Drink water but not too much!

When I was 20, I was engaged in a bunch of unhealthy attempts to drop poundage, and one of the things I was doing was drinking a lot of water. Water was good, they said! Water helps you lose weight! (This was years before scientists told us that you don't need to drink as much water as they thought.) I would fill up a 20-ounce sports bottle (you know, those things we drank out of before Nalgenes and Siggs became cool) at the water cooler at work. I worked as a programmer at the time, so every time I advanced a screen in my code (about 15 lines), I would take a drink. It would get empty around the time that I needed to pee, so I'd refill on my trip back from the bathroom and the process would repeat. Then one day, a nosy coworker commented that I was going to the bathroom every 55 minutes, because she'd been keeping track and she thought it meant that I had undiagnosed diabetes (because I was fat, you see). I got freaked out and had tests done and no, I was fine. I explained to the doctor that I was drinking about 200 ounces of water a day, not because I was thirsty but because I thought it would help me lose weight. She explained that I was also going to wash away a lot of nutrients and could potentially make myself really ill. REALLY ill. Whoops.

We all need water to live, but don't rely on H20 to help you lose weight.

Sadly, a woman in England died from doing exactly that.

But instead of consuming the recommended four litres over an entire day, she had that quantity in less than two hours as she watched TV at home. Later she collapsed after complaining of a headache and was taken to hospital, but doctors were unable to save her. A post mortem examination revealed Mrs Henson died from swelling of the brain caused by saturating the body with too much water. (Source)

How very horrible and sad that we've learned to turn off our body's natural preservation mechanism, all in the effort to lose weight. I'm just sad that someone had to lose their life to serve as a warning for the rest of us.

Related: Will drinking water really fill me up and keep me from overeating?

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