Reduce Weight Smartly - 1 - Importance of Water

Facts about water:

Consume at least 4 – 6 liters of water each day.

Let us calculate the amount of water exerted from body. Then you will know the amount of water to drink each day.

Every one of us urinate 5 – 10 times each day. The amount is approximately 150 ml in the morning and 100 ml other time. This means almost 1.5 liter of water is excreted from the body each day.

The amount of water that is used for digestion is approximately 1 liter.

The amount of water used by kidney is approximately 1 liter

Other miscellaneous expenses like – Sweating , Crying etc. – 0.5 liter

So just for expenses of body itself each person needs to drink 4 liters. And this is only minimum amount of water to be consumed daily. That is every normal person needs to drink 4 liters. If a person is obese he needs to drink extra water. This will help in cleaning the system more efficiently. 

Of course if you are drinking 4 – 6 liters of water, your frequency of visiting washroom is going to increase. This has two positive side effects –

You move out of system for few minutes. It is mandated.

You have to walk few meters every one hour. So few calories will also be burnt  (Tip from Murali)

When you are in diet, drink lots of water

When you go on crash diet like fasting few days only with fruits, mostly it is only the water content of your body is reduced.

Water weight is more volatile than Fat weight. So it can be reduced / gained easily.

That is why you immediately gain your weight after you finish your diet. (Example : GM diet) because the water

Maintain ideal weight of water

Every normal person needs to balance a proportion of weight for

• Muscle
  
• Fat
  
• Water
  
• Bone etc
  

A person can be overweight or obese. If a person is termed to have obesity it means he is having Fat weight more than ideal weight. But it is not necessary that the water weight of the person is also above ideal. Most of the cases, the water weight of the body might be lesser than the ideal weight. So it is not enough just to reduce weight. We need to reduce the weight of fat (it must not be reduced less than ideal weight) and still have water weight in the same ideal weight range.

If a person is not consuming enough water, the water is consumed from brain cells. This leads to de-hydration in the brain and that is why you get headache.

For example, you walk in sun. The water in the body is sweated out and this result in lesser amount of water in the body and that is why you can sense headache after walking few minutes in Hot Sun.

Drink water at right time

As many of us follow, it is not advisable to drink water while having food. Probably the only time most of drink water is after having lunch. We can see the long queue in the water counter.

Naturopathy doctors suggest that it is not advisable to drink water half an hour before meals and half an hour after meals. Suppose you are having lunch at 12.30 then don’t have water from 12 to 1 o clock. But make sure you drink water before and after this time period.

We need to avoid drinking water half an hour before meals because water is alkaline in nature and to neutralize, some acids will be secreted in the stomach. These are digestive acids. If we drink and these acids are secreted then the amount of acidic juices will be reduced. So there is will be scarcity of juices for digesting our meals.

We need to avoid drinking water within half an hour after having meals because water drunk after meals will dilute the digestive juices (acids) and so they won’t have full power to digest our food.

Avoid drinking water just before sleeping. This will sometimes result in making the stomach upset.

Drink 6 – 8 glasses of water in the morning

Because water is alkaline in nature it is very good cleanser. If possible drink lime + honey juice in the morning. Or Arugambul  juice. If you can’t go for these, drink one liter of water in the morning. You will really see the changes.

Habits we can inculcate in our everyday life:

Purchase two water bottles. 1 liter or two liter. Have one water bottle beside your bed and one beside your workstation.

Fill the water bottle full and keep it beside your bed. As soon as you get up drink as much water as you can. Initial days you will feel sense of vomiting and you can’t drink more than one glass. Don’t force. Drink as much as you can. Sip little by little every few minutes. Target to finish one liter before starting to office.

As soon as coming to office while your system is booting up (assuming you shut down your system everyday  J ) fill your office water bottle.

Set reminders in mobile / outlook / thru friends for every half an hour to remind you to drink water. If you are a person who uses mobile often, then have a note in the screen of your mobile or in desktop of your machine.

Try to drink 3 liters of water in office. It means you must empty your water bottle thrice.

Whenever you are bored have a sip of water. Keep the bottle right next to you. Else you will forget.

Maintain a log in your diary (or any separate weight reduction note) the amount of water you consume daily. This will sensitize the amount of water you drink every day.

P.S:  I am a person who forgets everything frequently. For many days even if the water bottle is next to me I will not drink water. Or consume not more than 1 liter. But now after setting reminders in my mobile, I find it much easier. I have set it for every one hour except during lunch time. And I follow all these habits.

Next Article – Exercises with Water