Day 19: Ice Water
Water is still a problem for me to drink, however I remember from way back when, when the Doctor told me it was better to drink "Ice Water" as your body had to warm it up to body temp so you burned more calories. While my Dad and later in life my husband both poo-pooed the idea.
However I found that it is so much easier for me to drink ice water then it is to drink room temperature water. So I was on a mission to prove that there were TWO benefits to drinking ice water. The first and most important was to help me drink more water in a day. The second was that I would actually burn more calories. However I wanted to proof it up to the doubting thomas's in my life.
So I went to the website
www.howstuffworks.com and now I have the proof, that will be sitting in my Husbands email shortly!
For anyone trying to
lose weight, this question is an exciting one! If you simply want to know if your body burns
calories warming up the
water, the answer is yes. But if you want to know if drinking a lot of ice water can help you lose weight, or keep weight off, this "yes" needs to be qualified with some calculations.
First of all, calories are case-sensitive. There are calories and then there are
Calories. Calories with a big "c" are the ones used to describe the amount of energy contained in
foods. A calorie with a little "c" is defined as the amount of energy it takes to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius.
What most people think of as a Calorie is actually a kilo-calorie: It takes one Calorie to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water 1 degree Celsius. So when you drink a 140-Calorie can of cola, you are ingesting 140,000 calories. There is no cause for alarm, because the conversion applies across the board. When you burn 100 Calories jogging a mile, you are burning 100,000 calories.
So, considering that the definition of a calorie is based on raising the temperature of water, it is safe to say that your body burns calories when it has to raise the temperature of ice water to your body temperature. And unless your urine is coming out ice cold, your body must be raising the temperature of the water. So calories are being burned.
Let's figure out exactly what you're burning when you drink a 16-ounce (0.5 liter) glass of ice water:
- The temperature of ice water can be estimated at zero degrees Celsius.
- Body temperature can be estimated at 37 degrees Celsius.
- It takes 1 calorie to raise 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius.
- There are 473.18 grams in 16 fluid ounces of water.
So in the case of a 16-ounce glass of ice water, your body must raise the temperature of 473.18 grams of water from zero to 37 degrees C. In doing so, your body burns 17,508 calories. But that's calories with a little "c." Your body only burns 17.5 Calories, and in the grand scheme of a 2,000-Calorie diet, that 17.5 isn't very significant.
But let's say you adhere to the "eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day"
nutritional recommendation. In 64 ounces of water, there are 1,892.72 grams. So to warm up all that water in the course of a day, your body burns 70,030 calories, or 70 Calories. And over time, that 70 Calories a day adds up. So, while you definitely shouldn't depend on ice water consumption to replace exercise or a healthy diet, drinking cold water instead of warm water does, in fact, burn some extra Calories!
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It's tough finding time during the week to get back on the treadmill. I know everyone says "Oh get up a 1/2 hour earlier in the morning" but the alarm goes off at 5 am now, and I'm into work by 6. David has been good about exercising after work since he's usually home an hour before me. But when I get home it's working to get supper on the table, clean up the mess and other things that just need to be done.
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It's hard to believe with water being one of the easiest drinks for me to access, it's also one of my biggest problems. It's a push for me to drink more than 24 oz of water a day, let alone 64 oz's that we should have daily. But I came close yesterday. 
