>Drinking water appears to stimulate thermogenesis, or heat production, in the body, particularly when it's chilled. The body has to expend energy to warm the fluid to body temperature, and the more energy expended by your body, the faster your metabolism

We did the math on the "ice cube diet" in high school physics; the energy required to melt the ice was only a few calories. Not the Kilocalories listed on food labels- actual calories 1/1000th of that unit.

If there's an effect here, it's not from heating the water.

How to lose weight, by me, someone who has lost 30 pounds and kept it off:

Step 1: Count every calorie you consume. If you don't know the exact amount of a dish, do your best. Apps like MyFitnessPal make this easier.

Step 2: Limit that amount to 1500 calories per day.

Step 3: Weigh yourself everyday first thing in the morning, and only look at rolling 7 day averages at least. Daily fluctuations don't matter.

Step 4: After 2 weeks, see how much you've lost (if any). If you've lost more than 1% of your body weight per week, raise that 1500 number. If you've lost less than 1% per week, lower that 1500 number.

Repeat until satisfied!

How can you make this easier?

1. Eat things that are filling with fewer calories. Think vegetables and protein. Stay away from things that aren't filling and have a lot of calories. Think candy bars. Water helps too, as the article says.

2. Walk/run. This will burn calories efficiently and if you attach a fit bit to it, you can incorporate the calories burned into your 1500 number above. Weight lifting doesn't burn many calories, though it's nice for your overall health of course.

This overall strategy lets you drink a beer if you want, or have that piece of cake. Just count every calorie and you're good to go. Even if you don't hit the number every day, log it anyway as a habit.

- Oh wise man, I don't want to get pregnant. What do I do?

- You should drink water.

- Before or after?

- Instead.

Same goes for weight loss I presume. If you can fill your belly with water, you can delay your next meal more easily.

Take any reason to drink more water. Drinking more water is one of the best changes I've made for my health. Now I can feel the difference when I don't drink enough: headaches, tiredness, perceived hunger, etc. Most of us live in a place where drinking water is essentially free and infinite, and it's so important to take advantage of that.

I’ve found that pseudo-dehydration leads to irritability in myself and family members. I can detect this with a few signals:

- lips are chapped

- skin feels especially warm to the touch

- moreso if skin is reddish or clammy

- droopy, tired eyes

- sticky tongue, “clicky” speech

- persistent sniffing, a dry nose

- difficult defecation

It’s amazing how quickly a large amount of water will make these conditions go away and boost mood and energy. If I find myself thinking particularly grouchy thoughts I feel my forehead, and if feels warm relative to my hand I know I need to hydrate. I try to go and get a big glass of water, drink it, then refill it and go back to my desk. Too many times I’ve got up and gotten water only to come back to my station with an already empty cup.

Yep! I have some evidence to back it up though there were perhaps more important mitigating factors.

I used to never drink water. After having some health issues for about a week, I swore off sugary sodas (except for a few a week when eating out). I also started walking 4 miles every other day. I now drink about 50% diet soda and 50% water.

I've lost 35 pounds in 3 months.

I don't snore anymore, I don't get constant heartburn anymore, my skin in clear and I no longer take naps every afternoon. I think the water has enabled me to reduce my meals to one, maybe two a day, instead of 3, and I am never that hungry.

Pretty interesting that this ended up on HN given that it's content marketing for Weight Watchers. I'd bookmarked this to read because of the .edu, thinking there might be good studies. But it turns out it's a placed article by WW. Not quite sure who paid who. But it's definitely not JHU research like I thought from the URL.

If you want to stave off hunger or eat less, drink a glass of water before each meal. The water will make a lot of what you eat expand in your stomach on top of starting with a partially full stomach.

The major click bait of the title is that water causes weight loss. It in fact does not. It just helps curb your appetite in ways that cause a caloric deficit.

totally agree with the article

in addition I've found my body abilty to handle dehydration drops with age, this is magnified with the day after drinking alcohol - drink water

for me, I go for a minimum of about 1 litre/ 1.75 uk pints/ 2 US pints first thing in the morning, then the same again around 2pm and then about a litre in the evening (soda based)

I can only do this if the water is at room temperature (I'm UK based so not hot here)

something the article does not say is that food has a lot of water in it as well - think soup or eating tomatoes etc.. also adds massively to your daily in take

(2020)

This is borderline silly. Drinking water may help you lose weight because then you're not drinking soda? Sure, but that take is just absurd — most people don't spend their days going around drinking only soda. There are many things in this article that are correct, such as the brain mistaking thirst for hunger, but they're all wrapped in too much sensationalism.

