Water is not only a mirror reflecting our mind—water is the source of life.
—Masaru Emoto
The human body is 70 percent water. You’ve got roughly 10 to 13 gallons of water in your body. Water makes up 75 percent by volume of your muscles and heart, 83 percent of your brain and kidneys, 86 percent of your lungs, and 95 percent of your eyes. Even 22 percent of your bones are actually water. Most telling of all, your blood is 90 percent water. You are, quite literally, what you drink. If you don’t drink enough—and most Americans don’t—or if you drink the wrong things, you will compromise your body and your health. Your weight will be one obvious sign of that compromise. That’s why I firmly believe the single most important thing you can do to not only be healthy but also to find and stay at your ideal weight is to drink good water—and plenty of it.
It turns out that isn’t always as easy as it sounds, given the current state of our water supply. This chapter explains why most water isn’t up to the job of keeping you healthy, then shows you how to make sure your water is. You’ll also learn how to figure out how much water your body needs daily. I’ll also explain a revolutionary water-purification and -processing technique that produces water that is ideal for the human body—water that will allow you to lose up to 1 pound every day.
Chances are you are among the 75 percent of Americans who are chronically dehydrated, meaning they don’t get the eight, 8-ounce servings of water each day—about 2 liters—recommended by mainstream health experts. The average person gets only about 1 liter of fluid a day—much of it from acidic coffee, tea, and soft drinks, many of which actually rob the body of water. And to get even to that minimal level requires estimating the amount they get from food. Oh, and sometimes they get it from drinking actual water, though it is likely to be inadequate in quality as well as quantity. Fully 10 percent of respondents to a survey done for the Nutrition Information Center at Cornell Medical Center reported drinking no water at all!
For ideal health and weight, you need much more water—good water—as I’ll detail later. The average adult loses about 2½ to 3 liters of fluid a day through sweating, breathing, urinating, moving, even sleeping, and the body becomes dehydrated if it isn’t replaced.
If you don’t get enough water, then you’ll get fat. Simple as that. For one thing, even mild dehydration slows metabolism by as much as 3 percent. For another, we are so poorly attuned to our bodies’ thirst signals that we interpret them as hunger pangs. That is, if we don’t drink enough, we eat too much. Finally, if we don’t get enough water, our bodies will actually retain water, and we’ll feel bloated and uncomfortable—and look even fatter than strictly necessary! An acidic body pulls water into the tissues to try to neutralize the acids there.
Most important, the body uses water to neutralize acids, to dilute excess acid, and to literally wash them (and all toxins) out of the body via urine and sweat and through the bowels. Without enough water your body becomes too acidic and goes into preservation—fat-storing—mode. A drop of just over 2 percent in body water content is enough to make that happen. In case you think that sounds like such a big change that it is unlikely to ever happen to you, take note: It’s not unusual to lose 2 percent of your body water during an average hour of exercise.
If that’s not enough to get you to drink up, let me add that in addition to fat, not getting enough water will also make you sick and tired. In fact, lack of water is the number one cause of daytime fatigue. Without enough water, you won’t have enough energy. You’ll feel tired and weak.
That 2 percent drop in body water can result in a measurable decrease in physical performance. The acid that builds up in your tissues when you don’t get enough water acts like a meat tenderizer, making your muscles flabby—and weak. Studies show that a 3 percent drop in water causes a 10 percent drop in muscle strength and an 8 percent drop in speed, as well as lower muscular endurance.
By the time you get to a 4 percent drop in body water, you’ll experience dizziness—and a fall of as much as 30 percent in your capacity for physical labor. Drop another percentage point and you’ll have problems with concentration, drowsiness, impatience, and headaches (one of the most common signs of dehydration, along with dry skin). Losing another percent can cause your heart to race and your body’s temperature regulation to go out of whack. Hit 7 percent, and you could collapse.
