I was just eating my lunch, when I thought of a kind of interesting thought/Chemistry type of problem:
How much Energy/Calories would I lose by drinking extremely cold** water?
(**Perhaps 3 degrees Celsius?- feel free to use whatever number above freezing for the water you wish- I don’t really know how cold the water I was drinking was, but I noticed it had some small pieces of ice towards the bottom of it when I pulled it out of the fridge, so it was either slowly starting to just freeze or it had been melting away the whole time)
So yeah, back to the Question:
If the water was just above freezing when I drank it, how much energy* would my body use to heat it up meet my Body Temperature?
*Side Question #2. Would my body not even need to spend any energy heating up the water, as it would be passively warmed up simply by being in my stomach?
Basically, where did that energy to heat up the water come from?
Bonus Question #3.
I know this doesn’t sound like a feasible way at ALL to lose weight/burn Calories, but it was an amusing thought that occurred while I was drinking some really cold water today for lunch.
So let’s say I DID want to try to lose 1lb using this method, how much Water and at what feasible temperature (so using a normal fridge, in case I can’t pull off getting 1 degree Celsius or something) above freezing should I drink it at?
One calorie is the energy required to raise one mL of water by one degree Celsius.
So, let’s say you drink a liter of water at 3C. Your body will need to raise that to 37C, a difference of 24 degrees. So that’s a whopping 24,000 calories! That’s like 40 Big Macs.
OK, not really, because food calories are really kilocalories. So it’s more like a few cucumber slices worth of energy.
In order lose one pound of fat, you need an energy deficit of around 3500 kCal.
3,500,000 / 24,000 = 145.8 liters of delicious cold water to lose one pound of fat. Better reserve a spot at the bathroom.
OK but if you drink an extra liter of water per day, you could lose over 2 pounds of ugly fat per year on this diet.
Now a liter of water is around two pounds? So if you weigh an extra 2 pounds for a year in water weight, how many extra calories will you burn walking around with it?
This ignores the effect of the extra liter of water filling up your stomach, so that you tend to eat less. If you drink the extra water just before meals, that reduced-appetite effect is likely to be much more important than the water-temperature effect.
To be practical all tap water in Wisconsin gets cold in Winter. Yet every winter is when people really pack on the pounds. Shoveling snow will burn you some extra calories, but you still gain weight unless you reduce your eating. Don’t look to cold water to lose wait, or you will be disappointed. Be careful of consuming too much water at close to freezing or you bring down your body core heat which is bad for you. This is why when it’s winter and your lost they tell you not to eat snow for water.
It seems to me that the catch to all this is, your body is constantly producing more heat than necessary. You give off this heat through your skin (and sweat, breath etc.). If you drink cold water, your body doesn’t necessarily have to burn more food or fat to produce more heat You’ll just lose less heat to your environment.
And even if that were not the case, and you did need more calories to heat the water, you would probably just be that much hungrier and eat more.
But that extra heat loss comes from your body doing extra work. The other day, after walking home from work, I made the mistake of drinking an ice-cold soda. I shivered for a half-hour afterwards, especially around my core. There’s no doubt my body was working overtime and burning more calories than it otherwise would have. If it had continued much longer, my muscles would have exhausted their reserves and stopped moving, which would have been a Very Bad Thing.
This is true. According to an article I read, the colder weather does indeed speed up our metabolisms. But our stomachs do a good job of overcompensating. Plus, we tend to be more sedantary at this time of year. If you 1)stick to your summer diet, 2)keep active, and 3)spend a lot of time outdoors, especially in the shivering cold, then you will lose weight.
Thanks guys!
I thought maybe this would be a stupid question, and people might just mock me, but I actually did learn quite a bit from your answers.
(Especially that passive heating one, Xema. It seems obvious to me now, but I wasn’t thinking of that yesterday at all. Just figured if the stomach acid and stuff in there is warm, that’s the Energy warming up the water. But how’d that stuff get warm? From Me!)
And yes, I know this isn’t a good Dietary method- I get the Calorie vs. calorie thing here, but I was just curious (didn’t know that the water was 0 degrees- another piece of ignorance fought). Though, I’m glad that I just asked about the Water- the beer thing- yeah, that sounds foolish, but my Water Q was a little bit more feasible with it contributing 0 Calories…
But wow, the 145L is a LOT to drink just to burn 1 lb.
But if it had been 100 degrees and you were sweating, it could have cooled you slightly and reduced your sweating temporarily without you burning any calories at all.
Drinking extra fluids has been shown to do nothing to limit appetite. However, eating watery food (e.g. soup) will cause you to reduce your caloric intake. If you’re interested in more details, I have previously posted a cite for a study on this.
Actually, I would still burn extra calories because my body would still have to warm up that cold liquid. You would still have the same internal temperature differential to contend with. In other words, your core is always kept around 98.5 degrees, even when you’re 100 degrees on the outside. So when you take in a cold drink, the body cells coming in contact with that liquid will always need to shake their money makers double-time if they don’t want to be cooled off. Your brain may not initiate a shiver response, but it still happens on a cellular level.
That’s why the experts tell you not to drink ice-cold beverages when you’re hot.
Back when I was a weight-cutting wrestler (real kind, not “pro”) I would seal off my bedroom door and heating vents and open the windows before I went to sleep. I’m talking cold Nov, Dec, Jan temps. I slept in a stocking cap, sweats, and with a normal blanket, but I figured my body would have to burn up a lot more calories to keep me warm/alive. I think it worked. The shivering fits alone had to burn up something appreciable.
The human body is a complex system. Therefore it’s difficult to predict what would actually happen if you regularly drank a lot of cold water. I wouldn’t be surprised if drinking cold water actually caused many people gain weight.