How Water Can Change Your Life

I am asked, almost daily, “If I could only do one thing to improve my health what would it be?” I always answer “drink more water.”

I am passionate about hydration and water intake because your body depends on water to survive. Every cell, tissue, and organ in your body needs water to work correctly. Digestive health, skin health, kidney, urinary health, and even cholesterol regulation are all affected by hydration or the lack thereof. Hydration also plays a key role in how your body maintains its temperature, removes waste, and lubricates joints. Keeping the body hydrated also helps the heart more easily pump blood through the blood vessels to the muscles. If you’re well-hydrated, your heart doesn’t have to work as hard.

Unfortunately, it’s estimated that 75 percent of the American population is chronically dehydrated. That is staggering. That means you are likely chronically dehydrated!

The Link Between Dehydration and Weight Loss

Dehydration will continually cause you to seek out food even when you are not hungry. Your body is smarter than you and it will fight tooth and nail to keep you alive! If you are not giving it the water that it needs, it will drive you to food, hoping to extract water from the food you take in.

That system worked and was very valuable with our ancestors when the majority of foods that people took in were fruits and vegetables, filled with water and nutrients. It kept people without adequate water supply alive. But today, the body craves things it can grab easily, including foods that are higher in salt, fat, and sugar.

One study found that one glass of water stopped hunger pangs for nearly 100 percent of those in the study.  Another review of studies published in Frontiers in Nutrition found that increased hydration led to weight loss due to a lower intake of calories and fat loss.

That’s why drinking 100 ounces of water per day is one of the main pillars in my book, Target 100.

How much water should you drink for health and weight loss? The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine determined that the ideal intake is approximately 15.5 cups for men (125 ounces) and 11 cups (91 ounces) for women.

Dehydration symptoms can include actually feeling thirsty or having a dry mouth to a slight headache, constipation, dizzy spells, impaired memory and loss of concentration. It can make you feel fatigued and also give you muscle cramps

How to Form a Hydration Habit

Drinking more water is simple, but not necessarily easy. This is where I see so many people fail. They set the “goal” of drinking more water without a plan or habit-building system in place. You simply will not remember to drink more water. It isn’t your habit. To succeed, you can rely on the habit loop of trigger-routine-reward and get serious about triggering the intake of water at moments that are consistent and stable. Set alarms on your phone, place a water bottle on your desk, bring water to bed to drink upon waking. This simple change of drinking up to 100 ounces of water a day can yield amazing results!