Even in the earliest stages, dehydration can also lead to muddled thinking, short-term memory problems, trouble with basic math and expressing yourself verbally, and difficulty focusing on a computer screen or printed page. Light-headedness and cold hands and feet can also result. The list goes on: anxiety, irritability, depression, sugar cravings, and cramps.
As for making you sick: When the dehydration gets a little more severe, symptoms include acid reflux (heartburn), joint and back pain, migraines, fibromyalgia, constipation, colitis, and angina. Serious dehydration is linked with asthma, allergies, diabetes, hypertension, and such skin problems as eczema, rashes, spots, blemishes, and acne. Degenerative conditions including morbid obesity, heart disease, and cancer are all linked with serious long-term dehydration. If you lose 15 to 20 percent of your body’s water, it can be immediately life-threatening.
In short: Lack of water can kill you.
In fact, although you could go about thirty days without eating, you can’t live seventy-two hours without water. Your body uses as much water in cold weather as it does in warm, and as much when you are sleeping as when you are awake. In an average day, even with physical activity or environmental extremes (like a hot and/or dry climate), and with no particular drains on your body’s water supply (like air travel, or time in a high-rise building), you can lose 1 percent of the water in your body. Although the most serious symptoms listed here don’t come from spending an hour or a day with low levels of water in your tank, most people exist in a chronic state of low-level dehydration for most of their lives. No wonder so very many of us are fat and sick and tired!
Fortunately, this is a relatively easy problem to solve. Finding the right water may take some doing, as you’ll see, but essentially you just need to drink up! Those who do provide their bodies with this crucial element for normal performance, in everything from temperature regulation and toxin excretion to joint lubrication and fat metabolism. Water helps process just about every biological, mechanical, and chemical action that takes place in your body. It cushions and protects vital organs, transports nutrients within each cell, and dispels acidic wastes. Your lungs need water to humidify the air they move. The digestive system uses several gallons of water daily to process food. Your brain needs water to perform the chemical reactions required to run your body. Your pancreas uses water to alkalize food coming out of the stomach and into the intestines. Water keeps your skin soft and supple, increases oxygen in the blood, and maintains normal electrical properties of the cells, improving cell-to-cell communication.
One study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association showed that women who drank more than five glasses of water a day had 45 percent less risk of colon cancer. Another study from the same journal showed a 50 percent decrease in the risk of bladder cancer in people who drank 2.5 quarts of water daily and a 79 percent drop in the risk of breast cancer. A survey of over three thousand American adults conducted at The New York Hospital—Cornell Medical Center indicates that eight to ten glasses of water a day could significantly reduce back and joint pain for up to 80 percent of sufferers. Drinking plenty of water also helps prevent kidney stones.
Perhaps of most immediate interest to you as you work on losing weight: A University of Washington study showed that one glass of water shut down hunger pangs for nearly all dieters in the study. And German researchers found that drinking water increases the rate at which you burn calories. Just 2 cups of water increased metabolic rate by almost a third—and it stayed up for about half an hour. When they reported their findings in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, they calculated that getting an additional 1.5 liters of water a day for a year would mean burning off an extra 17,400 calories—or about 5 pounds.
For all the wonders of water, the wrong kind of water can actually make you sick, tired—and fat. Your water, like just about everything else you take in, must be electron-rich and alkaline. Sadly, almost all of the readily available water is acidic, and this will make your body acidic and send it into the whole fat-holding cycle of self-preservation. And that’s while your body should be able to use the water you supply it with to neutralize and wash away acids! With acidic water, you’re never going to reach your ideal weight or your ideal state of health. But when you properly hydrate your body with electron-rich alkaline water, you are providing what your body needs to keep its cells healthy and pH balanced—without having to pull neutralizing agents from elsewhere in the body, where they have other jobs to do. Body cells are only as healthy as the fluids they are bathed in.
