(classical music)
- Hi, I'm Cristen.
- And I'm Ben.
- And today's question
is, how can I or you
gain pounds during the day
and then lose them at night?
- Right, and not just a
little bit of weight Cris,
we're talking two to three pounds.
That's nuts.
- Yeah, that's nuts.
Also that we do this while we're sleeping.
- Yeah, the main thing
that's changing overnight
is the amount of water
in your system, right?
And it's amazing how much
a gallon of water weighs.
It's like eight pounds.
- Eight pounds.
And so, if you break that down,
a pint of water or half a liter
weighs one pound.
- So, when you drink a
half liter bottle of water,
you instantly gain a pound,
an entire pound from just the water.
- Yeah, just from water.
And that's a big weight change,
and it can happen, again, very quickly.
- Like how quickly is quickly?
Is it overnight maybe?
- Yes, Ben.
In fact, overnight,
there are two processes
that cause you to lose
that water gain gradually.
The first process is respiration,
which is a fancy way of saying breathing.
- Oh, good, good.
- Yes, whenever we exhale, we
lose a little bit of water.
And you know a way to taste that?
- How?
- And also to test that if you're alive?
- (laughs) How's that?
- You breathe onto a mirror,
and that's why the mirror gets all foggy.
It's because you're
breathing out that moisture.
- Oh yeah, the condensation maybe.
The second thing is
transpiration through the skin.
The street name for that is sweating,
so you're losing water
through your sweat as well.
- And since this
happening while you sleep,
it's what I call the night sweats.
- The good old night sweats.
And these both eliminate a
surprising amount of water.
And then there's the third way
that you can lose this water weight.
We're all adults here.
- Yeah, it's pee pee.
- It's, yeah, it's peeing.
It's weeing.
- It's urination.
- So, you know a lot of
people use the restroom
before they weigh themselves
in the morning, right?
- Yeah.
- Guess how much water that eliminates.
- Tell me, Ben.
- Up to a pound?
- Whoa.
- What?
I know. I hope that guy's okay.
- So, again, a lot of water.
Yeah, the average person
eliminates about 1.2
liters of water in urine each day
and also eliminates about
one liter a day through
respiration, the breathing, and
transpiration, the sweating.
- Yes, yeah, absolutely.
So, that's almost five
pounds of weight fluctuation
throughout the day.
You remember that old myth, right?
Drink eight glasses of water every day.
The respiration and
transpiration and urination
are the reasons why.
- Oh, because we need all of that water
because we're just
constantly losing water,
left and right.
- We're just constantly
night sweats, between the night
sweats and everything else.
- Night sweats, day pee.
All day breathing.
- (laughs) That sounds like a song.
You know, night sweats, day pee.
- Yeah, night sweats, day pee.
- So, that's it.
Thanks so much for watching.
We hope this explains a little bit
about the amazing and, I'm gonna say it,
really weird weight
fluctuations that people have.
- Yeah, our bodies are very strange.
- Yeah, they're strange.
I'm gonna be thinking about that now,
like how many pounds of water I sweat.
- All of the night sweats.
But if you wanna know more things about
the weirdness of the human body,
you should comment below and let us know
what you'd like to learn
about on Brain Stuff.
