Permanent Fitness

Everyone really knows this. When on a diet, you should drink a lot of water. Quite often though, we don’t really ask the question: Why? Why is drinking water so important? I did some research and here are the answers. Apparently there are quite a few reasons to drink water no matter if your’re on a diet or not, but if you  are on a diet and do not drink, you sabotage all your efforts….

Drinking water is essential no matter if you’re on a diet or not

1. Our organisms need water to function properly. Each one of us should drink at least half a gallon of water a day and even more than that is better. It is quite interesting that most of us don’t do it. We drink coffee, tea or other fuzzy or sweet drinks, none of which can substitute water. In fact a lot of these dehydrate us even more. Majority of people are constantly dehydrated.
2. Drinking water boost metabolism. This is quite a long one, but I’ll try to explain it in detail. If you are like one of those people I described above and do not drink too much water, your kidneys, which are responsible for collecting and removing many produces of your body from the blood, cannot work properly. In that situation their function is taken over by your liver. Your liver is reducing slack to prevent it from being toxic to you. Being busy with that, however, liver cannot perform it’s other function, which is converting fat into energy. When during your diet you start to drink water, your kidneys begin to work again and free your liver, which can focus its efforts on burning that excess fat of yours.
3. Drinking water reduces craving for food. Feeling of thirst starts to bother you only if your body fluids drop 4-5% below their optimum. Until then, you do not really feel thirsty. Quite often, however, you might get this feeling of craving for something, but its difficult to figure out what. On many of those occasions, instead of a glass of water, you’ll reach for a snack. To prevent that from happening, you should drink a little too much and a bit earlier. If you actually feel thirsty, that means it is too late – try to improve next time.
4. Drinking before eating makes you eat less. This goes especially to people who are obese, but everyone should do it. If you drink a glass or two 10 minutes before eating, your stomach fills up and already starts to send signals to the brain, saying ‘I’m full – not hungry!!’. This helps you eat slower and less. Also, there is a greater chance of actually feeling full before you eat too much.
5. Water has no calories. All other drinks have more or less calories, but water has an absolute zero. If you really want to lose weight, forget about fuzzy drinks. Coke and other stuff like that should be gone from your menu for good. But what’s more – remember about juices. If you drink them, count them in your daily calorie intake. You’d be surprised how many calories can there be in your drinks.

There you go – 5 reasons. There are more probably, but for me these are enough.

So how about you – do you drink water? How is it working for you?