Water and Cold Weather are Free Fat Burners!

 Cold water, cold weather, cold showers, and cold plunge’s effect on the metabolism is intriguing to me. Very likely the reason we do not hear more about this, and other benefits is it is not easily duplicated in a resell-able form. 

 Foods we consume are measured by calories and when we eat extra calories beyond the fuel we need for energy, our body will simply store these for later use in our fat cells. Calories are simply units of heat/energy and are relied on for energy in our body whether it’s for our daily activities, digestion, or temperature control. There are certain things that have a thermogenic effect in our body that will cause the body to release this stored energy (body fat) as usable heat/energy.

 Water has ZERO calories, but the body must expend units of heat (calories) to warm up this water, which can lead to a thermogenic (fat releasing) effect on our fat cells causing them to release energy.

 A large portion of our required daily calories are used for controlling temperature, whether it’s to cool us, or to heat us and our body will work hard to keep our thermostat ay 98.6 degrees. 

 Example: according to the American Council on exercise, you can burn up to 400 calories an hour from shivering. The way I would interpret this is, if there are not enough calories from food in the digestive system, this shivering is causing a thermogenic (fat burning) process, causing a release of energy from our fat cells for heating purposes. 

 A similar process happens for the sweating process when the body is pumping water through our cooling system, and this is what keeps us from overheating. Our body when given enough water during times of heat, is really good at pushing this heat out and it burns lots of calories keeping our temperature where it’s supposed to be!  

 Each pound of fat holds approximately 3,500 calories, and when these units of energy are released whether for heating the body, cooling the body or for daily activities and exercise, it works like the energy we get from food except is has the slenderizing effect many of us our looking for.

 A study that was published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism showed that drinking about 2 cups of water increases metabolism by 24 %. That sounds like a lot to me, and I don’t know exactly how the groundwork was laid to arrive at this percentage, but when you figure that every single action and reaction in the body is reliant on hydration, this could be a very reasonable increase.

Water has been shown to increase the metabolism even when water was 98.6 (normal body temperature), however, if you want to increase the thermogenic (fat burning) effect it has on the body, drink it cold. Your body must burn calories (units of heat) to get cold water’s temperature up to body temperature at 98.6 degrees, so the colder the water, the more calories (units of heat) our body must burn to get it to body temperature.

 If we know how good clean water tastes to the trillions of cells in our body, it should make a difference in us enjoying it plain without additives and sugar!