Healthy Dieting

How much water you need to drink every day depends on your individual metabolism and on your weight. Here is a handy formula for working out your estimated needs:

Take your body weight, round it off upwards to the nearest 10, divide by 10 and then add 2. This is the number of glasses (250 ml) of water you need to drink every day.

If, for example, you weigh 79 kg, you should drink ten glasses of water a day (80/10 +2 = 10). This is the amount of water you need to drink on an average day, but if you are exercising, you will need to add at least another three glasses of water.

This formula takes into account the amount you urinate, the amount of water you exhale, the amount of water you perspire every day, and so on. The heavier you are, the faster your body is metabolising, and that’s why bigger people need more water. A sedentary woman weighing 70 kg, for example, needs less than an active 80 kg man — she needs about nine glasses of water a day.

Drinking so much is difficult if you are very busy during the day. The best way to ensure that you are getting your full water quota is to have ‘cues’ — and those cues should be the main meals of the day

• After breakfast, down three glasses of water.
• After lunch, down three glasses of water.
• After supper, down three glasses of water.

This may sound rather unpleasant and even barbaric. If you are not used to drinking so much water, you will certainly find this to be the case — at least for a while. But I suggest this method for one good reason: it works.

You may feel a little nauseous for a few minutes after drinking your water. This nausea is simply your lazy body’s way of saying, `Hey! This is different! I don’t want to change!’ Please persist: after a week or so of forcing your body to drink the water it requires, your thirst centre will suddenly wake up bright and cheery from its long slumber. Very soon, you will automatically start feeling very thirsty after each meal — and will down those three glasses of water with no problem at all!

It’s a good idea to drink your water lukewarm or at least at room temperature. Very cold water tends to make the stomach shrink, and as a result you don’t feel like having more than about a glass.

Please do not worry about the ‘dangers’ of eating and drinking water at the same time. Feeling thirsty during a meal is a natural response of the body, because it needs additional water to process the salts and food particles filtering into the stomach and the bloodstream. The idea that drinking at the same time as eating is bad for you probably originated during war times. Because there was a great scarcity of food, parents needed to ensure that when it did become available their children ate every scrap on their plates. A child who drank a large glass of water during the meal would not be inclined to finish his food — and so the precious nutrients would go to waste.

This advice no longer applies. Here is a good reason for drinking water before or during a meal: when food enters our digestive tracts, it moves along as a semi-solid fluid. It’s only at the end of this long and tedious journey that the water is finally absorbed. Why? Because it is needed to keep the food travelling smoothly and freely through the digestive tract. If you don’t drink at meal times, your food will stay relatively solid, and will move too slowly through your gut. The result is constipation.

Also please do not hesitate to drink plain tap water. I believe there’s little point in spending money on expensive bottled water (I’d rather you spent it on delicious fat-free treats!). Bottled water is no better for you than tap water — in fact, certain brands of bottled water have been found to have a higher bacteria count than plain tap water, which is why many of them carry a sell-by date!

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