Water and Weight Control

How is water the single most important catalyst for weight control?

Amazing as it is, most of us take this life giving liquid, for granted and assume that it is essential for life and don’t think much more about it except ‘Don’t Waste It”. But what is it's purpose in the body. In essence, it maintains the efficiencies of a diverse group of functions in the body. Without it, the body is not able to fully perform as the body directs the water to the essential areas for survival.

What does water do?

To not drink enough water will cause your body to be put off balance. The chemistry that makes your body function will not be able to perform effectively as it should. You may experience symptoms such as fluid retention, weight gain, loss of thirst, dry skin, the list is long.

When the body has a good intake of water, it can function at optimum as the fluids are balanced ‘within’.

This means that you will experience

• A natural thirst

• Natural hunger (but remember to eat until you are adequately full not until you are totally full.

• Liver function improves and metabolism removes excess fat not required.

• A limited evidence of fat retention

• Endocrine function improved

How Does water work?

Appetite

With the appetite, it suppresses it naturally, allowing the body to metabolise the stored fat. The kidney is not able to function correctly without the balance of water thus the excess that cannot be processed is moved to the liver for its assistance. By doing this, the liver converts the excess fats to stored fat deposits and places them in areas of your body for future use.

Studies have shown that by increasing the amount of water consumed, it will actually reduce the amount of fat stored as the kidneys are working properly and processing the material and passing through the excess as waste. The kidney’s function is not to convert the food to fat deposits but to pass the excess through the body, which is the balance that we want for good health.

With the knowledge that water assists the liver to metabolise the stored fat into useable energy, a large person carrying excess weight needs to increase the water intake to assist the metabolic process.

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Fluid Retention

With fluid retention problems, the best thing to do for long term correction and maintenance is to drink more water. If you drink less (not enough for the natural balance to occur), the body goes into survival mode and stores the water. The storage is usually in areas that outside the cells called extracellular. This often occurs in the feet, legs and hands.

If diuretics are used to displace the water build-up, this is a short term solution as the body will just replace the water storage as it is in survival mode. Your water intake is minimal and your body is programmed over centuries that it must reserve any excess.

Therefore if you drink more water consistently and as part of your daily diet, it allows the body to think that it is in a time of plenty and does not feel it has the need to build up that storage so much.

Another issue with water retention is if your diet contains a larger amount of sodium (salt products) than the body needs, it requires a larger amount of water to dilute the salts to an acceptable level. Your body can only tolerate a certain concentration of salts and uses water to stabilize this concentration. By increasing the water intake, you allow the dilution to take place effectively and the kidneys will force the excess water carrying the diluted salt concentration from the body. Thus creating a balance within the body. Salt intake in the diet should also be monitored as there is no point in putting your body under excess stress.

Water and Body Waste

During exercise and weight loss activities, the body moves the stored fat and pushes it into the usable energy and the excess is then removed through the kidneys and out as waste. Water plays an important part in the flushing of the body of the excess products in the body out as waste. Stored fat is just one example.

With this in mind, knowing that water helps flush the system, water can also help the ailment of constipation. If there is too little an intake, the body will take water from other areas and redirect to the viral areas that need it. One such source for the water to be removed from is the colon. The result in the colon is constipation, drink more water and the bowel function will return to normal.

Water and Muscles

For the muscles of your body to perform with the natural ability of contraction and release, it must maintain certain levels of water. This will prevent the muscles being dehydrated. With out the correct level of fluid, the cell structure tends to sag, the toxins that are a by-product from exercise do not move through the muscle as easily as they should which leads to other complications. The skin that covers your body will sag. Skin is held buoyant as the water in the cell structure if at full capacity tends to allow the skin to be firm and collected.

But how much is enough?

Generally the experts recommend about 2 litres of water per 24 hour period, however a person with excess weight should drink more. The recommended amount by the experts is about 1 glass per 10 kilos of weight carried over the average standard weight scale that suits you. The water intake also needs to be increased when the body is exposed to hot and dry weather as moisture is evaporated from our skin as the body uses it to cool our body temperature at a constant level. It also needs to increase with the amount of exercise or manual labour that you are exposing the body too.

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