Water is Mother Nature’s elixir of health and beauty. Drinking plenty of water can help you get healthy, lose weight, get a better complexion and feel more energized throughout the day. Many people don’t realize how important staying hydrated is to your overall health and to your weight loss efforts. According to a survey, majority of Americans do not drink the recommended amount of daily water. This may explain why so many people have trouble reaching their weight loss goals, as a recent study revealed that drinking just 2 cups of water before meals can help dieters lose an additional 5 pounds every year and help you maintain that steady weight loss. Imagine if we actually drank as much water as our body needs?
Drinking the right amount of water every day can help boost our metabolism and reduce the urge for overeating. This is because if we are dehydrated the lack of water causes our body to confuse hunger and thirst. But what is the right amount of water? Does every person need to drink the same amount or does it vary from person to person? What does this depend on?
We’ll share with you a few tips on how to calculate how much water you need to drink in order to stay healthy and stimulate weight loss.
Find out your weight. It is important to be familiar with your weight if you want to accurately calculate how much water you need to drink on a daily basis. The amount of water you will need to drink everyday is going to be based off of how much you weigh. After all, a 200 pound man wouldn’t drink the same amount of water as a 100 pound woman, right?
Your weight divided in half. Divide your weight by 1/2
to find out how much water you should drink on a daily basis. For
instance, if you weigh 170 pounds: 1/2 = 85 ounces. This means that a
person who weighs 170 pounds should drink 85 ounces of water every day.
Activity level. Another factor that effects how much
water you should drink every day is your level of activity (how much you
exercise). This is important because when you perform physically
strenuous activities you sweat and expel water in the process, which
means you need to compensate for the amount you lost. On average, you
need to add 16 ounces of water
to your recommended amount for every 30 minutes of exercise. This means
that if you’ve worked out for an hour today you’ll need to add 32
ounces of water to your recommended daily amount.
If you’re still not sure about the calculations here’s a chart for recommended daily intake of water for a range of weights.
It may seem nearly impossible to drink more than 100 ounces a day but there are a few guidelines as to how you can achieve your goal. Drink 2 cups of water (16 ounces) before every meal. This is 48 ounces a day. Every morning when you get up and before you go to bed try to drink a glass of water. That’s another 32 ounces. Divide the rest throughout the day and you’re set. Keep track of how much water you drink by using one specific container to drink water from and calculate how much of these you’ll need to drink.
Cheers!
Sources:
Water drinking survey: http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/80400530/pdf/DBrief/7_water_intakes_0508.pdf
Water and weight loss: http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2010/august/clinical-trial-confirms-effectiveness-of-simple-appetite-control-method.html
Hunger and thirst confusion: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2849909/
Ounces of water per half hour of exercise: http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/water-for-exercise-fitness?page=2