Losing weight is just consuming fewer calories than you burn.

Any diet advice or strategies are just ways to achieve that. Keto, low carb, intermittent fasting, whatever. It's all just getting you to consume fewer calories than you burn. Often it gets you to feel full with fewer calories so you don't overeat. It's easy to see how drinking more water falls into all of this.

However, anything claiming to switch around body chemistry or change your metabolism is either wrong or micro optimizing.

Edit: People are getting very hyped up about my comment. To be clear:

- I'm not hating on the article. I said in my post that it's easy to see how drinking water helps when you understand what causes weight changes.

- I'm not hating on Keto and Intermittent fasting or whatever. They work, and they largely work because you end up consuming fewer calories than you burn. It's not largely because of some change in your body's chemistry.

- It's harder to lose weight eating shittier food because it often doesn't make you full, causing you to eat more. Eating 1200 calories of chocolate bars a day will (often for most people) make you lose weight, it just won't feel very good doing it. That's why what you eat is just as important as how many calories you consume.

meh, this is the kind of statement that sounds meaningful but isn't really useful at all. It's like saying "The only way to make money is to have more income than you spend." Like great, but mostly worthless advice, the really important advice IS the details (e.g. different investments, getting promoted, etc) or in the dieting case it's details like like drinking calories, many different medications cause weight gain, hormonal levels, etc.

A lot of social circles live flat out in denial of the simple truth of weight loss and perpetuate the idea that it's not this simple, but it really is.

Genetics and medication might affect your appetite, metabolism, water retention levels, fat storage areas, ect., but at the end of the day one only needs to know one number and follow one rule to lose fat:

Number: Daily caloric expenditure

Rule: Consume items with fewer total calories than the above number

Measure weekly for best results.

Daily caloric expenditure can be approximated with heart rate data over a day and your height & weight.

The exact weight lost if it's only fat will be 1lb per 3500 kcal deficit.

You must consume 2g of protein daily per lb of muscle (approximating this requires calipers) to not lose muscle mass.

Water weight will vary, but over a week the number ought to go down if you're eating at an actual deficit.

You'll see the results in the mirror after a month if you actually do the above.

> Losing weight is just consuming fewer calories than you burn.

Of course. And your body is a dynamic system that changes how and where it uses and stores energy based on the source of the energy. Your body responds differently to 100 calories of table sugar compared to 100 calories of nuts.

I _lost_ weight by increasing the amount of food I was eating. Obviously this means that I had to start burning or otherwise shedding more calories otherwise we broke physics. It is important to note that "losing weight is just consuming fewer calories than you burn" is not the same as "eat less and you'll lose weight" since eating less can cause your dynamic system to require less calories.

> Losing weight is just consuming fewer calories than you burn.

A lot of people consumed more calories in their 20s and 30s than later in life. Yet in their 40s and 50s they gain weight, with the same sedentary lifestyle or even after taking up a sport.

Something is missing in your equation ...

Losing weight has as much to do with controlling hormones associated with fat storage.

important to note that amount of calories you burn is heavily affected by chosen diet. as you start consuming less, your body responds by lowering temperature, reducing your willingness to move and think, etc, all of which reduce calorie burn, so you may think you're in deficit when you're not.

This is not entirely correct. Foods are not processed in the same way by the body. Imagine eating a diet of 2000 calories of chocolate bars and chips vs 2000 calories of steak. Do you really think these would have the same effect in terms of health or even weight loss?

Drinking water makes you fill fuller which in turn reduces your calorie intake. Tfa states this.

it’s not that simple. your diet can affect how many calories your body burns. in my case i dropped to eating ~800 calorie diets and i actually lost weight slower (presumably because my body went energy conservation mode?)

You're getting downvoted but the basic premise is correct. Eat less, lose weight. The problem is that most people do not have the mental/physical fortitude to follow-through with it, and I don't blame them because it is hard to change your lifestyle. Most of these weight loss programs, if they aren't outright scams, are just essentially giving people a framework for their weight loss journey because forming a habit for lifestyle change is the most important thing to staving off weight gain in the long term.