Water is one of the most important of the "normally neglected nutrients".
In this section we explain why water is so important; why it's so often neglected; and show you several methods to keep it from being a problem while you are dieting to lose weight.
Water is a vital nutrient often foolishly ignored by dieters.
Water is vital to health. A lack of water will have worse health effects faster than a lack of any other vital nutrient. Your body therefore manages it's water supply very carefully even though this is an unconscious process for you.
For dieters, this is especially important because your body does its management in part by stimulating hunger when it needs more water.
People often assume that only thirst is stimulated by a need for more water. But both science and experience show that this is not so.
Science shows that you generally will lose about 2% of your body's water (that's a considerable amount) before thirst develops. Dieters and others have noticed that they experience much less hunger when they deliberately drink more water or other liquids.
Most natural food does contain a great deal of water, so "hunger" can also satisfy a need for water -- and hunger can therefore be effectively used by the body as a water management method. "Thirst" probably kicks in mainly when a "low-water" situation reaches a certain "threshold" that begins to threaten more serious problems.
So dieters need to maintain their water intake and they should not rely on thirst to remind them to do it.
Success is built on details that others ignore.
As I stated in Part One, water is an essential nutrient that is so often taken for granted it’s not even mentioned. However, it is also so important that a lack of it will kill you faster than a lack of any other vital substance except oxygen. Since dieters are smarter (naturally) than most other people, we do not take it for granted.
drinking enough water daily is critical. One reason for this is that on the diet you are usually taking mineral supplements. Supplements practically eliminate the possibility of transient nutrient deficiencies.But even if you are using supplements properly to ensure you get only RDI amounts of nutrients, they can still allow an unnoticed accumulation of too much of something—unless your body can get rid of it. And that requires water. If not eliminated these excesses can cause all sorts of unpleasant and even frightening sensations.
I will give you a personal example of what I mean. One week, after I’d been doing The diet for some time and had basically stopped thinking much about it, I got into an intense working situation where I started drinking a lot of very strong coffee—which strongly suppresses thirst.
After several days, I started having continuous stomach upset and intense heartburn. These symptoms got worse and worse until I was convinced that some serious physical problem was developing. But before doing a lot of expensive medical tests, I fortunately decided to write down what I had been eating and drinking.
The problem practically jumped out at me. I’d been drinking less than half my proper amount of water for at least a week. Naturally, I immediately started pouring water down. The symptoms disappeared completely in 12 hours despite the fact that I did not stop drinking the strong coffee for several more days.
This demonstrates that the body can easily eliminate many toxic excesses and their physical symptoms if it has the means to do so. I pass this story on because it will be much easier on you if you can learn this from my experience than if you must learn it from your own. Do not neglect water!!
It is interesting to note that some water is actually created from hydrogen and oxygen by your body’s metabolism. The process of burning virtually any organic substance produces water, and the metabolic “burning” of carbohydrate, fat, or protein is no exception.
However, the amount of water you create this way is insignificant compared to your daily needs. About 13 ml of water is formed for every 100 Calories burned. This works out to about 200—300 ml per day for the average diet or about one cup of water created for each 2000 Calories burned. Obviously, this is not very significant amount compared to the amount your body requires each day.
The amount of water you will need from food and drink varies with the amount of water you lose. And this loss can vary enormously. One of the main functions of water in the body is to carry off waste materials. The kidneys can change the amount of water used for this purpose quite considerably by concentrating the urine either more or less. But there are limits to their ability to do this and the waste elimination function cannot be neglected for any length of time without producing serious problems, as I’ve described.
Under “normal” circumstances, you can expect to lose about 4% of your body weight in water daily. This is the amount that must be replaced. (Use the calculation table below for a very approximate estimate of this requirement.)
| YOUR WATER NEEDS (daily minimum) |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Your Body Weight in Pounds |
Typical amount of water lost per day (4%) | Pounds of water lost per day | Water (pounds per quart) |
Amount you will need to replace per day |
| _____ lbs |
x 0.04 |
= _____ lbs |
÷ 2.084 |
=____ qts |
A quart has 32 oz or 946 ml
Note that you do not necessarily have to drink the amount of water you calculated above. Most food has a lot of water in it and this water will take care of a lot of your real need. For non-dieters, typically about 45% of the needed replacement amount will come in the food they eat. But dieters—who are not eating much food—will usually need to drink a much higher percentage of total amount lost—another reason to pay conscious attention to the water factor.
About one half of the amount of water you lose per day is nearly unnoticeable because you lose it through your skin and in breathing. This is the amount you lose in an environment cool enough to prevent visible sweating. If you are doing heavy work in a hot or dry environment, or at high altitudes, you can lose much more—up to ten times more—just from your skin and lungs. Sweating, as you know, is the body’s way of using water to eliminate unneeded heat. About 600 Calories of heat is eliminated for every quart (liter) of perspired water.
Because the need for water is so variable depending on the above and other factors, no RDI for it has been set. However, there are some guidelines. The rule-of-thumb is that you should get approximately one to one-and-a-half milliliters of water for each Calorie (kcal) that you eat. For example, if you eat 2000 Calories per day you need to get 2000- to 3000-ml (2–3 quarts) of water per day. Up to 45% of this will probably come in the food you eat.
It is important for dieters to pay conscious attention to getting enough water. Do not depend on thirst to tell you when to drink. The thirst sensation does not typically kick in (activate) until you have lost about 1.5–2.0 quarts (or liters) of water.
This amount of water weighs 3–4 pounds (about 1.5–2 kg). You could lose it in one day (yippee!J) and gain it all back the next (gloom…L)—another good reason to distrust both the scale and all those diet plans with great-looking models that breathlessly rave about how “I lost 8 pounds in a week!!!”.
It is interesting to note that water can be toxic in huge amounts. I am not referring to drowning (although that is obviously toxic J). It is apparently possible—though extremely rare—to ingest water so fast that the kidneys can’t get rid of it fast enough. The known symptoms of this are gradual mental dulling, confusion, coma, convulsion, and death.
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