Okay, you’re ready for a drink, and you’ve got a glass of tap water, or a bottle of water from the store. It looks clear and good. It may even taste good. But is it really good for you? Is it even safe to drink? Is it acidic or alkaline? Is it going to speed you to your ideal weight, or keep you stuck in entirely the wrong zone of the scale? Just by looking and tasting, you have no real way to know. What I’ve uncovered by testing waters from around the country and around the globe, however, is that your odds are low of having in front of you right now something you really want to drink. The most important characteristics of truly healthy water are its purity, pH, electron activity, and molecular structure. I’ll explain a bit about each below.
First of all, you must be sure your water is pure and safe to drink. And just because it came out of your tap, or out of a store-bought bottle, or from a public water supply doesn’t make it so. Physicians for Social Responsibility reports that over 75,000 toxic synthetic and chemical compounds can be identified in this country’s water sources, though only a fraction of them are targeted for regulation. Indeed, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently documented approximately 83,000 violations of water quality standards by municipal water systems, featuring over 21,000 contaminants—organic and inorganic—over the past thirty years, almost 200 of them already proven to be linked with adverse health effects. Industry and agriculture cause a lot of this contamination, but much of it can be traced back to everyday products like lawn chemicals, prescription drugs, gasoline, and household cleaners.
More than 240 million Americans use water from contaminated public water systems every day, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that almost 1 million people in America fall ill annually from water contaminated with harmful microorganisms—and about 900 die.
Turning to bottled water won’t necessarily help. Among other things, many bottled waters are simply bottled tap water. (See the chart on here for more details about the characteristics of the many bottled waters I’ve tested.)
The truth is, there doesn’t seem to be any naturally good water left on the planet. Once glacial melt must have been just about ideal, or rainwater, or spring water near the source, or high mountain streams. But in today’s industrial age of acid rain, air pollution, contaminated groundwater, and ocean garbage dumping, you can’t get the water your body really needs without some modification.
A high-quality filter is definitely in order to make sure your water is free of such various impurities as undesirable chemicals, trace elements, and microorganisms. I think a distiller or an electronic water purifier would be your best bet. (Or buy distilled water, available at any grocery store.) Setting up the equipment to purify your water at home will run you about $400 to $1,500. I recommend the ReGenesis purifier, which filters and ionizes water, or the Living Water Machine distiller by Crystal Clear (see Resources).
To be truly healthful, your water must also be alkaline. Pure distilled water ranks an even 7 on the pH scale. Anything above 7 is alkaline, and so better than acidic water, but to get the full benefits of alkaline water—neutralizing the acids that make you fat—I recommend water that’s at least 9.5 on the pH scale (and as high as 11.5 to 12.5 in cases of serious health conditions, including extreme obesity). Most water today is more acidic than neutral. Imagine: You’re drinking acidic water, requiring your body to draw down its stores of alkaline substances even more just to neutralize water that by rights should be neutral in the first place—when you could be saving those stores by providing good alkaline water. And don’t be fooled by “pH-balanced” claims like the ones on certain bottled water labels: “Naturally pH balanced at 7.2.” True, that is just the slightest bit alkaline, and it is certainly better than acidic water. But to really reap the benefits of alkaline water, that pH just isn’t high enough.
Drinking alkaline water washes away acids and wastes, helping your whole body stay alkaline. By providing alkaline water to neutralize and remove acid from the tissues, you’ll stop the body from gleaning alkaline substances from other body parts to do the job—like leeching calcium from your bones. Acidic water could contain toxic metal ions, like lead, cadmium, and mercury, which in excess can cause serious health issues. Conversely, alkaline water may be filled with alkaline minerals your body needs, like calcium, magnesium, and potassium, and in the only form your body can absorb (ionic). And negative microforms won’t be able to thrive in an environment supplied with plenty of alkaline water.
Fortunately, there’s an easy way to make sure your water is alkaline: To each liter of water (preferably ionized or distilled), add 16 drops of 2 percent sodium chlorite, or 2 to 3 teaspoons of sodium bicarbonate (plain old baking soda) or sodium silicate. Ask at your natural food store for sodium silicate or sodium chlorite. See chapter 9 for more details on pH drops.
