It’s no surprise to anyone that clean drinking water is an essential part of being healthy, but did you know that it is also one of the most important resources when it comes to dieting and weight loss?

The first step to any diet is obviously to eat less food or decrease portions. This is simple enough, but where most people go wrong is when they reduce their food intake, they also reduce the amount of water they drink. It’s true that not drinking water can cause you to temporarily lose a couple pounds, but in the long run this is one of the most crucial dieting mistakes you can make. Lots of clean, healthy water is one of the most important pieces to the natural weight loss puzzle.

Let me give you a brief explanation of how weight loss works within the body. When you burn calories, your liver converts fatty acids into energy for your body to use for any activity from breathing to a full paced sprint. This is where the water comes in. Your liver requires an abundance of water to complete this task efficiently. Using clean water can even help to speed this process up. Using unpurified water puts more pressure on your kidneys to filter out the added metals and other contaminants found in tap water such as chlorine and asbestos. Often times, your kidneys are not able to handle this added pressure alone, and some of the work is pushed to the liver. This takes the liver away from its initial job of converting fat into energy, and the fat is left to be stored in your body.

Doctors recommend that the average person drink at least half a gallon of fresh water every day. If you are currently trying to lose weight, you should add one eight ounce glass of water for every 25 pounds you weigh above your recommended weight. If you are unsure about how much to drink, I say just go ahead and drink some more.

Now the question is how are you going to get such a large source of clean, fresh water? Tap water is contaminated with chlorine, asbestos, lead, mercury, and dozens of other chemicals. That won’t do. Water bottles will end up costing you thousands of dollars every year, and a good amount of water bottles contain the same contaminants as tap water, and home delivered water has the same problems. That is no good either. The only real choice you have of getting pure, uncontaminated water at a reasonable price is to buy your own home water filter. It will provide you the best quality, and in the long run it will cost you less money than bottled water.