weight loss tips

[danaeris]

A friend just posted some weight loss tips in hir journal, and two of them are things I'd always been confused about before, because for me they contradict slightly. I was hoping someone here could clarify for me.

The are...
Eat upon waking
and
Exercise upon waking

Which should I do first? Currently, I get up, get dressed, brush teeth, drink some water, and head to work, which is a 20 minute walk, before eating. Breakfast at work is cheaper, bigger, and healthier ($2 for scrambled eggs, fruit salad, and bagels, or free milk to eat with your cereal). I thought this was the ideal for my health... wake up, exercise, and then eat. Do I have it backwards?

The only other thing in there that was new to me and helpful was the fact that apparently, drinking ice water burns calories. Lots of them. I like ice water. I'm sometimes bad about drinking it because of laziness. Clearly I should drink more water and make sure it is icy.

Comments

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

huh, ok. If it were that easy as drinking ice water, I guess everyone would be losing weight. I will have to do the calculation myself sometime. I assume it still does burn calories, but probably not nearly as much as I might have hoped.

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Does burn calories, but yeah, not an awful lot. There are also negative-calorie foods that do give you some small amount of energy, but require more than that amount of energy just to digest. Celery and pickles are the only two I can name offhand.

After waking up, exercise before eating -- reduces chance of cramps, can burn more fat (but not calories), makes it more likely you will actually successfully exercise.

[rjpb.livejournal.com]

I assume it still does burn calories

Nothing you consume burns calories itself. Ice water makes your core cooler, so you may burn one or two extra calories to restore your body temperature; it is that little.

The larger effect of drinking ice water is twofold:
1) Being well-hydrated helps you burn calories more efficiently; you should drink a lot of it though.
2) Being well-hydrated helps you feel less hungry so you will eat less; keeping your belly full of ice water will also help keep you less hungry.

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Nothing you consume burns calories itself. Ice water makes your core cooler, so you may burn one or two extra calories to restore your body temperature;

Depends how much, and how cold. By my calculations later in the post (which could be off, and you're welcome to check) drinking your full 8 glasses of water at just over 32 degrees will burn 74 dietary calories (74,000 metric calories) a day. That's not massive, but it's noticeable. That's assuming your body bothers to warm the water (and you) back up to body temperature, but that seems like a reasonable assumption.

You're correct in the larger effects you mention, and you're right that they're usually much more significant.

[rjpb.livejournal.com]

drinking your full 8 glasses of water at just over 32 degrees will burn 74 dietary calories

But not compared to drinking your full 8 glasses of water at tap temperature of about 50 degrees. That is an 18-degree change (32 to 50), not a 66-degree change (32 to 98). So about 20 dietary calories are additionally burned for the ice water compared to the regular water you would alternatively be drinking, or about 2 calories per glass.

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Here we go. I just checked the original post of the information. To raise water from ice to body temperature (about 32 degrees F to 98.6 degrees F) is about 66 degrees F, or roughly 37 degrees Celsius.

A half-gallon of water (8 8-oz glasses) is about a half-gallon. We'll say a gallon is 4 liters (roughly four quarts, which is what a gallon actually is) to make the math easier in a minute. A standard calorie is the heat to raise one cc of water by one degree C. A liter is 1000 ccs.

So 2 liters of water (half a 4-liter 'gallon') is 2000 ccs of water. 2000 ccs of water raised by 37 degrees C is 2000 * 37 standard calories, or 74,000 calories. A dietary calorie is a kilocalorie, or 1000 calories. So you burn 74 calories by drinking a half-gallon of water at 32.5 degrees Fahrenheit (and that's uncomfortably cold, at least for me).

The original assertion was that that was equal to the calories burned in jogging a mile. That's off, but not, like, an order of magnitude off.

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

A half-gallon of water [...] is about a half-gallon.

Sigh. Right. True, but silly.

[princeofwands.livejournal.com]

Exactly!

Depending on how hard I'm working, how fast I'm moving, and how precise I'm being about measuring my workout, I seem to have an upper sustainable caloric burn of almost 1 kCal/min. Estimates put my 6-min mile run between 60 and 100kCal depending more on duration than specifically intensity. Same order of magnitude, and lots of overlap ping real solution space.

[princeofwands.livejournal.com]

This later thread is angelbob and I fleshing out the part where 1/2gallon of water is different than 12oz of beer, and addresses the similarities in total work between heating that volume of water and running a mile (which are both agreeably different than the caloric content of a bud-light).

[aaangyl.livejournal.com]

Drinking water is good. Helps in tons of ways. Not sure about icy though. Definitely NOT icy after exercise or before stretching or mediation. If you want to loose weight through making your body keep warmer, wear less coats and shiver more maybe, but your internal systems are designed to run hot - think about "brain freeze" factor drinking a slushie and such.

To improve morning energy kick, wake up, do your stuff, then throw in a stretch/warmup routine before you walk to work, and start working on methods of walking that make you feel like you're "working" - exaggerate motions or change pace or hold things with your arms in a way that works them more or somesuch. Slow down and start cooling down as you approach work. If you can, pop into the bathroom when you get there and do some breathing exercises, focus on clearing your mind and stuff, then get a big glass of water (I kept a pitcher on my desk) and get to work!

There's also a lot of diet & nutrition stuff you can do to engourage weight loss, a lot of which I've been intending to post about but I've been distracted and busy. If you've got a lunch or dinner slot some time I can get up to the city, I'd be happy to dump some info in conversation, but there are so many individual things to consider it's not really something I can spit into a comment or anything. Ditto for the neurochemical stuff.

[princeofwands.livejournal.com]

Specifically in your case of order "walk" vs. "eat" - it depends on eat what. (I draw the distinction, because if it was an hour walk rather than 20minute, it'd be a no brainer to get some calories before/during your walk. If it was jogging you'd want to consider how your body reacts to jogging on an empty stomach vs not. etc.)

I find that I am vastly more successful in managing my day/diet/exercise/mood/nutritional requirements/weightloss if I get a few calories right away on waking. (Like on the order of 50-100.) Something easily digested is best. And then catch another 100-300 calories in the next couple of hours with that morning walk in between. Letting myself wake, get moving, shower, dress, get out, go walking, and settle toward eating is well over an hour into my day and after first exercise. Bad length of time to wait till first food. Practically speaking, for me - I end up slugging back a 230kCal breakfast shake first thing and then snack lightly later in the day. If I'm doing my 50-100min hard cardio thing in the morning, then I'll grab a 170kCal worth of powerbar, start my run, and then grab another 170-300kCal in powerbar over the course of the workout(depending on duration and intensity).

The other thing on that body warming water burns a lot of calories is that the real lesson there is that running a mile doesn't necessarily burn as many calories as one might imagine.

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't take long to get out of the house. Some mornings, I wake up and am out the door fifteen minutes later, so I'm getting my food 35 minutes after waking. Most days it takes about 45 minutes for me to get up and walk to work. On rare days where I sleep over at unseelie's, its about... 90-105 minutes before I'm fed because we take a shower and cuddle a lot. So maybe in those cases I should try to eat something or grab an oj.

[auros]

Random: I generally avoid drinking OJ on an empty stomach, as the acidity does bad things to me... If I'm going with something liquid in the morning, I'll either go for milk, or something that involves both milk and fruit (smoothie using yogurt, or have a glass of milk and a glass of OJ separately, or whatever).