To reach your ideal weight, your water must be energized. Energized water is saturated with electrons, highly charged, and full of potential energy. You already know that alkaline water has a negative charge because of all its electrons, whereas acids are dominated by positively charged protons, and that it is the attraction of electrons to the protons that neutralizes harmful acids. Here I’ll explain the two ways to measure the electron activity, or energy potential, of water: ORP and rH2.
The value of ORP (oxidative reduction potential) quantifies the amount of energy in your water (or anything else) by numbering its electrons. It is expressed in millivolts (mV). Make sure your water registers in negative millivolts. To get you to your ideal weight, your water should have an ORP of at least –50 mV. (And you don’t want to go beyond –1,250 mV, and as you get close to that you only want a small amount of it on any given day.) That means there will be sufficient electron activity to neutralize excess acids that would otherwise cause your body to gain or hold weight. Most tap water comes in at about +500 mV.
Consider rH2 (reduction of hydrogen; sometimes called “redox”) as sort of a backup measure to ORP. rH2 is measured on a scale, just the way pH is. The rH2 scale ranges from 0 to 44, with 22 being neutral; the lower the number, the greater the concentration of electrons. With each step, the number of electrons increases by a factor of 10; water with rH2 of 22 has 10 times more electrons than water at 23. An increase of just two places on the scale, then, means 100 times fewer electrons. You want your water to have an rH2 of 22 or less. Unfortunately, most municipalities have, on average, an rH2 of 30 or greater. That’s 100 million fewer electrons than you’re aiming for. Our water is not providing us with the energy we need to be healthy and maintain a healthy weight.
I was going through life overweight—and just not caring anymore. I’d tried so many programs and nothing ever worked. Until I heard about this plan. In just five months 60 pounds came right off, and I have stayed at my ideal weight of 160 for over two years now. My cholesterol has dropped 100 points, my blood pressure is normal, and I take no medications. I love this way of life and have amazed my friends—and doctor—with how young and good looking I am now!
You already know the solution to this dilemma, however. Adding the sodium chlorite, bicarbonate, or silicate to your water as described earlier increases not only pH but also electron activity. These substances react with and release oxygen in the water, increasing its energy potential.
The final critical characteristic of water to consider is molecular structure. In most tap and bottled water, H2O molecules tend to cluster together in groups of 10 to 20. Electron activity occurs on the surface of a molecule, and as molecules cluster together, the total surface area decreases, thereby decreasing electron activity. Conversely, the smaller the clusters formed, the higher the electron activity. Furthermore, large clusters of molecules can’t permeate cell membranes very well, and so can’t hydrate the cells from the inside. The smaller the size of the cluster of molecules, the better able the water is to hydrate the cell and the more oxygen it can provide.
Your water should have no more than 5 to 6 molecules clustered together. Ideally you’d get monomolecular water—each molecule stands as an individual, without clustering. Two cutting-edge processing methods can provide you with properly structured water.
PAW, or plasma-activated water, uses electromagnetic fields and ultrasound and UV radiation to break down the molecular clusters and increase the electrical potential of ordinary tap water without chemicals or heat, creating highly electrically charged water with smaller molecule clusters of 1 to 2 molecules (vs. 10 to 24 in most tap or well water). Most tap water emerges from the machine with a pH of 9.5, an ORP of-250 mV and an rH2 of 19.5. The increase in electron activity remains stable for several weeks—you don’t have to drink this water immediately upon making it to receive its benefits the way you do with plain ionized water. And testing by the National Testing Laboratories in Cleveland, Ohio, has found PAW to exceed every standard for levels of bacteria, metals, non-metallic inorganic chemicals, organic chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
PAM, or plasma-activated micro-ionized water, I make with a machine of my own invention, on which I have a patent pending. (Check the pH Miracle website—see Resources—for up-to-date availability.) Essentially, PAM takes PAW one step further, adding a micro-ionization process that increases the amount of electrons in the water. It creates fully monomolecular water, the only process to do so; thus, no other water can provide as much energy potential or be as easily absorbed by the body and the cells. PAM has a pH between 9.5 and 12.5, an ORP between −50 and −1,250 mV, and is stable for several months.
