Photo by brraveheart.

In the last couple weeks I’ve switched from drinking several diet soft drinks a day to water.

I’ve wanted to do this a while because of all the scary sounding ingredients in diet drinks and because the mere taste of something sweet may spike insulin levels slowing fat loss and interrupting satiety.

But I found two reasons that are new to me on the web that I wanted to share. They are not silver bullets for weight loss — nothing to get too excited about. But they are interesting little hacks that pushed me over the edge to drinking much more H20.

1. Ample water indirectly ensures the liver can concentrate on breaking down fat for energy
2. It takes 1 calorie of energy to heat 1 ounce of 40 degree water to body temperature

1. The liver and kidney: Best friends forever

The liver plays a role in the conversion of fat into energy. The kidney’s main function is to maintain a balance of many bodily fluids. Staying hydrated enables your kidneys to function properly. If they are not working optimally, the liver will take on some of the kidney’s job, which reduces the liver’s ability to metabolize fat stores for energy. I’ve found some information that seems more speculative than anything that also points to diet drinks being harder for the kidneys than water. This makes sense to me with all of the mysterious ingredients on the label. The kidneys then have to possibly offset some of that work to the liver, therefore cutting down on fat conversion to glucose if you are drinking 6-8 Diet Pepsis a day like I was.

2. Cold water is hard to heat up

An often quoted statistic is that it takes 123 calories to warm a gallon of cold water to body temperature. This can be confirmed by looking at the definition of a calorie: “the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 °C.” The body must use energy to warm itself therefore by drinking a lot of cold water you can use a little more energy a day. If you drink a gallon (16 cups) of water a day for a month that equates to 3690 calories which is a little over a pound (of fat).

I think these two reasons are interesting as most “drink more water” claims are, to me, subjective. I’ve been drinking a lot more water recently. I’ve had a few issues. The first few days were rough as my bladder got used to it. I often don’t get ice cold water at work, it’s probably only 50 degrees F. And the drastic drop in the amount of caffeine was hard at first but I’ve been sleeping a lot better as a result.