High and Dry
They tell me I should be drinking more water.
Who? Everyone. My doctor, health experts, every diet guru from the "go vegetarian" folks to the "screw vegetables" Atkins crowd. They're all agreed -- if you want to lose weight and improve your health, drink eight glasses of water a day.
Eight 8 oz. glasses of water a day is 64 ounces total -- about 1.9 liters.
It sounds like a lot, but actually it's just a little more than three 20 ounce bottles of water over the course of twelve hours. I can (and have) put away that many Cokes, no problem. Of course that would net me nearly 60 milligrams of caffeine (yeah!) and 776 calories (boo!). That's like two meals worth of sugar.
Water, by contrast, gives me no caffeine and no calories -- but it also makes me run to the bathroom every twenty minutes.
No, really.
I keep telling myself I'm flushing out toxins, that my body is getting more water so it doesn't feel the need to retain water the way it would when I'm dehydrated -- but it's still kind of freaking me out how often I have to go.
A fellow reporter who used to be in the Army (we have a couple of those), said her drill instructor had them drinking gallons of water a day.
"You will learn to hold [it]," he told them.
I guess I will too.
Studies have shown that drinking water can raise your metabolic rate -- or the rate at which you burn calories -- by 30%. When you're trying to reform a body laid waste by Twinkies and Ho-Hos and have challenged yourself to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks, you've got to listen to those numbers.
The problem: like most Americans, I'd rather drink just about anything. Soda and beer, especially. I don't hate the way water tastes -- it just doesn't taste like anything, especially.
Which is, really, just more of my whining because I'm thinking of food and drink as sources of pleasure and not nutrition. If I consume it, it had better be delicious. You can have both -- but occasionally you just have to man up and drink that next bottle of water because it's good for you.
Comments (3)
To report abuse of the comment feature on this site, please use the feedback form at the bottom of any page.
Drinking enough water has always been the hardest part for me. Besides my sweetness addiction, drinking that much of anything makes me feel like I've got a water balloon in my stomach, sloshing around threatening to pop. I'm told this goes away — I've never made it long enough to find out.
Posted on February 8, 2008 9:57 AM
Drinking plenty of water was the best study tip I learned in college. The constant trips to the bathroom meant that you could never really fall asleep while studying. And it was better for me than downing a gallon of coffee.
Posted on February 8, 2008 10:30 AM
I'm told that once you're drinking a lot of water for a while, your body regulates itself and you don't have to run to the bathroom every few minutes.
I'm looking forward to that.
Posted on February 8, 2008 6:48 PM