“I want to lose weight”, “I am trying so hard to put off those extra kilos”…. Sounds familiar? In the quest of slender bodies, we often tend to take up any new fitness regimes that are in trend, but tend to ignore some of the simple facts such as water actually helps in losing weight!! Yup – you read that right – water helps burn the fat and builds muscle!

Drinking water is one of the easiest efforts you can incorporate into your weight loss or weight maintenance plan. Think about it: unlike saying no to eating that delicious pastry at work or going to kickboxing class once or twice a week, making sure you are drinking enough water requires little to no will power.

Why water???

1. Drinking Water Helps Maintain the Balance of Body Fluids - Your body is composed of about 60% water. The functions of these bodily fluids include digestion, absorption, circulation, creation of saliva, transportation of nutrients, and maintenance of body temperature.

2. Helps Keep Skin Looking Good - Your skin contains plenty of water, and functions as a protective barrier to prevent excess fluid loss.

3. Helps Your Kidneys - Your kidneys do an amazing job of cleansing and ridding your body of toxins as long as your intake of fluids is adequate

4. Helps Maintain Normal Bowel Function - Adequate hydration keeps things flowing along your gastrointestinal tract

5. Drinking Water Fills You Up – As it keeps you from overeating

6. Drinking Water Revs Up Your Metabolism - Water has been proven to contribute to your body's ability to burn calories

7. Drinking Water Keeps You Healthy - Water flushes toxins from your body's system and aids in keeping your joints lubricated

8. Stops water retention - Leading you to drop those extra pounds of water weight

9. Drinking water helps build muscle - Think of it this way, blood plasma is 90% water and so water is like an ever-flowing stream in your body that carries oxygen and nutrients to your muscles, organs and entire body. This water transportation system, delivering nourishment, is not only vital to keeping your muscles hydrated so they contract, function, and build up optimally, but necessary for your entire body to have an overall feeling of well-being.

Having educated enough on why you should include loads of water in your everyday routine, now let us learn how this can be easily included as a major part of your weight loss program …

1. Drink water before you eat

Health resource websites such as WebMD state that drinking water before meals results in an average reduction in intake of 75 calories per meal. Drinking water before just one meal per day would cause you to ingest 27,000 fewer calories per year. Do the math: You'd lose about eight pounds per year just from drinking water! Now imagine if you drank it before each meal.

2. Replace calorie-filled drinks with water

Ditch the sodas and juice and replace them with water to help you lose weight. If you think water tastes boring, add a slice of lemon. A glass of water with lemon is a recipe for successful weight loss because the pectin in lemons helps reduce food cravings.

3. Drink it ice cold

Drinking ice cold water helps boost your metabolism because your body has to work harder to warm the water up, therefore burning more calories and helping you to lose weight. Plus, ice cold water is just so much more refreshing than water that’s room temperature.

4. Hit the gym

Because drinking water helps prevent muscle cramping and keeps your joints lubricated, you can work out longer and harder. Just another way of keeping yourself hydrated with water and thereby helps you lose weight.

5. Make sure you get enough

You should follow the “8x8” rule recommended by most nutritionists: Drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day for weight loss and to maintain an ideal weight. You might need to drink more water if you exercise a lot or sweat heavily, or less water if you drink other beverages like herbal tea (make sure they are decaffeinated).

Remember water can only be a mere booster to the process of your weight loss as long as you follow a healthy clean diet plan and workout regimes along with, not a complete diet plan by itself.

So be it your weight issues or health issues that are bothering you, start loving and drinking water and feel the difference in you!!!!!! Go H2O……..