During my teen years, I tried controlling my obesity using the very popular method, at least to us teenagers back then, known as liquid therapy. It’s a diet merely composed lots and lots of water and some fruits. No not the liquid diet therapy for Crohn’s disease patients.

I know that it’s actually for people who has recently undergone surgery but my reliance on my research ability and my understanding of the human body – I have a BS Biology degree, made me resort to this drastic dieting technique allowing myself to be my own guinea pig.

How did I fare with this water diet?

For one month I only drank water and ate fruits. NOT! I ate beef, chicken, and egg but only once a week. And, I coupled with 1-hour shadow boxing and freestyle dancing every morning. YES, every single morning of that one month.

And as I’ve expected I’ve lost about 10 pounds in just one month, which I know is not a healthy number of pounds lost. But that’s actually how much I’ve lost.

Aside from the exercise, I’ve gotten rid of my other activities to avoid overworking my body.

After stopping the liquid therapy diet plus shadow boxing and freestyle dancing, what else should I expect? I gained back some weight.

So what’s the moral lesson of my story? No it’s not that I totally recommend water fasting to help you in your weight loss endeavor, since it may not work for you, or worse it can do you more harm than good. Since as taught my the experts, weight management is not a standardized process.

However, I’ve learned that definitely water can help one lose weight because aside from that experience, although it has turned into a yo-yo dieting thing, it still helped me lose weight without too much side effects as opposed to the other weight loss activities I did, which I’ll discuss some other time.

This is also the time to inform you on what may cause the wonder on how water helps one to lose weight. According to Peter Lindner’s Fat, Water Retention and You, when your water intake is too meager (below eight cups a day), aldosterone, a hormone that causes the body to hold on to every molecule of water and sodium it can will be secreted. This causes water retention, which is one source of weight gain.

Also, many mistake thirst for hunger. If you find yourself feeling pangs of hunger, try drinking water first. Weight management experts say that if it still doesn’t water down your cravings, then that’s the time you eat some healthy solid food.

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