Drinking water to lose weight may be a foreign concept to some. For others, you may have been told this before but you aren’t sure exactly how drinking water helps with weight loss. Let’s clear that up.

How does drinking water help us lose weight?

First and foremost, it increases our satiety (this is the feeling of being “full”) for about 30 minutes. If your brain is telling you to eat and you don’t think that you are physically hungry, try drinking a glass of water and “recheck-in” with your body. Doing this will help you learn the difference between your brain wanting food for dopamine or comfort, and your physiological hunger signals.

Drinking water also aids in digestion and improves constipation by keeping our bowels regular by stabilizing our gut flora which removes toxins and decreases inflammation.

Other benefits of drinking water include:

• Improves circulation, increasing oxygen flow to our brain and organs
• Improves the immune system, meaning we get sick less often and recover faster
• Regulates body temperature
• Decreases frequency and severity of UTIs and kidney stones
• Hydration before exercise improves workout performance
• Hydration after exercise helps to reduce soreness by flushing lactic acid, cushioning the joints and stabilizing electrolytes
  Improves sleep quality

How much water should you drink per day to lose weight?

Well, it depends on your health, your weight, and your activity level. There are some medical conditions that affect the heart, liver, and kidneys where physicians will advise someone to restrict their water intake.

Although generally, we recommend that healthy people take in about 8 cups per day. This is 64oz or about 2 liters of water.

Keep in mind, if you are exercising or sweating you will need more throughout the day.

If that is the case, take breaks and listen to your thirst.

Another way to guide your hydration is through your urine. Your urine should be clear or a light-yellow color. If it is dark, you are behind on fluids and dehydrated.

Dehydration can lead to weakness, fatigue, low blood pressure, confusion and dizziness and it can happen quickly.

Flavor Tip: You can make your water intake more enjoyable by infusing it with fruits such as cucumbers, lemons, or oranges!

30 Day Water Intake Challenge

I challenge you to track your water for 30 days and see if there is a difference in the way you feel.

1. Keep a sleep journal
2. Document how much you eat and how often
3. Use a water bottle with measurements on it so that you know how much water you are actually drinking throughout the day. I have one that has 1400mL or 48oz – so I drink one full one in the office and then 1/3rd of one when I get home and I know I’ve met my requirements.
4. You can even take a picture of yourself on the first day of the challenge, then again on the last day. A lot of people notice changes in the clarity of their skin and a reduction in abdominal bloating.

And of course, come back and leave a comment with your results! I hope this helps you on your weight loss journey. As always, stay safe, stay healthy.

Dr. Kristine LaRocca

Disclaimer: Although I am a medical doctor, I am not YOUR doctor. So the things I teach are not to be used as medical advice. You should consult your physician to discuss what is best for you personally.

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If you’ve ever tried to lose weight, you already know that sugar is fattening. While it’s true that this is a huge area where many of us can make a change in our weight, it’s important to understand the effects that sugar has on the body and how to spot hidden sugars in our food.

Before we get into that, it’s important to be familiar with glucose and insulin and how they work together within our bodies.

Glucose is your blood sugar. Glucose is important because it’s used by most cells in our bodies to produce energy, including our muscles. It’s extremely important because it is the main source of energy for the brain, and is the only source of energy for red blood cells. (This is why people diagnosed with diabetes are so strict about monitoring their blood sugar.)

Insulin is like the gatekeeper to the cells and allows the glucose inside the cells to be used for fuel. It basically allows the glucose to go where is needed to run our bodies efficiently.

When we consume more glucose than our bodies need at any given time, it is stored for later use. When we go through periods of fasting these stores are what our body uses for energy.

But what happens if we don’t fast and snack through the day?

When we have enough stored, our bodies take the excess and store it as fat!

Good sugar vs Bad Sugar: Knowing the difference.

There are over 60 different names for sugar listed on food labels. The common names are sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup, barley malt, dextrose, maltose, and rice syrup. Let’s discuss some of these and the effects they have on our bodies.

FRUCTOSE: You may have heard of fructose (not to be confused with high fructose corn syrup). It’s the natural sugar found in fruit. It’s stored in the liver only and doesn’t circulate in the blood. Typically consumed when eating a whole piece of fruit, the serving is moderate and does not have negative health effects.

HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP: This is essentially a super concentrated dose of fructose. It’s used to sweeten a lot of obviously bad foods, like popsicles, soda, and candy, but it’s also snuck into foods we may think are good for us, like sweetened yogurt or canned fruits. What makes this type of sugar dangerous is that, like fructose, it is stored in the liver only, which only becomes problematic when we consume too much.

Once our liver is full of fructose storage, it starts to create fat and store that in the liver too, creating what’s called “fatty liver”, which can lead to severe health consequences such as liver scarring leading to fibrosis. It is also the cause of insulin resistance which causes diabetes.

SUCROSE: Commonly known as table sugar. When sucrose is digested it breaks down into fructose and glucose, which go their own separate ways in your body. Fructose heads off to the liver, while glucose stays in the blood. This process causes a spike in blood sugar, which then causes a spike in insulin.

It is a vicious cycle.

Too much concentrated fructose causes our liver to get over packed and start to spill out the excess fat and the sugar.

Excess fat and sugar cause our insulin to spike up to get it back in the liver.

Insulin spikes cause our cells to become resistant to using insulin.

When our cells become resistant the sugar stays in the blood.

What can you do?

Well, you’ve already started to take action, simply by reading this. Increasing your knowledge and awareness of the ingredients of the foods you are eating is the first critical step. Read labels. You will be surprised.

Tip: When looking at the ingredients, the list is in order by how much of each ingredient is in the food product. If sugar or high-fructose corn syrup is close to the top then that food product is mostly made up of sugar.

Eat whole foods as often as possible. By whole foods I mean, real foods, from nature. Fruits, vegetables, proteins, and carbohydrates in their natural state.

Tip: If it was made in a factory, it’s not a whole food. Be weary of canned and boxed items, check the labels to make sure they haven’t added any surprise ingredients. If you can’t buy the fresh stuff, frozen is the next best thing.

Where is sugar hiding?

You already know the obvious.

• Sugar is in desserts, pastries and ice cream, but it’s also in our drinks.
• Take a look at the juices, sodas, sport drinks…even the DIET drinks.
• We’re having sugar for breakfast in our breakfast bars, cereals and yogurts.
• High-fructose corn syrup is in tons of processed foods including pizza dough, pizza sauce, soups, breads, pastries, cookies, ketchup (crazy right?!), and tons of other sauces and packaged products

When teaching patients or clients about nutrition I often hear “I don’t eat fruits because they have too much sugar.”

I’m always blown away, because many times these same people are eating a sugary cereal for breakfast that is marketed to be “Heart Healthy” with a fruit juice that is marketed to be “100% juice.”

This is not your fault. It’s been taught to us this way for years.

The job of these companies is not to get you HEALTHY.
Their job is to MAKE MONEY.

You got this. Pay attention. Together we can outsmart the food industry and take back our health.

So, if you haven’t yet – sign up for emails and get the free weight loss workbook, where you’ll find more information about healthy eating.

Also, subscribe to my podcast, where I discuss all things health and wellness.

Have questions? Let me know and I will answer them in future blogs.

Stay healthy, 
Dr. LaRocca

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