The information on this page is from online resources. Be sure to visit the website formore information. Please consult your physician before beginning any health, diet, fasting, exercise regimen. You can lose a little weight by simply drinking cold water. Your body must burn a few calories to heat the water up to body temperature. That's that many fewer calories that are available for your weight. The potential weight loss is not "a miracle," but, in a year, you could lose as much as 5 pounds by drinking cold water and making no other changes in your diet. In addition, there might be some other health benefits. For most persons, it takes between about 1420 and 3200 calories (that is "kilocalories" or thousands of regular calories) to make one pound of body weight. To lose a pound of weight, the dieter must remove that many calories from his/her intake of food. If we take the "average," you could say that cutting 2310 calories from your diet results in the lose of one pound of body weight. Now, suppose that you drank water that was 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Your body must burn a few calories to warm the water to body temperature of 98.6 degrees. To raise one pint of 50 degree water the 48.6 degrees to body temperature, about 12.25 calories are burned. That doesn't sound like much, but suppose you drink only 3 pints a day for a year; that's almost 4500 calories or 1.4 to 3.1 pounds of weight loss. If the water were colder, say ice cold, or if more water was drunk, more calories would be burned and more weight would potentially be lost. Of course, drinking cold water or substituting cold water for coffee or other warm drinks already in your diet would have other effects, some desirable, some undesirable. A large volume of water thins the blood and can actually make you "drunk." It washes water soluble nutrients (such as B vitamins) from the body. For a few persons with congestive heart disease or other conditions, serious edema or other conditions might occur. The kidneys have to work harder to remove the excess water from the body and that too must be taken into account. Someone drinking a lot of water would have to take vitamins and minerals to replace those purged from the body and would have to carefully avoid salt. Nobody should ever undertake to diet without getting a doctor's approval of the dietary changes. Drinking several pints of water a day is likely to give a person a sense of fullness and thereby somewhat reduce the desire for foods. There is also a slight "carry factor." Your body must burn a few calories just to carry the weight of the water you drink. A pint of water is said to weigh a pound, so carrying that pint inside your body is like carrying a one pound weight in your hand. Your body will burn a few calories simply to tote the weight around. Depending on activity and other factors, an adult burns between about 12 and 18 calories each day for each pound of body weight. By that standard, a 120 pound person would burn between about 1440 and 2160 calories each day. A 180 pound person would burn more fuel to keep his/her body functioning, between about 2160 and 3240 calories each day. One theory of dieting is for you to consume each day the number of calories required for your desired or "ideal" body weight and the body will slowly adjust on its own. The dieting will become progressively easier as you go along. According to that theory, if you want to weight 150 pounds and you are active enough to burn 15 calories per pound of body weight per day (about the "average"), you could consume 2250 calories a day. Over time your body would adjust to its appropriate weight of 150 pounds. For the cold water diet, the "carry factor" is not very great, but over a year it will amount to the loss of more than an additional pound. Supposing you "carry" the pound of cold water during 18 hours of the day, you'll burn about an extra 4100 calories per year. On average, that would represent about 1.9 pounds of additional weight loss. Just as the water leaches nutrients from the body which you must replace, it also leaches water soluble, but weight-producing, foods from your body such as sugars and carbohydrates, a few proteins and so forth. In addition, the added water purges waste products and toxins, including agents associated with aging, from the body. All the values and numbers that I've used in this article are approximate and written for the U.S. reader. Persons in the rest of the world may approximate equivalents as: between about 3130 to 7050 calories represent about one kilogram of body weight, one liter of water is about 2.11 pints, 50 degrees Fahrenheit is 10 degrees Celsius, so, drinking 1 liter of water at 10 degrees Celsius burns about 25.9 calories. Therefore, consumption of about 120 to 270 liters is required to burn about one kilo of body weight. Two liters per day results in a weight loss of about 3.72 kilograms in a year. See
As A Public Service
The Cold Water Diet
By: Professor Douglas Silver Porter