The Water Diet

Can you really lose weight by drinking water?

Friends and co-workers had been telling me for months about The Water Diet, but I didn’t believe you could lose weight from just drinking water. Of course, I have a few friends that did water fasts where they only consumed water for several days in order to drop a few pounds, but I had no knowledge of water helping with weight loss.

I did know that failing to drink enough water could cause you to gain weight, but that was the extent of my knowledge. Even with some well-formulated information, I found it difficult to believe that water could actually make you lose weight.

When I began searching for the Water Diet, I discovered there is not just one but dozens of variations. The one I chose involved drinking an eight-ounce glass of water before, during, and after each meal. To a degree it made a great deal of sense because if you accomplished nothing else, you were able to curb your appetite.

Many diets over the years have recommended drinking a glass of water no sooner than thirty minutes before a meal in order to provide the body with a sense of fullness, but it has only been recently that we have actually seen a trend toward using water as a weight loss tool.

During my research I discovered that the secret to water as a weight loss tool lies in the calorie burning process. If you drink cool water, the body needs to burn calories in order to heat the water to room temperature in your body. Thus, the colder the water is, the more calories it takes to burn it.

Statistically you can lose up to five pounds annually if you drink eight cool glasses of water daily and don’t change anything else in your eating or exercise routine. With that in mind, I figured if I made some adjustments in what I was eating and how I was exercising, I would have some success.

I reduced the amount of calories I was consuming by portion control as well as eating healthier foods, increased my activity level, and drank the water at every meal. The first thing I noticed was that I could eat less because the water provided a sense of fullness that decreased my appetite. By increasing my activity level, I was able to burn more calories.

I am certainly not a typical example since I only wanted to lose about five pounds, but I did prove to myself that the consumption of the right amount of water has a definite impact on weight loss. I even took a week off where I didn’t drink the water like I should but did the other things and gained a pound. It may not be much but a pound a week amounts to four or five pounds in a month, and if you do that consistently, you will soon be on the road to obesity.

If you are attempting to lose weight and not succeeding, you may want to try the Water Diet. If you have any health conditions that may cause oedema, the increased water may not be right for you. Always check with your doctor first, but in most cases increasing your intake of water has more benefits than problems.

Review by Karen Williams