Every Thursday, we tell you to drink water. Well today's Wednesday.. and we want to make sure drinking half your bodyweight in ounces isn't just a Thursday thing!

Your body is made up almost entirely of water; its hard to believe, but everything in your body is floating in a water-based suspension. Also, many of our bodily functions require water in some part of their equation to occur properly. In this case, we are going to talk about the liver.

The liver is an amazing organ, of its many functions, one is to take released bodyfat and break it down for use as energy (a process called lipolysis). However, when hydration levels get as low as 80% (ie not very low) the liver & kidneys have a difficult time functioning, and filtering all that thickened blood. Since kidney function trumps liver function on the task-list of sustaining life, the amazing liver does what it can to take over for the kidneys. Wow, we are sure glad that is the case, otherwise we would all be in some serious trouble! But we are; because without the liver able to do its job, lipolysis (from above, the breakdown of fat for use as energy) doesn't occur at the rate in which we need it to, in order to maintain a healthy body composition.

So one of the points we are trying to make is that in order for proper diet & exercise to be truly effective, you'll need to maintain a proper hydration level as well, so that the bodyfat released into the bloodstream due to exercise can be broken down and used as energy to repair, and proper nutrition will have provided us with the right type of protein that breaks down into the amino acids we require to use as the building blocks of muscle in the repair of tired & sore muscles (that was a mouthful!)  :)

So remember, half your bodyweight in ounces, spread throughout the entire day.

Water increases your metabolism so much that if you're chronically dehydrated, it can mean up to an 8 pound weight gain (or more) per year. No wonder weight creeps on! Your challenge is to drink at least half your body weight in ounces of water PER DAY. Ex: 150lb = 75 oz of water.

This doesn't mean all at once, it means throughout the whole day ;) We can all mistake thirst for hunger too, which leads to eating more unnecessary calories, so it's important to always have water handy. Can you do it? Get that calendar out & mark it down to remind yourself!