Alternately, the adding of the sodium drops or powders already described can help reduce the size of the molecular clusters.
The statistics earlier in the chapter should be enough to make you suspicious of the healthfulness of your tap water. But turning to bottled water isn’t any guarantee of getting really good water. In North America, more than 70 percent of people drink bottled water, downing over 13 billion liters each year. (Though we are still relative slouches in this area, compared with the 90 percent of French and Italian people who drink bottled water.) You have more than seven hundred brands from around the world to choose from. But whether you choose spring water, artesian water, mineral water, sparkling water, well water, or municipal drinking water (which is what you’re getting in most of those bottled waters anyway), you are most likely getting proton-saturated, acidic water. Water with no energy. Water that will actually steal energy away from your body, rather than contributing to good health.
Approximately 80 percent of bottled water brands are processed waters—municipal or tap water that has been run through a filtration system for impurities and chemicals. Both Aquafina (from Pepsi) and Dasani (from Coke), for example, are simply bottled from municipal water supplies. More than half of bottled waters around the world are exempt from governmental standards; they don’t have to live up to even the minimal standards tap water is regulated by. Buying bottled water is no assurance that it is any safer or healthier than tap water. And in some cases, your own tap water would be a better choice. Ask any company you buy water from for a complete lab analysis of their water to see if it is good for you. The companies won’t be able to tell you about all the characteristics explained in this chapter, but it will be good for them to know people are asking—and they can at least tell you the measurements (in ppm, parts per million) of certain chemicals and metals in the water.
I tested more than sixty of the most popular and (supposedly!) best bottled waters from around the world to see if any met my criteria for pH and electron activity. The results listed in the following chart should be more than enough to make you very interested in the next section, on ways to filter, charge, and structure your water yourself: the only two that had a pH above 9.5 carried a positive charge. In fact, I found only one with a negative charge! And of course you will be expected to pay top dollar for all of them. But all water is most definitely not created equal. You need to make sure you are drinking high pH water with extra electrons for increased energy.
| Brand or Type | Source and Features | pH | ORP(mV) | rH2 |
| Propel Fitness Water | Processed water with minerals added | 3.37 | +305 | 27.05 |
| San Pellegrino | San Pellegrino, Italy spring watere | 4.49 | +449 | 28.49 |
| llanllyr Source | West Wales, UK spring watere drawn from beneath the organic fields of llanllyr | 4.75 | +447 | 28.47 |
| Perrier | Perrier, France | 4.91 | +478 | 28.78 |
| Pellegrino | San Pellegrino, Italy sparkling natural mineral water | 5.28 | +392 | 27.92 |
| Hawaiian Islands | Natural filtered spring water | 5.36 | +618 | 30.18 |
| Aqua Diva | Tuscany, Italy natural mineral water from an artesian wella | 5.78 | +611 | 30.11 |
| New York City municipal water | Filtered tap water | 5.81 | +440 | 28.40 |
| Aquafina | Filtered municipal water | 5.96 | +431 | 28.31 |
| Badoit | St. Galmier, France natural sparkling water from a deep water table through a 1,500-foot fissure | 6.0 | +426 | 28.26 |
| Ferrarelle | Mountains of southern Italy natural spring water | 6.1 | +428 | 28.28 |
| Valverde | Italian Alps spring watere | 6.22 | +402 | 28.02 |
| Spa | Reine River, France spring watere | 6.23 | +418 | 28.18 |
