Water is HEAVY!

[changing]

So I was ruminating in the shower this morning about fluid retention and scale weight (not suffering from it right now, but it's become a great interest of mine lately), and I thought back to something nifty that I'd learned way back in the day in some lab science class I had to take: the metric system is really cool because different units of measure are very convertible when applied to water. For example, 1 ml of water in volume = 1g of water in weight (mass).

It sounded harmless enough, but then I started running the numbers in my head. Here's something scary:

I drink a gallon, 128 oz (approx 3.79L) of water a day. That means that I drink approximately 3.79 KILOGRAMS of water a day. Convert that to US measure, and we're talking approximately 8.33 POUNDS of water per day! My god, the water I'm drinking is heavy!

Naturally, a certain portion of the fluid we drink needs to be excreted through the urinary tract in order to remove fluid waste from our circulatory system and then the body, but I'm sure that it's not 100 percent, and the potential is there for some pretty heavy retention. Especially if our body is freaked out because we, say, are losing weight more quickly than it's used to or if it is ticked off because we ate too much sodium.

So the next time, you gain X number of lbs/kg overnight, remember your good friend/arch enemy water weight, and how incredibly heavy it is compared to volume.

[DAWNIMMEL]

Never thought of it that way. I too drink a gallon of water a day. My husband gets tired of carting it into the house. I haven't weighed myself for a couple of days. Usually I am one of those bad ones that does it everyday. Thanks for the info.......D-

[killerbombshell]

Holy math, Batman. That is really impressive. Thanks for working that up, I'll have to remember that!

[chrisie_20]

let me ask you a question that may need to be directed somewhere else but being that reading your thread made it pop into my mind I will ask you are taking water pills a bad idea?

[cmcole]

Yes, one litre of water weighs one kilogram. I remember that when I lift the bottles onto the fountain (18.9 litres = 18.9 km + the weight of the bottle)