Princhester, if you sleep in a cold room on top of your blankets, you will burn more calories during the night than if you sleep all warm and comfy underneath the blankets.
Now, nobody is going to lose ANY weight by ingesting or exposing themselves to cold. But you will burn (a negligible few) more calories.
In context, burning calories is losing weight. The rule of thumb is 3500 large calories per pound of fat, I think. By negligible, do you mean that the amount of calories involved is small relative to the 3500? Do you consider 120 calories (a half ounce of fat) negligible?
Kalt and RM Mentock, you want to continue the debate, I will see you in the other thread.
It would help, Kalt, if you read both that other thread and the cites mentioned there because (whether I’m right or whether I’m wrong) I’ve been over all this stuff and there’s not much point in me going over my views again just for your benefit.
Princhester: I did read the other thread, and I stand by my opinion. It takes energy (i.e. calories) for your body to maintain body temperature. Homeostasis is not free energy. Unless you’re going to argue that our bodies are, in essence, perpetual motion machines, you are wrong. Cecil and I are not.
RM Mentock: Yes, I do consider 120 calories, or even 200, to be negligible if you’re not exercising and eating right. By negligible I mean (in the context of this thread) you’re not gonna lose any fat.
Kalt I have no quibble with the straight out calorie calculation completed by Cecil as such, it is the underlying assumption of increase in metabolism that I doubt.
I know it takes energy to warm the drink or maintain body temperature. I’m not completely thick. Read Race Bannon’s analogy again. A car is not a perpetual motion machine, but it is still true that turning on the heater does not cause it to use more fuel than it otherwise would, because it is already producing excess heat, it is just a matter of diverting that heat to the passenger compartment.
Likewise, with our bodies, how do you rule out that the iced water is not warmed by excess heat, diverted through the mechanism of vasoconstriction?
Kalt, I can tell you here’s another Houstonian who’s not 40 lbs overweight.
Anyway, When I was young I liked to eat ice. One day I was at the doctor for a routine checkup. He told me that eating too much ice could give me anemia. Don’t know why, but that’s what he said.
You need to understant the mechanisms of how you body works.
With regards to #1, Being cold does trigger an automatic counter response by the body to try to maintain core body temperature. It will start with shivering but after a while the muscles that make the body shiver gets fatiqued so it goes into a secondary which is deny circulation to the extremities such as the arms and legs and the head. When core body temperatures drop below safe limits the body dies. So whats the best way to beat the cold?
…exercise.
With regrads to #2, I’m afraid it has the opposite effect. Cold (or iced) water doesnt significantly affect core body temperatures so it does not trigger the cold survival response, however it does tend to slow the digestive precess down which tends to make it absorb the wrong things at the wrong sequence. It might add weight rather than reduce weight. Hot soup or an apperatif aids digestion better and the better digestion works, the better it is for the body.
Why not look into the atkins diet?
Cite please X~Slayer.
What you say runs absolutely contrary to every single cite on this topic that I have ever read.
Vasoconstriction comes first, metabolism increase comes second.
Drinking cold liquid absolutely does affect core temperature. However, quite what the body’s reaction will be depends on an array of factors, shell (or skin) temperature being primary.
Go to the other thread linked earlier by RM Mentock, check out the cite by Truth Seeker on the first page, which is a link to a paper on the body’s temperature control mechanism including experiments relating to precisely the topic of ingesting large amounts of cold liquid under controlled shell temperature conditions.
That’s what I thought you meant. But from what I’ve seen, reducing your calorie intake by 120 calories per day might result in a loss of a pound of fat in 30 (3500/120) days, a dozen pounds over a year. That can be done by not drinking that soda everyday. Some people would be happy with that. I understand that nutrition and weight loss is complicated (just ask Princhester) but that’s on the same scale as the cold water.
Basically, you can do little things to make a little difference, but cutting food consumptuion is anywhere from 75% - 90% of the determining factor in whether you will lose weight.
You need to create a 3500 calories deficit between what you eat and what you burn to lose a pound of body fat.
Getting your body to burn more calories means being more active… Sure, eating cold ice or being cold can get your body to burn more calories, but the amount of calories burned is paltry versus what you EAT.
Let’s say you have a big piece of cheesecake today, in addition to 4 decent meals that give you a days worth of nutrition. The cheesecake is in the neighborhood of 700 calories, or 1/3 the calories for an entire day for an average woman, and 1/4 the calories for an average male!