| Deja Blue | North American purified or filtered tap water | 6.28 | +434 | 28.34 |
| Deer Park | Allegheny Mountains near Deer Park, Maryland spring water | 6.31 | +644 | 30.41 |
| Poland Spring | Spring waterd | 6.31 | +390 | 26.90 |
| Hawaii Water | Reverse osmosis-filtered spring watere | 6.38 | +386 | 27.86 |
| Chatledon | Auvergne, France A natural spring mineral water, one of the first bottled waters; presented in 1654 to Louis XIV to help cure his gout | 6.58 | +358 | 27.58 |
| Fiji | Fiji Islands spring watere | 6.65 | +406 | 28.06 |
| Blue Moon | Processed filtered tap water | 6.65 | +365 | 27.65 |
| Voss | Norway artesiana water | 6.67 | +357 | 27.57 |
| Penta | Micro-ionizedc | 6.7 | +789 | 31.89 |
| Fonyodi | Budapest, Hungary natural spring water | 6.80 | +502 | 29.02 |
| Arrowhead | Spring watere | 6.83 | +359 | 27.59 |
| Eon | Natural springs, Mount Shasta deep ice pack water, reverse osmosis and carbon filtered, ozonated,b no heat or added minerals or chemical stabilizers | 6.84 | +578 | 29.78 |
| Laurisia | Italy melted snow that seeps up through a volcanic rock grotto | 6.87 | +398 | 27.98 |
| Calistoga | Mayacmas, Sierra, Nevada, and Polomar mountains near San Diego, California spring watere | 6.93 | +404 | 28.04 |
| Crystal Geyser | California’s Mount Whitney spring water | 6.93 | +404 | 28.04 |
| Lissa | Italy natural mineral waterd | 6.96 | +398 | 27.98 |
| Smart Water | Vapor-distilledf water with minerals added | 6.97 | +368 | 27.68 |
| Volvic | Natural mineral waterd filtered through volcanic rock | 7.07 | +407 | 28.07 |
| Whistler Water | Ozonatedb glacier water | 7.18 | +419 | 28.19 |
| Dasani | North America purified tap water | 7.2 | +378 | 27.78 |
| Nariwa | Japan spring water from Magnetic Mountain | 7.30 | +303 | 27.03 |
| Tynant | Bethania, Wales, UK natural mineral waterd | 7.30 | +396 | 27.96 |
| Scottish Natural Mineral Water | Campsie Falls, Lennoxtown, Scotland natural mineral waterd | 7.36 | +408 | 28.08 |
| Ice Age | Ozonatedb glacier water | 7.39 | +378 | 27.78 |
| Thames River | London Thames River | 7.42 | +405 | 28.05 |
| Buxton | Buxton, England artesian water drawn from 4,500 feet underground | 7.42 | +400 | 28 |
| Brecon Carreg | Brecon National Park, Nottingham, England spring watere | 7.42 | +391 | 27.91 |
| Absopure | Irish Hills, Michigan spring water, ozonated, ultraviolet | 7.48 | +455 | 28.75 |
| Evian | Evian, France | 7.53 | +390 | 27.90 |
| Natural Value | Sacramento, California spring watere | 7.54 | +381 | 27.81 |
| Zephyrhills | Spring water | 7.57 | +362 | 27.62 |
| Cloud Juice | “800 drops of Tasmanian rainwater” | 7.58 | +367 | 27.67 |
| Treewater | Pickens, West Virginia reverse osmosis or filtered water and ozonated water | 7.65 | +453 | 28.53 |
| Barraute municipal water | Quebec, Canada first place in municipal waters at the 2002 International Water Tasting Awards | 7.79 | +483 | 28.83 |
| Dannon | Natural spring water | 7.84 | +546 | 29.46 |
| Waiwera | New Zealand artesiana | 7.87 | +356 | 27.56 |
| Canadian Mountain | Melted glacier | 7.96 | +364 | 27.64 |
| Aqua Hydrate | Utah purified water with minerals added | 7.96 | +358 | 27.58 |
| Vittel | Vosges, France spring watere | 7.98 | +402 | 27.98 |
| Coumayeur | Mont Blanc Massif (in the Alps) natural mineral waterd | 8.02 | +410 | 28.10 |
| Palm Springs municipal water | Filtered and chlorinated tap water | 8.13 | +515 | 29.15 |
| Acqua Panna | Tuscan Apennines of Northern Italy, 25 miles north of Florence natural spring water | 8.20 | +523 | 29.23 |
| Iceberg Water | Newfoundland melted icebergs | 8.31 | +326 | 27.36 |
| Essentia Water | Micro-Ionizedb | 8.57 | + 58 | 22.58 |
| Evermore | Artesiana | 9.23 | -57 | 21.43 |
| pH Miracle Water I | Plasma activated micro-ionized | 9.5 | -250 | 19.50 |
| Trinity Geothermal Water Original | Artesiana | 9.55 | +330 | 27.30 |
| Regenesis Water | Micro-ionized | 9.8 | -78 | 21.22 |
