Water is an essential part of our diet and vital for the ongoing functioning of our bodies. Healthy hydration helps maintain these processes.
The human body consists of, on average, about 60% water. The brain, heart, lungs, and muscles consist of considerably more than this, however, even your bones contain over 30% water. And whilst you could live on little or no food over a month, the body cannot survive without water for more than a few days.
Adequate water consumption is an important step in the weight loss program this site promotes. It is also essential for maintaining good overall health and wellness.
The benefits of drinking water
There are quite a few reasons to maintain good hydration. Some of these are essential requirements to our survival; others are simply beneficial to our health.
Let’s look at some of reasons to stay hydrated.
- Avoiding Dehydration. The first and foremost reason for drinking more water is to avoid dehydration. Severe dehydration causes potentially life-threatening problems such as brain swelling, seizures, and kidney failure. Healthy hydration helps avoid these issues.
- Body Temperature Regulation. Staying hydrated helps maintain your body temperature during physical exercise or in hot environments. Sweating keeps your body cool, but requires the lost water to be replenished.
- Help Maximise Physical Performance. By managing your body temperature and staving off dehydration, your body is able to continue performing efficiently. It is possible to lose a considerable amount of water during intense physical activity.
- Maintaining Cognitive Function. Not drinking enough water can negatively impact your brain function. This can include your alertness, focus, and short-term memory.
- Saliva Production. Water is the primary component of saliva, together with a small amount of electrolytes and enzymes. Saliva begins the process of breaking down food for digestion.
- Improves Digestion. Drinking water throughout a meal helps your body break down the food more effectively. This can help you get better nutrition from the food you eat.
- Better Nutrient Absorption. Many of the minerals, vitamins, and other nutrients your body needs are dissolved in water. Healthy hydration helps carry these nutrients to where your body needs them.
- Removes Waste. Keeping your body hydrated helps with kidney function and the removal toxins and waste products. These are then excreted via bowel movements, urination, and perspiration.
- Healthy Skin. Suitable water consumption helps to keep your skin hydrated and may also promote the production of collagen. This can help combat the effects of aging and sun exposure.
There are further reasons beyond the above, however, you get the idea. Water intake affects almost all areas of our health and body function and is an important element in our weight reduction program.
Can drinking water help lose weight?
There have been numerous studies linking water and weight loss. This is generally due to improved digestion and improved metabolic function rather than from water fasting.
The weight loss program we promote does not use water fasting for weight loss. Water fasting is a weight loss technique whereby only water or fluids are consumed for a number of days, i.e. no food.
Whilst some rapid weight loss may be achieved, water fasting is not effective for losing weight and keeping it off. Nor is it a particularly healthy method of weight loss; you are effectively starving your body of all the other energy and nutrients it needs for health functioning.
An effective weight loss program should cover all aspects of weight loss, health, and wellness. This includes diet, exercise, water intake, and long-term prospects for keeping the weight off; not just a fad diet.