Can Drinking More Water Help You Lose Weight?
At Next Level Fitness in Irvine, CA, we encourage drinking more water. Not only does drinking adequate water improve your health, it can help you lose weight. 55% to 65% water, depending on your sex and age. Your heart and brain are approximately 73% water and your lungs about 83% water. You can see how important it is. Dehydration, even mild dehydration, can cause physical symptoms that range from brain fog and body aches to exhaustion. Mild dehydration can make your workout more ineffective and you’ll burn fewer calories.
Your metabolism will be slower if you’re dehydrated.
Even mild dehydration can cause your metabolism to slow. If you want to give it a boost, drink a glass of water. It boosts your metabolism by 30% for anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half, especially if it’s cold. Studies on the effect of water on metabolism show that drinking two liters of water a day—approximately 8 ½ cups—increased the metabolism of the average person who drank less water, enough to cause them to burn an additional 96 calories. In 36 days, you’d lose an extra pound with no extra effort.
Calm those cravings with water.
Our body is amazing and tells us what we need, as long as we know how to listen. Sometimes, people misread those messages. Have you been hungry for something, particularly something juicy, but even after eating tons of calories failed to satisfy that desire? Sometimes, you interpret the message the body is sending and you’re really thirsty, not hungry. Try drinking a glass of water before you grab a sandwich or other food. You might find that it was all you needed to be satisfied.
Drinking water before a meal can actually help fill you up and help you lose weight.
One study compared two groups. One drank two glasses of water before a meal and the other didn’t. Aside from that, both groups continued their normal habits, including normal eating habits. Throughout the study, the group that drank the water at less than the group that didn’t and lost 44% more weight. It was a simple solution that made a significant difference.
- If you feel the bloat and have problems with water weight, don’t quit drinking water, drink more. If you’re dehydrated, your body holds water to make sure there’s enough for vital organs. Drinking extra water provides that and flushes waste, like extra sodium from your system.
- Opt for water over soft drinks. Not only do soft drinks contain calories and chemicals, they make you thirstier. Many manufacturers bury the flavor of salt with extra sugar and the salt makes you thirstier.
- If you drink water, make it cold water. Your body burns extra calories to warm the water and every little calorie counts. It’s easy and one little trick that’s satisfying on a hot day.
- As you get older, staying hydrated becomes harder. It may be one reason older people have slower metabolisms. Dehydration in seniors can often be mistaken for senility and dementia, plus cause UTIs.
For more information, contact us today at Next Level Fitness
It’s summer and we’re just reopening. There’s a lot of things that can create a diversion in Irvine, CA, to prevent you from sticking with your workout schedule. It’s tough to stay motivated as a beginner, but you can make it easier by taking a few steps and making some changes in your life. As a beginner, you face more obstacles than you do the more seasoned you become and you haven’t yet developed the habit of healthy eating and working out. Here are some tips to help you fake it until you make it.
How do you lose weight without dieting? Eat healthier. Many healthy foods are not only delicious, they’re lower in calories. That list includes foods that make you feel full. Let’s face it, in order to lose weight you have to eat fewer calories. That doesn’t mean you have to eat less, just eat smarter. Mix a half cup of Greek yogurt with a half cup or more of berries and toss in a few walnuts for a filling, delicious sweet treat that’s healthier and fewer calories than a candy bar, but will help you stay full longer. Now that’s smart eating.
Are eggs bad for you? The easy answer is no. Twenty years ago, people with cholesterol were told to stay away from eggs, today, nutritionists and doctors look at eggs a bit differently. If the other foods in your diet are low in cholesterol, eggs are a good source of protein for most people. Should you eat them with bacon, ham or breakfast steak every day and expect to get a rousing round of applause from your doctor or great blood profiles? Absolutely not. You need some cholesterol in your diet, but you can also get too much of a good thing.
Some foods we list on healthy meal plans at Next Level Fitness in Irvine, CA, contain trans fat. Don’t let that scare you. There are two types of trans fat, and they react in your body quite differently. One is naturally occurring trans fat created by bacteria in the stomach of ruminants like sheep, cows and goats. It may have heart healthy benefits. The bad type of trans fat was initially created in a lab to extend the shelf life of oil. This hydrogenated fat was a cheaper alternative to fats like butter and it was used in many products. Artificially created trans fats have a negative effect on health and cholesterol profile.
Eating a small bowl or a few spoonfuls of ice cream won’t hurt you. However, eating a gallon a day can really pack on the pounds. That’s a bit of an exaggeration to show how much portion size can affect your weight loss program. With most healthy eating programs, vegetables like celery and fresh fruit portion isn’t a problem. They’re packed with fiber, so it’s difficult to eat many calories, since they fill you up without adding a ton of carbs or calories. Nuts, sweet potatoes avocados and olive oil may be healthy, but here, their high caloric nature means you have to pay closer attention.
Every day, there’s something new that is supposed to be a healthy option. One of the latest is to add collagen to coffee. Why? The answer is simple. Collagen is healthy and important for every part of the body. As you get older, you produce less collagen. While collagen is important for connective tissues, joints and ligaments, will extra collagen reduce wrinkling, joint pain and the signs of aging? Those are just a few of the reasons for the latest fad of adding collagen to coffee.
Maybe you love your job that involves hours of research on the computer, but you need even more. You need to sweat! Sweating can occur if you have a fever that’s breaking, with the sweat flushing out bacteria as it cools the body. It can happen when you’re simply too warm. However, the best type of sweat occurs when you workout. Clients at Next Level Fitness in Irvine, CA understand that and love the benefits they receive from breaking a sweat in the gym. It’s actually not about sweating, but upping the intensity, which makes you sweat that provides the benefits.
No matter what activity you’re doing, your core muscles are involved in some way. Even sitting involves core muscles. They’re the muscles of your torso that start right below the pecs and continue right beneath the abs, which includes the muscles in your back. Strong core muscles affect how all the other muscles function, which includes how you walk. When they’re strong, core muscles provide stability and improves balance. The stronger your core muscles are, the stronger and more powerful you’ll be.
If you’ve tried finding healthy snacks and settled on the ease of small bags of trail mix, make sure it’s the right type. That’s extremely important if you want a healthy snack that will benefit your body, help you lose weight and keep you fill you up, not out. Commercial trail mix isn’t necessarily the healthiest of snacks, particularly if you choose one that has M&Ms or other types of candy as the primary ingredient. So which type of trail mix should you choose?