Drinking Water and Weight Loss

One of the keys factors in childhood obesity is a drinking water and weight loss link. Make water your household beverage of choice and help your child shed excess weight.

Early on in my creation of the Kids in Balance weight loss and lifestyle change program, it became clear that sufficient water intake was one of the seven key B-A-L-A-N-C-E factors in whether or not a child developed obesity. Along with Body type, Attitude, Laughter and play, Activity, a good Night's sleep and Eating for health, was the very important Clean water factor.

If you are a parent and you've been telling your child to drink more water, you are right. Drinking 8-12 glasses of water a day is a great idea. Quite simply, water is the body’s most important nutrient. At conception your child was surrounded by water and for her 9 months of pre-birth growth, she is carried in a water-filled amniotic sac. And after birth, though you may see very little of it, her body fluids really are everywhere. Between 57-70% of your child's body weight is made up of water.

Health Benefits of Water

While there is indeed a drinking water and weight loss link, there are many more health benefits of water. For starters:

• water fills and bathes each of a body’s 100 trillion cells
• water makes up the fluid that travels the 60,000 miles (100,000 Km) of veins and arteries in a body
• 98% of intestinal, gastric, saliva and pancreatic juices are water and
• 92% of blood and  tears are water.

Water goes virtually everywhere and surrounds virtually every bit of tissue in our systems. If those health benefits of water weren't enough, water holds nutritive factors in solution and acts as a transportation medium for those factors. Another transport function, and one of water’s most important jobs, is holding body wastes and toxins in solution and carrying them to where they can be removed from the body. Water also:

• acts as a lubricant for our joints and soft tissues
• provides the liquid necessary for the proper digestion of food
• helps maintain normal body temperature by allowing heat to escape as water evaporates from our skin and
• provides the medium for red blood cells to transport oxygen to the tissues.

So while it might be nice that there is a link between drinking water and weight loss, it is also clear that there are a great variety of other benefits to drinking water. And of prime importance, is the fact that water is one of the best natural protections against a variety of infectious diseases including influenza, pneumonia, whooping cough and measles. The performance of your tissues and their resistance to injury is absolutely dependent on the quality and quantity of water you and your child drink.

Drinking Water and Weight Loss

So how exactly does drinking enough water help with weight loss? First, if your child is drinking water, it means she isn't drinking pop, sugary juices or drinks laden with artificial sweeteners. She doesn't need the empty calories of pop and juice nor the challenges of dealing with the possible link between artificial sweeteners and obesity.

The next reason drinking water and weight loss go hand is hand is the simple reason that your child needs proper nutrients to reach and maintain a healthy weight; water ensures those nutrients get to the right places in a timely fashion. Even before its transportation role, however, water provides the environment in which enzymes digest food and convert it to energy. In order for your child to have the stamina for physical activity and the mental capacity to make good food choices, she needs sufficient water intake.

Finally, when your child is adequately hydrated, there is less chance she will mistake a "thirst" signal for a "hunger" signal and overeat.

According to author Kelly Barton, "Water is the most neglected nutrient in your diet but one of the most vital." Take full advantage of the link between drinking water and weight loss and ensure your child drinks 3-4 glasses of water for every 50 pounds of body weight, every day.

Need more help in transitioning your child to a healthy weight range? Order my Overweight Kids in a Toothpick World. The book details the entire Kids in Balance program and provides step-by-step instructions, activity sheets, Day-at-a-Glance Guidelines and lots of tasty, kid-friendly recipes. KIB's simple steps to helping your child reach an appropriate weight mean health really can be in your home.

If you would like even more support to go along with Overweight Kids in a Toothpick World, purchase Coach, ten weeks of helpful newsletters designed to provide further insight and encouragement for you and your child during each stage of the KIB journey.

You are also welcome to download the free handout, 10 Things You Can Do Right Now to Get Your Kids in Balance.

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