Why your lack of hydration is killing your fat loss and why calories in/calories out is only a very flawed guideline at best

[BackInTheGame78]

Two things.

First, if you are not properly hydrated, you are killing your body's ability to burn fat, killing your metabolism and preventing thermogenesis that could be occurring. You are also killing your workouts.

Let's dive into this.

Being properly hydrated is important for many reasons. Lack of hydration impares your body's ability to burn fat as water is required for this to take place. It's also been shown that even being slightly dehydrated can slow your metabolic rate throughout the day so you actually burn less calories when lacking water. This means you cannot accurately determine caloric needs for your body as they are going be lower and sometimes significantly lower than they should be if you were properly hydrated.

Think of your metabolism as a machine and water as the fuel. Water helps deliver nutrients to cells, removes metabolic waste and helps with many other metabolic functions. Not being properly hydrated basically is like running on fumes for these processes and they slow down. Virtually every body process needs water to function properly.

In fact, studies have shown there was a significant increase in the rate of calories burned for people who drank 10-12 glasses of water per day versus those drank 4-6 glasses. They have also shown that simply drinking 500 ml(for us Imperial system users, a little over 2 cups) of water at once causes a significant boost to metabolic rate for at least and hour afterwards of up to 24%.

This is a very important thing to note. Water BY ITSELF can drastically increase thermogenesis in your body. This means with no other changes, being properly hydrated and drinking a half liter of water at once a few times a day can have significant effects on the number of calories your body burns throughout the day.

Now let's talk about hydration and your workouts. Muscle cells are volumized by water. A volumized muscle cell is a strong muscle cell. Think of an inflated ball. Which is stronger and hurts more if you get hit with it? Obviously an inflated one. Working out without proper hydration can decrease your strength by up to 20% due to muscle cells not being properly volumized. This is why keto diets kill your strength. It's called carboHYDRATE for a reason. 1 gram of carbs combines with 3-4 grams of water to create glycogen. Your body needs BOTH for your muscles to be properly inflated. Keto diets are effectively forcing your body to workout with a flat tire.

Wonder why you aren't losing weight? If you aren't hydrating yourself properly, this is the first thing to fix and likely will have a much larger effect than you might think.

Does Dehydration affect one's Metabolism? | Ultrahuman

Water makes up over half of your body weight 50 to 60 percent in women and 60 to 65 percent in men. Since water is involved in almost every biological function in the body, it is no surprise that consuming sufficient amounts of water is the first step in ensuring that your metabolism works at an...

ultrahuman.com

Up next...why calories in/calories out is a guideline at best and complete bullshi!t at worst.

 

[BackInTheGame78]

So you hear calories in/calories out touted as a law handed down by God himself from fitness people, dieticians, mainstream media, etc...People are lining up to burn me at the stake for questioning this. And they are an angry mob indeed...

I'm here to tell you it's only a guideline at best and complete bullsh!t at worst.

Why? Well for a few reasons.

First, let's look at what a calorie is. It's a unit of measurement that measures how much energy it provides your body if you eat it. OK, fair enough. Seems simple right? But it's not.

What if I told you that if you ate a few sticks of celery raw they would give you 6 calories but if you ate the same celery in a stew it would give you 45 calories?

But you'll ask BITG, how can that be?!? It's the same food! Yes...it is, but the process of cooking breaks down some of the indigestible fiber raw celery contains and makes it digestible for the body. This happens with a LOT of foods...the process of cooking is similar to pre-digesting...it causes some nutrients to become available that are not available while raw. This is almost NEVER accounted for when tracking calories. This is the first thing that causes calorie counting to be inaccurate at best.

Now, let's get to the part where we talk about the body processing the food and indigestible material. Neither of these is properly included in calorie counts. For instance, a gram of protein counts as 4 calories. But simply to use it, the body requires 25% of this to actually process it for use. So effectively a gram of protein only counts as 3 calories per gram. A person eating 200 grams of protein per day is counting 800 calories but actually only getting 600. Same with broccoli. It has negative calories(at least when eaten raw) as the body requires more calories to digest it than it actually contains. This is not accurately portrayed either. Numerous other foods have this type of effect also. Mainly raw vegetables.

Then we get to fiber. Fiber is counted as a carb. But really what you should be given is something called net carbs, which means total carbs-fiber since fiber cannot be digested by the body(most kinds) and passes through. So 150g of carbs with 50g of fiber is really only 100g of net carbs. This means if you are tracking calories you will count 4g per carb for a total of 600 but only actually take in and use 400 calories.

Unless the food is cooked and then some of that fiber becomes digestible and then it depends on how cooked it is and what type of food to determine how many calories in the form of carbs get added back in. Are we starting to see how this whole calorie thing is starting to fall like a house of cards?

But...but...BITG...this HAS to have some value! It does...it acts as a very loose guideline and nothing more.

Now let's get to the next part...thermogenesis. The RATE at which your body burns calories. As noted above, simply being hydrated versus not can create a SIGNIFICANT difference in how many calories your body is burning daily. What you eat/drink can cause a SIGNIFICANT difference in thermogenesis. Certain foods increase your metabolic rate. Spices are a huge one...capsaicin(hot peppers), garlic, ginger, etc... protein as mentioned above. Beans. Coffee due to caffeine content. Dark chocolate due to the theobromine it contains.

This can cause a much different reaction to what you eat and how many calories you burn, which isn't directed related to calorie counts but it goes hand in hand. If you are increasing your caloric burn rate, you effectively are creating an increase in the amount of calories you can consume on a daily basis.