| Trinity Natural Mineral Supplement | Artesiana | 9.88 | +316 | 27.16 |
| pH Miracle Water II | Plasma-activated micro-ionized | 11.5 | -750 | 14.50 |
| pH Miracle Water III | Plasma-activated micro-ionized | 12.5 | -1,250 | 8.50 |
|
a Water from an artesian well—a well that taps a water-bearing underground layer of rock or sand, in which the water level stands above the top of the aquifer (porous rock that acts as a natural filter to keep out microforms and other toxins). b Ozonated water contains a particular form of oxygen, which breaks down into another form that fights bacteria and other microbes, including yeast. c Micro-ionized: see passages on PAM and PAW, previously. d Mineral water must contain at least 250 parts per million of dissolved minerals and trace elements thought to be healthful. No minerals can be added; the minerals in the bottled version must match the water at the source. Note that calcium, magnesium, and potassium are all alkaline, but that iron, manganese, copper, and zinc are all acidic; so you need to be very careful about the amounts you get of them, and the form they come in. e Spring water comes from an underground formation through which the water flows naturally to the earth’s surface, and can be collected only at the spring or through a hole bored into an underground spring. f See Purity section, here. |
||||
If, like most people, you drink only when you feel thirsty, you’re not getting enough water. Your body loses 2 to 3 liters of water daily through normal activity (breathing, sleeping, walking around), and you need to be sure not only to replace that but also to further hydrate your body. Thirst lags far behind your body’s need for water and is an inadequate signal of your body’s full spectrum of needs. In fact, what thirst indicates is a mild state of dehydration. If you rely solely on thirst to replenish your water when you exercise, it takes up to twenty-four hours for your body to return to proper hydration status.
As a rule of thumb, you need to get 1 liter of electron rich, alkaline water every day per each 40 pounds of body weight—per 30 pounds for those engaging in moderate exercise like the program in this book. For someone weighing 160 pounds, that’s 4 to 5 liters a day—a gallon or more. For someone 210 pounds, up to 7 liters a day is required. As part of your routine, you should drink 8 ounces of water before you work out, 4 ounces every 15 minutes or so while you exercise, and 8 ounces again about half an hour after you finish exercising. You should also weigh yourself before and after exercise to make sure you’ve replaced all lost fluids. It’s not unusual to lose up to 2 percent of your body water during an hour of exercise (as much as a pound!).
A person who drinks only 2 liters a day will not get the results that a person who drinks 5 liters a day could expect. A person who also makes adjustments to what he or she eats according to the guidelines in this book will do better and faster than someone who only drinks water but still eats acidic foods. In large part, your results are up to you!
Doctors and nutritionists will say that losing weight by drinking water is not possible. And that is true—with the water that is currently out there! But with sufficient amounts of electron-rich, alkaline-structured water you make yourself, you can lose up to a pound a day.
(Even mainstream experts would agree that if we drank water instead of soft drinks we’d shave off pounds. The average American guzzles 44 gallons of soft drinks per year, about one 16-ounce bottle each and every day. That’s easily enough to add a few pounds every year.)
Getting the right water in the right amount is the single most important part of the pH Miracle Living plan for healthy weight loss. Fully hydrating the body with good water is the quickest and easiest way to reach and maintain your ideal weight.