Wanna burn that off with being cold or drinking ice water!!! --first of all, just hitting the stairmaster vigorously might require 60-90 minutes to break even! Most folks exercise in 20 mins aerobic bursts, so you are really looking at 5,6, or 7 exercise sessions to burn the cheesecake!
All that and you break even! Not even losing weight based on exercise!
Drinking ice water, or subjecting yourself to cold air might burn a handful of calories, but it is foolhardy to think it’ll make a real dent.
If your eating 4000 cals a day, you need to eliminate about 2000 cals to get started on losing weight (through diet or exercise…or other trickery).
You can save gas by keeping your car clean to reduce wind resistance. Considering everything you can do to increase fuel efficiency, is this worth worrying about? The ‘ice’ theory can be compared to the clean car theory.
It’s pretty easy to tell if your body is generating excess heat - if you sweat, your body has heat that it needs to remove. If not, it is not likely that your body has excess heat.
OK, I’ll do the ice theory part. A reasonable weight loss program is about three pounds a month, or 350 calories per day. The proverbial 8 glasses of water could account for about 70 calories–twenty percent. I doubt the clean car theory can account for that much fuel savings, but if you can show me it can, well, I’m going to go out and wash my car.
It’s not the heat and it’s not the humidity, it’s the amount of food and exercise that makes you fat or not. As an illustration I give you Cuba, hottter than hell and more humid than being underwater, but the general lack of food and transportation keeps everyone almost bone thin.
The ‘8 glasses of water’ is in addition to all the beverages one normally consumes? Or, does the water REPLACE the other beverages. I think the latter.
I drink 4-5 cold drinks per day anyway, and a few hot ones. I could replace those with 8 cold glasses of water, but it would be unreasonable -to me- to ADD in 8 more cold glasses of water on top of everything else.
Therefore, I’m not shaving of 70 cals extra. The diet cokes, the hot coffee, the cold diet tea…all of it burns calories. Add in the energy from caffeine, and replacing all that with 8 glass of water is a difference hardly worth noting.
BTW, a well observed diet creates a 3500-7000 calorie weekly deficit, equal to 1-2 pounds of body fat per week, or 4-8 pounds per month.
The basic goal is to create a 500 cal deficit each day, on average. If you burn 2500 just living, eat 2250 and add exercise to off about 250 each day. That’s 500/day, or 4/month. Or, a more advanced diet would be: exercise 500 off each day, and eat 2000 cals a day for 8 pounds per month. (1000 cal deficit per day, or 2 pounds/week)
That is certainly your choice to make.
OK, that makes the percentage 70/250, or 28%. That’s even higher.
Likewise, with our bodies, how do you rule out that the iced water is not warmed by excess heat, diverted through the mechanism of vasoconstriction?
Because you’re body heat is internal (unless, I suppose, you are in a place that’s ambient temp is over 98.6F). When a car blows hot air through the heater, the car isn’t warming itself, it’s warming the passengers. When you ingest cold, your body temp is going to drop. Homeostasis burns calories/energy to warm itself (that’s the key word) up. If you were standing in a really hot place, I suppose your body wouldn’t have to burn those calories, or at least not as many. Internalized vs. externalized warming is the key here. We could harness our excess body heat to warm up a slice of cheese - stick it between your hands for a minute. But when we’re warming ourself up, we have to burn calories.
Well I never said it doesnt affect core body temperatures, just not significantly. This is based on the ingestion of the recommended daily amounts of water. Sure, if you dump buckets of ice water down your gullet, I would agree that would affect core body temperatures significantly but would you really do that just to lose weight?
Tell you what, if you do drink lots of ice water (above the recommended 8 glasses) I would hazard to say you will lose weight. But not because of the temperature. Water is essential to a good diet. Biggest drawback is the bathroom visit frequency. All that water has no nutrition, so no weight gain possible. Gives the stomach a full feeling so eating does become less (until the person gets used to the feeling).
RV, I’m not disagreeing…I’ll buy into the idea that 8 glasses burns 70 cals per day.
Just making sure everyone understands it’s 8 extra glasses on top of everything else you’d drink in a day.
If you tend to burn about 2200 per day just living, and you ADD another 8 glasses of water, I guess you would figure that you now burn 2270 per day, and you can work to create consumption deficits off that new number.