When it comes to fat loss, most people under estimate the power of drinking water. Not only is your body made up of mostly water but it needs water for the most basic of tasks.
One of the major benefits of water for fat loss, is that it helps to regulate fluid expenditure and bowel movements. The more water you drink, the more your body needs to maintain homeostasis and balance, so you will pee a lot more. That is why powerlifters and body builders use water manipulation to help shed unwanted pounds as they cut close to competition. On top of helping keep you from getting constipated and bloated, it also helps kidney function, it keeps the urinary tract clear of unwanted waste (trust me, UTI are no f***ing joke), and will help prevent kidney stones.
Another major benefit of drinking water for fat loss is that it helps suppress your appetite. When working with clients on their fat loss journey, we will inevitably run in to people who over eat or snack. During a caloric deficit this will happen for two reasons:
- they are bored
- they are thirsty
By asking them to notice their hunger pangs and water intake, you can manipulate your body in to not feeling hungry due to the amount of water in their belly. Try this: when you get hungry or think you are hungry, drink 12-16 oz of water, wait 10 minutes and see how your body feels. If you are still hungry, repeat. If after the second bout of water you are still hungry, then eat.
Last but not least, drinking a good amount of water will help increase how much you move your body during the day. See with more water intake, you will need to pee more (see above). Because you will need to pee more, you will need to walk to the bathroom more. If you work in an office setting, this could add up to hundreds, if not thousands of more steps per day depending on how far you desk is from the bathroom or if you have to walk up stairs. As a benefit to this, it gets you up out of your chair and moving around so you don’t get caught in “desk posture”.
The flip side of drinking a lot of water is you will flush your system of essential electrolytes. If you are a sweater when you train or you drink a really high amount of water, you are going to want to replace those electrolytes. While drinks like Gatorade have been around forever and new products like Liquid IV seem popular, they are both heavily concentrated and loaded with sugar (Liquid IV first ingredient is cane sugar). The best product I’ve ever tried for replacing sodium, magnesium and potassium is LMNT. It is a perfect balance of all three essential electrolytes in 4 tasty flavors. My personal favorite is watermelon. Head over to drinklmnt.com/tabletalk for a free flavor pack with a purchase of any flavor.
*the link is not an affiliate link and I receive no financial compensation from LMNT.