Drink me baby!... Dude... I mean the water.

Hello,

I am aiming to drink about a gallon of water a day. I did yesterday and felt great. Let me know what you think.. too much? just right? not enough?

Im about 5'5 5'6 & about 188lbs

Unless you have a medical impairment, there is no medical need to drink that much water.

When losing weight, water can be used to reduce constipation, to curb your appetite by drinking water prior to meals, and, if you're holding a water bottle, it will tend to reduce the need to put food in your mouth. Other than that, there is zero need to drink more water other than dictated by thirst (understanding that the elderly have a diminished capacity feel thirst).

Dr Tim Noakes, probably the pre-eminent author in the area of running physiology, released "Waterlogged" a book on water and athletics recently. The book includes all significant research conducted on water and exercise and his decades of work in this area are simple - drink when you're thirsty.

Another medical doctor, Dr. Valtin, a professor at Dartmouth and the author of a textbook on kidneys, delved into this (he hired a full time researcher to help him). In 2002 he could find no medical basis for the "8 x 8" recommendation.

The links below discuss his findings. What I like about this article is that it's balanced, researched, and the discussion appears to be unbiased. Sort of like…science. :-)


http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2002/aug/080802.html

http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/283/5/R993.full

Even snopes has debunked "8x8":

http://snopes.com/medical/myths/8glasses.asp


One of the more interesting things in Waterlogged is that until the invention of Gatorade, marathoners rarely drank water during races. They consumed sugar-rich drinks (most folks need the carbs once they get past mile 20) but, historically, marathons and other long distance runs simply didn't have people drinking much liquid during the race and folks weren't keeling over.