Water: The Best Place to Start

One of the most common questions I hear is, "I want to lose weight but I don't know where to start." Well here's your answer: DRINK MORE WATER!

The beauty of this weight loss tip is in both its simplicity and overall effectiveness. If you Google reasons to drink more water, I'm sure you'll see thousands of articles explaining why water is so integral to your health. But a short and sweet explanation is that it aids in a multitude of life sustaining functions, supports physical performance, and aids in weight loss. For the purposes of this article, I'll focus on the latter.

By consuming more water, you're supporting weight loss two fold. First, water will help excrete excess water weight. This may seem counterintuitive, but when the body becomes dehydrated, it will actually hold onto water as a survival mechanism. In addition, elevated water consumption will potentially improve kidney function, thereby allowing excess water and sodium to be flushed out of the body.

Another way drinking more water yields weight loss is it can help prevent you from taking in calories you might have otherwise consumed unnecessarily. Basically, if you consume 3-4 glasses of a sugary or calorie containing drink with meals, replace those with water. Make yourself the deal that you can have that soda ONLY after you've consumed your normal equivalent in water first. I guarantee that even if you still reach for that soda, you'll certainly have a diminished capacity for consumption of any liquid because you've already filled up that space in your stomach and quenched that much of your thirst with water first.

For weight loss and healthy living to be sustained, they have to start with small steps somewhere. Drinking more water is something that you can literally do right this second and I promise, can be the jumping off point you need to get your health in check.