How drinking too much water can make you fat

How could water possibly make you fat if it contains zero calories and requires energy to be processed?

It won’t do it on it’s own, but drinking too much water can make you fatter indirectly. We all know that drinking enough water is essential for health for several reasons. Unfortunately, that makes many people wrongly conclude that “more is better” when it comes to drinking water. Drinking water lowers our blood concentration of salt and sugar. That is often a good thing, especially when those levels are too high. Let’s not forget however, that some salt and some sugar in our blood is a good thing. We need a balance and there exists an optimal concentration of blood sugar, sodium, vitamins, and minerals. The optimum blood concentration for these things certainly is not zero. 

When our blood sugar, sodium, and vitamin levels drop too low, our appetite increases. This is so we can restore these levels. We know that if we eat a lot of salty peanuts, we get thirsty, but what is less talked about is, if we drink too much water, our appetite for salty peanuts (and other things) increases.

There are many factors that regulate appetite. It’s true that an empty stomach can make us feel hungry. Drinking water may help with that factor, but let’s not forget the other factors that increase appetite. Low blood sugar is one of the biggest ones. This causes huge cravings for food, which lead to over indulging, followed by a rapid increase in blood sugar, followed by a huge insulin spike. This overeating leads to rapid weight gain as well. A nightmare situation for diabetics. If you don’t want your blood sugar levels to get too high, don’t let them get too low either. Don’t just drink tons and tons of water thinking that it’s the healthiest thing you can do.

So remember that drinking water is good, but don’t overdo it, or your cravings caused by the subsequent drop in blood sugar, sodium, and vitamins, could very well lead to over indulging, obesity, and diabetes.