After a slightly larger then planned meal with the girlfriends family, I down a few glasses of water right after to try and flush all the crap out of my body. I recall reading this in a thread about something body builders do if they feel they've eaten too much bad stuff in a sitting.

My girlfriend seems to believe drinking cold water too fast just clogs you up and just gets all the food stuck there.

So question is, is there a benefit to drinking iced water versus room temperature water, and what are the results of downing a few glasses quickly after a meal?

Thanks.

Drinking water will not flush bad stuff out of your system. It will keep you hydrated though, which will help keep your metabolism ticking over.

Drinking cold water will burn slightly more calories than room temperature as your body will have to expend energy to warm it up before absorbing it.

A gallon of iced water a day will burn 123 calories, about the same as a mile at 3.5 mph on a treadmill. Not much but it adds up. New one on me of flushing out parents' meal or clogging system up. But water is good for you.

Drinking lots of water during and after a cheat meal will help a little to reduce the bloating caused by the large ingestion of sodium (since pretty much all cheat foods people like are salty), but other than that there's no benefit aside from the obvious goal of staying well hydrated.

Also, this could be mumbo-jumbo, but I've known some practitioners of Chinese medicine (the actual herbalists, not simply people random people or whatever) that specifically recommend avoiding cold beverages if you have certain types of issues, specifically kidney problems (and possibly ovary issues as well). My girlfriend's had chronic kidney issues her whole life, and she firmly believes there's validity to this. She avoids cold beverages as much as she can, and almost never complains of kidney discomfort like she used to.

The whole "cold water burning calories" thing made me laugh, just because it's so obvious that it never even occurred to me. I'll have to give that a shot.

Just a side note: if you're looking to hydrate, it's better to drink water throughout the day rather than all at once.

I like cold beverages... uh huh.
(stick it in the fridge stick it in the fridge stick it in the fridge)

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