Patriots quarterback and noted non-politics guy Tom Brady has a new book out that goes into painstaking detail about his preferred conditioning methods (lots of massages), his famously strict diet (not a whole lot of dessert!), and the volume of water he drinks in order to stay hydrated (on some days, up to two and a half gallons). Wait, what?

Brady's baseline recommendation is to drink half one's body weight in ounces every day, which, at his listed weight of 225 pounds, would put his target at close to a gallon of water. As anyone who proudly and publicly toted around a worn plastic jug during their obligatory bodybuilding phase in high school can attest, this can be an uncomfortable amount of water to get down your gullet in a 24-hour period. Even if it causes you to run through your allotted bathroom passes much faster than you'd planned, though, it's a not particularly onerous task. (Kathleen Jones, a Certified Nutrition Specialist affiliated with The Vitamin Shoppe, recommends that during exercise, athletes drink between six and eight ounces of water every five to fifteen minutes, depending on how much they sweat, in order to avoid dehydration.)

Brady, however, states that on "active days," his intake increases dramatically to three hundred ounces of water, which is enough to fill a nice aquarium. He even genially hypothesizes that his super-duper-extra-hyrdated state is what protects him from sunburns, which is, shall we say, a perhaps-bold assertion, since drinking water is most certainly not a sun exposure management strategy that is currently recommended by the renowned health care professionals at the Center for Disease Control, or the Mayo Clinic, or the Cleveland Clinic, or any other reputable source, really. (Please wear sunscreen.)

Unconscionably irresponsible pseudoscience aside, though, I asked some experts what they thought about Brady's efforts to turn himself into a human-sized Nalgene bottle. Jonathan Harper, an associate professor of urology at the University of Washington School of Medicine, tells me in an email that Brady's hydration regimen is "definitely" not recommended for the general population. Although anyone losing large amounts of water through sweating will need to drink more water than an inactive person, he says, 300 ounces may be extreme even for a professional athlete, and could lead to severe illness. Michael Fredericson, a Stanford Health Care sports medicine physiatrist, downplayed the idea that any "ideal" water intake amount exists, citing with approval a recent New York Times review that found "no real scientific proof, for otherwise-healthy people, [that] drinking extra water has any health benefits."

Even those in the heart of Bradyland are dubious. Mark Zeidel, a Harvard Medical School professor and chair of Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center department of medicine, politely called the number "a bit high" and added that the likeliest result of downing that much water is... well, having to pee a lot. Although it "may be okay for an elite athlete," he concluded, given the potential dangers associated with hyponatremia and water intoxication, "this is definitely one of those 'Don't do this at home' situations."

But Brady's purported water intake level isn't even close to the most baffling fluids-related revelation in the book:

"I never had any coffee or anything like that," Brady told WEEI. "Ijust never tried it."

I'll die first.

Watch Now:Have Whiskey, Will TravelJay Willis is a staff writer at GQ covering news, law, and politics. Previously, he was an associate at law firms in Washington, D.C. and Seattle, where his practice focused on consumer financial services and environmental cleanup litigation. He studied social welfare at Berkeley and graduated from Harvard Law School... Read moreRelated Stories for GQTom BradyHealthHealth