Quote:
Originally Posted by mel67
I can only vouch for myself, and water definatly increased my weight loss. It must be good, it must be a plus, because other wise, i dont think the "weight loss/health folks" would be pounding it at us to drink drink drink. I've read and been to countless weight loss sites, and one of the top mantras was 'drink water'. Whether or not cold water vs. tepid water is better, i dunno. i just know that water itself has been good to my weight loss. not to mention my hair is shinier, my facial skin cleared up, and (ahemm) constipation is not even a word in my vocabulary any more. And it seems that every "theory" we come upon, some where out there, there is another "theory" or study that debunks it. Some studies show it works, some say it doesn't, to the point ya don't know what to believe, and must rely on our own experiences. could be that just every "body" is different. it makes sense to me. really cold water cools down our insides, which in turn need to be heated back up to temp, which requires energy. anywho!! i'm sticking with the water. its good for me debunked or not, i've seen the proof in my pudding. I'm down 22 pounds, without a lick of exercise.
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I got sucked into the debate last week about whether drinking cold water killed someone and apparently offended some people. So, I present the following with some trepidation. I just want to say up front that I am not trying to offend anyone. I'm trying to present information on a topic I am knowledgable (research design and our ability to make causal claims) and welcome discussion on the topic.
That said...
As for the issue of not knowing what to believe, I think that is the experience of most of us! Some of the problems are that much of the time the research we read about isn't necessarily written by someone who knows how to interpret it, and then, if WE aren't experts in an area, it's hard for us to know how to interpret it and what the main issues are.
So I know exactly what you mean! However, I think it's unfortunate, and that some of the problems could be cleared up if we were more educated about how research works and what the limits of research are. I post the information below to help people understand some of those issues and limits.
There certainly is a lot of confusing information out there, not just about water, but about everything! One of the reasons a lot of the information is so confusing is that it is very hard to demonstrate that X causes Y.
I teach research design courses and one of the issues we discuss repeatedly is that the best way to show causation is to conduct an experiment in which you control every variable other than the one you want to study. So, if I wanted to study how water affects weight loss -- and whether drinking water causes better weight loss than not drinking water -- I would gather together a group of people and randomly assign them to conditions in which they drink different amounts of water (the random assignment is critically important, because it allows us to assume our groups are equivalent to each other, except for the amount of water they drink).
Then over time I would monitor their progress. Assuming that everyone actually drank the amount of water they were assigned to (a big problem in a lot of research with people), I could conceivably determine the size of the effect of drinking water on people's weight loss.
Studies like this are logistically difficult, as you can imagine, for a number of reasons, and while they can establish causation, sometimes the groups we study limits our conclusions. If we only studied women, can we assume the results apply to men? If we only studied people on one diet, can we assume it aplies to everyone? If all the participants are under 50, does it apply to people over 50? Etc...
We can also conduct research using animals, for whom we can better control water intake, but again, we don't know how well that research might apply to people.
However, in the absence of controlled research, it is very difficult to make the claim that drinking lots of water causes or increases weight loss.
Let's say you've lost weight while drinking lots of water. But have you also watched your diet? Which caused the loss? Or is it some interaction of the two? In other words, how do we know it's the water that causes the weight loss and not something else we're doing?
There has been a lot of interesting debate about drinking water. On the one hand, we certainly need to stay hydrated to survive, and many of our functions work best when hydrated. Certainly it seems no one advocates NOT drinking water.
On the other hand, it's unclear where this liquid needs to come from. There is a lot of water in many of the foods we eat, especially fruits and veggies, and the diuretic effects of caffeine seem to be less problematic than many claim, meaning drinking caffeinated beverages can provide some hydration. (I can provide some links if anyone is interested, but don't have time right now.)
Why do weight loss/health people advocate water so much? Maybe because in addition to hydration, it also fills us up and makes us less hungry, so maybe any liquid that did that would be helpful. Hard to say.
The conclusion I've come to is this. If you are drinking lots of water and are happy with how things are going, keep doing it. Your success may or may not be because of the water you are drinking, but you're successful, are doing nothing wrong, and that's what's important.
If you are like me and are successful without overly worrying about water per se, and are happy with how things are going, keep doing it. Your success may or may not be because of the water you're NOT drinking, but you're successful, are doing nothing wrong, and that's what's important.
If you are NOT successful at weight loss, and especially if you aren't drinking a lot of water, drinking water might help! Maybe it will help fill you up. Maybe it will do something else... you might want to explore the possibility.
Anyway, I hope this post was comprehensible, and if people did make it to the end (and didn't fall asleep from boredom or get really mad at me), then I thank you for your attention!