in the amount of weight loss and that the amount of weight loss determines the degree of adaptive thermogenesis."


    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.20027/full
    In the experiments done for this study, even within people who were restricting calories to less than 50% of their requirements, less than HALF the subjects experienced adaptation of more than 120 kcal per day.

    And a quote from their motivation paragraph:
    "In the Minnesota study, about 35% of the fall in basal metabolic rate (0.8 MJ or about 180 kcal) was independent of changes in FFM and therefore ascribed to AT"
    If you didn't know, the Minnesota starvation experiment was one of the most extreme starvation response experiments done, where normal weight subjects lost an average of almost 17 kg. Even there, the response was only 180 calories per day.


    In short, no, "Starvation Mode" is not the reason you didn't lose weight.
  • tlflag1620
    tlflag1620 Posts: 1,358 Member
    Drinking more water can help reduce how much water you retain, which can help the number on the scale go down (at first), but it won't assist fat loss. Only a calorie deficit can do that. It's only been a week, give it more time, and pay close attention to calorie intake. Water is great, but there is no need to push fluids. Drink to thirst and let your urine be your guide (okay I laughed when I typed that) - place and clear means you're getting enough.

Categories