According to this persuasive non-embeddable video — from a BBC series called The Truth About Food — the answer is don’t worry about it.
They compare two twins. One drinks 2 liters water/day, the other doesn’t drink any water. Not self-experimentation, but close.
I did an experiment in which I drank 5 liters of water/day. I lost a few pounds, not nearly worth the trouble. There was one surprise: Flavors intensified. Every strawberry was the best-tasting strawberry I’d ever had.
…plus the few pounds you lost were water, which removed some of the buffer between your normal hydration level and being dehydrated. As someone who recently stopped taking a diuretic, I must say that having a few extra pounds on the scale is far superior to being on the edge of dehydration when exercising.
That being said, I drink a lot of water — I’m up to liter 6 today and it’s before 10AM — after experimenting with more normal consumption levels. Two advantages I’ve found for losing weight:
1) The well-known “you may be thirsty when you think you’re hungry” angle. I’m not sure that this is true, since hunger is often a passing thing anyway, but, even so, this is a nice simple habit to get into to let it pass.
2) Being well hydrated seems to make higher ambient temperatures much more tolerable, perhaps because sweating is more effective. Between the additional calories needed for thermoregulation and the reduced energy use/cost from air conditioning, this aspect has been a total win/win for me. Of course, I work alone (so my slightly increased sweatiness doesn’t affect anyone else) at home (so I can keep the temperature high); not sure how broadly applicable this aspect is.
“There was one surprise: Flavors intensified. Every strawberry was the best-tasting strawberry I’d ever had.”
Thats not a good thing for the SLD diet. But that’s interesting.
Before “whahuunhuuuh?” has me committed for water-poisoning myself, I’ll point out that I weigh 290 pounds and had walked 5 miles in 100% humidity when I posted yesterday. Because of the conditions, I weighed myself after the walk, so I knew I had lost 2 pounds of water since waking up; this was after drinking 4 liters before and during the walk, so I knew I needed at least one more. Considering that waking up is my low point for hydration, the extra liter over replacement seemed prudent.
Side rant: Really big people sweat a *lot*, even on a gentle stroll, and the resultant discomfort and dehydration keeps big people from continuing to exercise. If I were an insurance company (or the US government, for that matter, to avoid future Medicare/Medicaid costs), I would send free sweat-wicking clothes and a Camelbak to every obese customer who asked for it.
“Not a good thing for the SLD diet.” I think that drinking all that water only affected my taste buds, whereas SLD is about smell.