I have always been told that drinking water is important. I have also been told that if I am trying to loose weight and get into shape that drinking water will help. Yet, I have never understood why this is. It is probably due to my lack of understanding about water that has led to me always being slightly dehydrated.

In my quest to become more healthy I decided that it was time to find out just why water is so important, and how much I need to be drinking each day to be fully hydrated. I found what I was looking for here at timeforfitness.com. In their article: DRINKING WATER AND WEIGHT LOSS written back on 06.10.2011.

I already knew that drinking water helped flush out the toxins in our body, but I had no idea that water affected our metabolism as well. Your Metabolism is the rate you are able to convert fat stores into energy. This is done by your liver. However when you kidneys aren’t getting enough water to function, it is the Liver’s job to help cover for it. When this happens the liver cannot do its main function of converting fat to energy and your metabolism drops. This means that when you are getting enough water for your kidneys to function you liver is free to do its main work and as a result your metabolism rate increases.

The article goes on to explain why drinking the proper amount of water a day can help a person loose those last few pesky pounds that they had been unable to drop before. Water also helps improve muscle tone, and is a natural appitite suppressant.

So how much water do we need to be drinking a day? The daily requirement for a healthy non overweight person is 8 (8oz) cups a day. In addition to this base 8 cups a day a person needs to drink 1(8oz) cup for every 25lbs they are over weight. A note: If you are doing any intense physical workouts, working in the heat, or are pregnant you may need to add some more water to this basic equation.

For those interested in reading the above article in full. Here is the link: http://www.timeforfitness.com/weightloss/water-weight-loss.html