How Much Water Should I Drink Daily?
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Conventional wisdom has held for years that you should drink eight 8 ounce glasses of water daily. Especially if you are trying to lose weight, it is said, drinking the optimum amount of water daily curbs your appetite and helps your system shed the fat. If you are active in sports, or live in a hot climate, you should add more water to your daily drinking quota.
But is the eight 8 ounce glasses of water quota correct? Some say that you consume plenty of water daily in your watery foods, such as soups and beverages, that you can offset against the amount of water you need to drink daily. Others say that the body processes watery foods differently and it is not as accessible a form of hydration as pure water.
Beverages containing caffeine should not be considered part of your daily water, since caffeine is a diuretic and will actually flush fluids from your system, but do they flush as much as the drink itself contains? There's no clear answer to that.
The latest new conventional wisdom from the field of sports medicine holds that you should drink daily half your body weight in ounces of water. That is, if you weight 120 pounds, you should drink 60 ounces of water every day, or seven and a half cups. If you weight 180 pounds, you should drink 90 ounces of water daily, or eleven cups and another few sips.
Some people who suffer from water retention, also known as bloating, are reluctant to drink extra water, on the assumption that it will make the bloating worse. This is not true; in fact, retaining water is often a sign that you are not getting enough water, causing the body to hoard what little water it has. Counter-intuitively, if you suffer from periodic ankle swellings or days when you can't fit into your "fat pants," drinking more water will actually help you shed the excess fluids in your tissues.
If you are trying to lose weight, add more water to your regimen. Burning fat creates waste products that must be flushed from the body, and the more fat you lose, the more wastes are left behind. Additional daily water will help move these toxins out of your system.
Surprisingly, it is possible to "overdose" on water. Too much water throws your electrolytes out of balance and can cause all kinds of nasty symptoms, but you have to drink far more than most people would consider for this to be a concern.
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New: Discuss this ArticlePosted by: anon11992
i drink about 7-9 32oz bottles of water a day. no coffee & no pop. and i exercise 1/2hr every day. am i drinking too much water? i love water. but im told that its not going to help me lose weight if i drink so much.
sara Posted by: motherteresa
So now after all these years of being told that we should drink 8 glasses of water every day, the studies are coming out that that is not necessarily so. It seems that there is no evidence that drinking all that water is of any benefit. Supposedly, we need 1.5 quarts of water a day and we get that by drinking but also through the food we eat.
In hot weather or when exercising strenuously, our bodies need more liquid, but for most people 8 glasses is too much to take in one day, every day, but they force themselves to drink it all thinking it's good for them. So again moderation prevails. Drinking water, or in my case green tea, is what we should continue doing. For good health, we do not need necessarily 8 glasses a day anymore. Posted by: olittlewood
how much water is too much? i know a lady who is a body builder, and she drinks one to two gallons of water per day. i know you should be well hydrated, but this seems like overkill.
Posted by: manymeese
If you have a bad heart and have just finished exercise or are out doing yard work like my late husband was, drinking cold water can kill you. Your heart is already overworking and when it has to process the cold water it can't... you will overwork it. Drinking room temperature water is so much better.
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