Drinking water to lose weight is one of those tips that you’ve probably heard about over and over throughout the years, but it’s stood the test of time because it actually works! Succeeding on a low calorie diet plan or one of the many low fat diet plans is impossible without plenty of water, and may even be harmful to your health.
Dehydration is a dangerous and often overlooked complication of quick weight loss programs that can weaken your body’s immune system and undo all of the hard work you’ve done to lose weight.
I’ll tell you exactly why drinking water to lose weight is one of the most important weight loss principles that are out there...It’s necessary for our survival!
Our bodies can withstand weeks of starvation without food but only a few days without water. Due to massive water loss through sweating and urination, we need at least six glasses of water per day on a normal day without excessive heat or activity.
Most people fall far short of this mark. If you’re going to be putting so much energy into losing weight (counting calories, resisting temptation, doing fifty push-ups every day, etc), then drinking water is probably the easiest thing you’ll do on your entire diet so do not skip this important step.
One of the major reasons water is so essential when dieting is becausequick weight loss can have a poisoning effect on your body without lots of water to flush all the toxins through. When your body breaks down stored fats, it needs water to dilute these by-products and whatever else was stored in those fats.
Fat soluble pollutants and toxins like pesticides can cause serious illness in someone experiencing weight loss without adequate water intake so drinking water to lose weight is not just helpful, it’s really quite necessary.
When you’re on a diet, you’re also eating less food and it’s interesting to note that for many of us, most of the water content we get throughout the day is in our food itself. Dieters are more likely to become dehydrated due to the decreased food consumption, so extra water intake is even more important.
The other important thing to learn from this fact however is that often when our body is thirsty, it “remembers” that there is a lot of water in food, and tells you that you’re hungry so you’ll go eat something!
In essence, a lot of times when we think we feel hungry, we’re really just thirsty so drinking water to lose weight makes sense because it suppresses our appetites and makes it less likely that our bodies initiate intense cravings.
Fizzy, sugary drinks are a big reason that many people are overweight. We now drink more than one 2-liter bottle per person every week, on average. Each serving of sugary, fizzy drinks and juice is extremely high in sugar and calories: as much as a candy bar for just one small glass. Substituting water for cola is the easiest change for weight loss that you can do in your day to day life.
You can save hundreds of calories each day by just looking at your fluid intake and often substituting water for other more calorie rich beverages.
Although it was traditional wisdom that caffeinated beverages do not count toward your body’s needs for water, it’s not clinically true, so feel free to drink coffee, tea, and diet soda as long as you’re also drinking water to lose weight.
The pure water is necessary, especially for the elderly who often do not feel thirst in the same way that they used to – this is one reason why it’s good to get in the habit of drinking water even when you are not thirsty.
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