How Much Water Should I Drink Daily?
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.
Written by Jane Harmon
