Did you know that one of the most effective weight loss supplements is good, old fashioned water? That’s right. Nevermind the plethora of pills, powders, and potions you’re bombarded with on the shelves of your local health and nutrition emporium, you need water to lose weight as quickly as possible. How does drinking water help you lose weight, and are there any special tricks you need to know in order to maximize your progress?

Drinking water helps you lose weight through two main mechanisms: the first is thermogenesis. Thermogenesis is just your body producing heat. In order to do that, it has to turn up your metabolism and burn calories. Could it really be so easy to lose weight?

The fact is that drinking cool water does make your body burn more calories through this process. Drink cold water, because then , your body must expend energy in order to heat it to body temperature. That energy has to come from somewhere. If you are eating correctly, this stored energy will be derived from fat.

The other way that drinking water can help you to lose weight and more importantly, burn fat, is because most people are chronically dehydrated. This causes your kidneys to function below par. When your kidneys aren’t working at peak efficiency something has to take up the slack for them. In this case it is your liver that gets pressed into duty helping rid the body of excess waste products.

That’s okay, because the liver is great at doing that , but there is something else the liver is also great at. The liver’s other function is metabolizing fatty acids. For those of us without medical degrees, that means the liver burns fat. The problem is that when the your body is dehydrated and the kidneys need help detoxifying your blood, helping them takes precedence over burning fat, so your liver stops metabolizing fat and starts helping out with waste management duties.

Drinking water can help make you lose fat in other ways as well . One of these is a bit counter intuitive. If you are in the early stages of dehydration, your body actually holds onto water, because in the dark recesses of our past, you couldn’t just go to the 7-11 and pick up a bottle of it. It might be days before you found any clean water to drink. This response causes you to retain water when you’re beginning to be dehydrated. Water is fairly heavy at over 8lbs per gallon, so it doesn’t take too much hiding inside your body before it can make the scale edge it’s way up. Chronic dehydration will eventually deplete these reserves, but cause many other problems.

You’ll know if you are drinking enough, because your urine will be clear, or very pale yellow . You will find that when you drink more water, your body will start purging itself of the excess water it has been storing for emergencies, so for a short time you will urinate more frequently. After your body is well hydrated, you will actually carry less water.

Drinking enough water will enable your body to regain the blood volume lost to dehydration. When propoerly hydrated, your body’s systems will be more likely to operate at maximum efficiency. This is especially important when you are exercising frequently. Your blood carries nutrients and oxygen to your muscles. When your blood volume is low you’ll feel lethargic and not want to work out.

These are a few of the reasons that drinking water helps weight loss. Grab a bottle of cool, clean water and drink it right now! Experts recommend about 8 12 oz glasses per day, but some of that is supplied by the foods you eat. Go to it!

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Scientists at Loma Linda University in California began following 8,280 men and 12,017 women aged 28 to 100 who had never had heart attack, stroke, or diabetes.

At the end of six years:

• Men who drank 5 or more glasses of water a day were 54 per cent less likely to have had a heart attack or stroke than men who drank 2 glasses a day or fewer.
• Women who drank 5 or more glasses of water a day were 41 per cent less likely to have had a heart attack or stroke than women who drank 2 glasses a day or fewer

The Loma Linda scientists concluded that the protective effect of drinking water was probably due to the reduced viscoscity of blood, which was less likely to clot. Also, in this study, people who drank more water drank less alcohol, sugary soft drinks, coffee, and tea, and the lesser benefit of drinking 5 glasses of water for women may have only been due to the fact that women usually have a smaller volume of blood than men.

Is there any truth to the belief that beverages other than water are dehydrating? Well, actually, water itself is not adequate for keeping you hydrated. You need at least a very small concentration of sugars and electrolytes in your overall consumption of food and drink to ensure normal fluid exchange in the intestine.

Most people, however, consume too much sugar and not enough electrolytes. As little as a tablespoon (15 ml) of fruit or vegetable juice every few hours, or the equivalent from food, may be enough to help your body stay in fluid balance.

Robert Rister is the author or co-author of nine books and over 2,000 articles on natural health including a review of the real value of colon cleansers.