How Wikipedia saved my life

It's Saturday afternoon, the second to last day of my spring break, and I'm bored. I've been needing to blog for over a month now, and since I don't really feel like thinking and writing, I thought I'd goof around with some Mac apps I've been neglecting (Photo Booth, Numbers) and answer a useless question I've been wondering about for a long time:

If I drink a lot of water, how much weight will I gain? Also, how will my drinking a bunch of water affect my scale's calculations of body fat % and body water %?

Yes, questions you never cared to ask, and I'm asking them.

So here's the lowdown.



Me being bored



The water bottle I'm going to be using, holds about 33.8 fluid ounces, I weight it using my scale and it showed 2.2 lbs, which is about right



The scale in question, it uses those metal pads to send electricity into my feet and, using my age, gender, and height, calculates my body fat % and body water %

Another FYI, as far as weight and body fat % I'm not going to tell you the initial number, just the amount it increases or decreases, because I'm like a woman when it comes to my weight.



4:40 PM Downing the first bottle of water. I'm wondering how much fluid the stomach can handle. I'd like to avoid puking.



4:45 PM Finished the first bottle of water. Results of the second weigh-in:

I gained 2.5 lbs, my body fat% went up by 0.4% and my total body water % actually went down from 53.3% to 53.1%. Odd.

Wikipedia says that the stomach, on average, expands to contain about 1 liter of food. Not sure how it handles water, but I just downed a liter of it, so I'm going to slow down a lil bit. No use puking in the name of science.

5:25 PM Finished the second bottle. Gained 2.1 lbs from the last weigh-in, my body fat % jumped up by .6% and my total body water % continued to go down, this time by 0.3%

At this point, nature is calling, but I'm going to hold off for now. In the name of science of course.



Such a trooper!

As a precaution, I read up on wikipedia about water poisoning/intoxication. I found this little tidbit: "In 2008, Jacqueline Henson, a 40-year-old British woman, died after drinking four litres of water in under two hours as part of her Lighter Life diet plan."

Holy Shitballs. About one hour into this game I've downed 2.5 liters. Granted, this woman was probably clinically obese, I'm not sure what kind of complications that would put into the whole deal, but I'm going to take it easy on this water drinking deal. I'm not puking for science, and I'm certainly not going to die for this stupid lil deal.

To balance out my electrolytes I'll see if I can find a banana or some pretzels or something. Yeah, I don't want to die.

6:09 PM finished my third liter of water. Gained 2.4 lbs from the last weigh-in (must be noted that I ate a few things to try and add nutrients to all the water I've been drinking in the interest of not dying) my body fat % went up .4% and my total body water continued to drop, this time by .3 percent.

I'm done drinking water for now. Wikipedia scared me straight, I don't want to die by something as lame as water intoxication, I'm actually starting to feel a little woosy, so I'm gonna end the consumption (and idiocy) right now. However, before I end the experiment all together, I'm interested in seeing how answering nature's call will change the numbers.

6:51 PM Nature called... and called... and called. I just lost 2.4 lbs in about a minute. That's about a liters worth of urine. My body fat % dropped by 1.3% and my body water % went back up to 53.3%, which is what it was at when this whole thing started.

Here's a graph of my exploits