This hasn't even begun to talk about how the FDA has said that product labels can be off by up to 20%! So what you are tracking by those labels can be off a LOT. And this is known and they don't care.

On top of this, calorie counts can be different depending on what species of plant/fruit/vegetable you eat, the kind of bacteria in your gut that determines your ability to obtain nutrients and break down these foods, and numerous other factors talked about in the article linked below.

If you combine all of these together, your "calorie" count can EASILY be off by 500 per day and over 1000 if you do a lot of these things properly in terms of eating high fiber, high protein foods, stay optimally hydrated and consume caffeine and other thermogenesis boosting foods/spices regularly.

This is why calories in/calories out is in many ways complete bullsh!t and why people who are strict components of this don't really understand what they are talking about. There are FAR more important things to losing weight than calorie counts of food.

However, if you are looking at processed junk and refined sugars, those calorie counts are pretty accurate...it has little to no nutritional value and there aren't really any deductions to take there. Stay away from it as much as possible. Once a week indulging can actually HELP your body with weight loss due to its effect on restoring optimal leptin levels and revving your thyroid. Overindulging will kill your ability to lose weight and this is where calorie counts can come in handy.

Science Reveals Why Calorie Counts Are All Wrong

Digestion is far too messy a process to accurately convey in neat numbers. The counts on food labels can differ wildly from the calories you actually extract, for many reasons

www.scientificamerican.com

 

[Reincarnated]

I also found being dehydrated increased my vulnerability to migraines, so there is that.

 

[BackInTheGame78]

I also found being dehydrated increased my vulnerability to migraines, so there is that.

So will being magnesium deficient. Migraines are always a sign of magnesium deficiency, although that may or may not be a only thing causing them.

 

[2rings]

I am working on slimming down belly fat while eating low carb/ medium protein/ high fat diet while eating only a lunch and dinner 5 hours apart.

My meals are 50% low carb vegetables, 25% high quality protein, and 25% fats. No alcohol.

I drink plenty water throughout the day and at night before bed I have a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar in water.

This technique has not yet reduced my belly fat. I heard it can take up to a month to become fat adapted and it has to be strict without any high carb binges at all or it prolongs the time needed to start burning fat.

My meals seem to be too large and I get bloating from some vegetables.

 

[BackInTheGame78]

I am working on slimming down belly fat while eating low carb/ medium protein/ high fat diet while eating only a lunch and dinner 5 hours apart.

My meals are 50% low carb vegetables, 25% high quality protein, and 25% fats. No alcohol.

I drink plenty water throughout the day and at night before bed I have a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar in water.

This technique has not yet reduced my belly fat. I heard it can take up to a month to become fat adapted and it has to be strict without any high carb binges at all or it prolongs the time needed to start burning fat.

My meals seem to be too large and I get bloating from some vegetables.

Carb cycling works better than low carb. The fad of low carbs is ridiculous and unhealthy long term. And unnecessary.

Try adding 30 minute walks 5-6 times a week.

Bloating is a sign your body doesn't like something and it's causing chronic low grade inflammation which retains water and makes losing weight harder. It will also screw up your hormones if it goes on long enough.

Try figuring out what it is your body doesn't like and remove that

 

[2rings]

Being a diabetic, a high carbohydrate meal will wack my blood sugar levels for days afterwards. It can be as simple as a bowl of noodles or a bagel. Those foods are significantly hard on my health.

Even natural foods like potatoes or corn will mess with my diabetes considerably

But I never had diabetes until in my 30’s. Before that I used to eat anything I wanted. So consider yourselves lucky!!! I used to love noodles.

Also, even if you not diabetic, todays modern food choices can temporarily push you into a diabetic range of high blood sugars, but your body will naturally bring that down on it’s own. I have to inject insulin or the high blood sugars will not go down at all.

A good example of foods that will spike a non diabetics blood sugar is Americanized Chinese food: white rice with other fatty and salt/sugar combinations along with MSG. You know how after you eat a huge Chinese food meal like that you can feel tired, want to nap, and rapidly feel crazy hungry again even though you ate a huge meal? Those are diabetic symptoms.

 

[EyeBRollin]

Also, even if you not diabetic, todays modern food choices can temporarily push you into a diabetic range of high blood sugars, but your body will naturally bring that down on it’s own.

It depends on a lot of factors- the persons physical fitness and activity level, the quality of carbohydrates, the amount of carbohydrates, the total meal composition, time of day, and genetics.

It’s far more than carbohydrates = diabetes. Sean Baker, popular social media carnivore, has diabetic blood markers, despite not eating any carbs for years. (The speculation is allegedly that his body is always releasing glucose in anticipation for exercise)

 

[2rings]

This is a good forum to learn. Even though I am diabetic I have always been on the slim side. A lot of T1’s are on the slim side.

But recently I had developed some pudge in the stomach and love handle area and my goal is to shed these problem areas and have a flat stomach again (but 6 pack abs are not my goal).

I’ve never been shredded and when I used to have a gym membership my goal was to just tune up my overall body but not get huge like some of the other guys. I would just stop in for 10-20 minutes every other day for the machines and stretching and to socialize. It was the soft exercise approach that a Chinese doctor recommended to me, opposed to heavy duty lifting and over exertion.

My favorite workout is punching and kicking the heavy bags.

I have been focused on hydration lately and it is basically just doubling my fresh water intake and peeing twice as often. Also I am trying a mix of water + fresh lemon juice + real sea salt.