COLD WATER

stonerdude

Sitting through high school chemistry class one gorgeous spring day, an equally bored friend of mine and I came up with a sure-fire diet program based entirely on the thermal properties of water.

Let me run it by you. In 11th grade chemistry, we were taught that water has a high specific heat. That is, it takes a lot of heat to raise the temperature of water even a little. "A watched pot never boils," or so it seems, because even a gas stove's flames or the red-hot coil of an electric range can never boil that pot of water quickly enough when you want your spaghetti. Why? It takes one unit of heat called a calorie (small "c") to raise one gram of water (which is one milliliter, or ml) by one degree Celsius (very roughly equivalent to nearly two degrees Fahrenheit, or F). Sorry about the math anxiety this may be arousing in you, but I'm going somewhere with this.

Your body temperature is surprisingly hot, approaching 100 degrees F (okay, okay, 98.6). "Cold" tap water is perhaps 50 degrees F or less. Ice is 32 degrees F, and "ice water" might be in the high 30's. If ice water were 38.6 degrees, that is fully sixty degrees lower than you body temperature.

Now a dietetic Calorie (with the large C) is more properly termed a kilocalorie, equal to 1,000 small-c calories. It takes 1,000 little one-ml-of-water-two-degrees heat calories to make one "food" Calorie.

Hmm. A small-c calorie of heat can only raise one ml of water about two degrees F. A liter of water is 1,000 ml. One food big-C Calorie is 1,000 little calories. So you have to burn one Calorie to raise the temperature of one liter of water two degrees.

Uh huh. But that means that to raise the temperature of a liter of ice water sixty degrees, to body temperature, takes 30 Calories. Two liters would burn 60 Calories.

Just ten extra food Calories per day, for ten years, will gain you ten pounds. In other words, if you eat only ten superfluous Calories each day, you will gain a pound a year. That is admittedly not much. On the other hand, you would have real trouble cutting me a ten-Calorie piece of chocolate cake. On a dessert plate, ten Calories looks almost insignificant.

If, however, you drank two liters of ice water a day, you will burn 60 Calories each day just heating to your normal body temperature.

That is six pounds per year weight loss: a pound every two months.

In ten years, that's 60 pounds of weight lost.

(That is in fact a minimum figure. Since one degree Celsius is actually only 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, the process will burn about ten percent more Calories.)

Two liters is just over eight eight-ounce glasses, no more than many a physician would advise you to drink anyway. Make that water cold, and you burn calories watching TV. A pound every two months, on ice water. No exercise factored in; no dietary changes considered. Just add water. Cold water.

Ice gouged out vast river valleys and ice water filled the great lakes; ice sunk the Titanic and ice water killed hundreds of its passengers. Ice water for simple weight loss? What a simple twist of physics.

But wait, there's more. Many a person drinking more liquids will eat fewer solids. Even water is filling if you drink enough of it. Reduced food means reduced Calories. Take a daily multivitamin tablet to cover nutrient losses which are inevitable in any diet.

Americans consume more soft drinks than all other beverages put together (yes, that includes milk, tea, coffee, juices, sports drinks, bottled water, liquor, wine and beer). Drink water instead of pop, and you will be consuming much less sugar (and fewer Calories) or, in the case of diet pop, far less of those questionable artificial sweeteners. We'd also avoid the carbonic acid found in all carbonated beverages, and the phosphoric acid added to colas. Dentists etch teeth with phosphoric acid, and carbonic acid isn't much easier on the enamel, either.

Can we get too much water? Not easily; your body is naturally mostly water. Your blood is mostly water. Your food is mostly water. Your bowels and kidneys require water for excretion of wastes. Why, you were conceived in an aquatic environment. Too little water is associated with kidney stones, urinary tract infections, febrile illness, dehydration, and worse.

So drink yourself slim.