Why is it so important to drink water (at least 8 glasses per day) when you are trying to lose weight or burn fat (in my case belly fat)???

While it is true that water makes you feel full, this is not the most important factor in weight loss. In order to lose weight, your cells must remain hydrated. When they become dehydrated, the body's natural defense mechanism will try to "hold on" to all the moisture it can by retaining fat. If the cells are fully hydrated, the body can more easily burn fat. Water also helps flush toxins from the system. If your urine is dark, you are not getting enough water. An easy way to determine the amount of water you need is to figure one ounce of water per pound of body weight. This sounds like a lot of water, but it will really make a difference in your overall health as well. A good diet and execrcise program are also essential.

Water is great for aiding weight lose I'm sure that is the secret to all diets because on every diet they always tell you to drink loads of water

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Staying well hydrated is always important. I recommend 0.5 oz of water daily per pound of body weight. More if you are exercising strenuously or dealing with hot weather. I don't believe in the 8 glasses one-size-fits-all answer... if you think about it how much sense would it make that a 100 lb woman and a 200 lb man need the same amount of water each day?
Here are some ideas on losing "belly fat."
First, for all of the "quick and easy" weight loss diet pill suggestions, remember, if something sounds too good to be true... it probably is, particularly if you have to pay for it.
On Yahoo!Answers I find certain questions being asked repeatedly which is simply a reflection of new people participating. A couple of common questions amount to "How do I lose weight," or more specifically, "How do I lose abdominal fat?" I have gotten very positive responses from my answers when I paused to reply (and now beginning to get "It works!" emails that are very gratifying. I like helping people)... so have recently decided to put a good solid answer on my Yahoo!360 Blog (September 10) that I can point people to. These are my thoughts as a physician and athlete.
Don't target losing more than about 2 lbs per week. If you try to lose faster, your body will go into "starvation mode" and get very stingy about burning calories while at the same time very efficient about storing any calories that you do provide. And it will make you feel awful.
There is no site specific way of losing fat... the old myth about working your abs to burn belly fat isn't true. To get rid of love handles, you need to lose overall fat. That happens with exercise and watching your diet. More on that below.
The most effective way to lose fat is aerobic exercise in the "moderate" fat-burning range, ideally first thing in the morning before you eat. When you wake your body is ready to burn fat and your levels of growth hormone are highest at that time. Later in the day it can take up to 30 minutes just to put your body into a fat-burning mode.
Another overlooked way to burn fat is by lifting weights. Skeletal muscle has very high caloric needs... almost twice that of adipose (fat) tissue. Put on a little muscle and you will burn calories all day even at rest. Be aware that skeletal muscle weighs more, so with this approach you may see your weight increasing while your body fat is melting away. Not realizing this often stresses folks who think they should be losing weight as a measure of fitness. Forget the scale, look in the mirror and you will be happy.
To lose a pound of fat, you need to eliminate about 3500 calories. You can do this by burning more with exercise or by modifying your diet to reduce intake. If you do a Google search on say, "swimming calories" you will quickly find a website with tables of calories burned for a given exercise. You can use such lists to estimate how many calories you are burning up with your routine.
For diet, keep a diary for a couple of weeks counting calories, grams of protein, and grams of fat intake. It is easy with online sources of nutritional information (type the name of the food and calories into the Google search engine) and packaging labels. That will let you quickly figure out where the fat is coming from in your diet.
Fat gives you 9 calories per gram. So take the number of grams of fat, multiply by 9, then calculate what percentage the fat calories are of your total daily calories. Restricting the calories from fat to about 20% of your total intake is ideal for a maintenance diet... that isn't overly restrictive. Of note, you need some fat in your diet. For instance, the body uses fat to produce hormones. Once you have a picture of how to modify your diet, you can drop the diary and just go back to it occasionally if you are wanting to tweek things further.
There is a subset of questions that goes further and asks about "How to get a six-pack?" The answer is the same. Six-packs are 20% abdominal exercise and 80% diet. There is one caveat... abdominal muscles will form in the position that you work them, so be certain to pull them tightly toward your spine while doing crunches, etc. Also, during most lifting, the "core is active" which means that you should be stabilizing with contracted abs then too. Fail to do this and the abs will form, but bulging outward and the result is not attractive.
If you are trying to build muscle as a way to lose fat, then you may need to increase total calories and specifically your protein intake. I target about 0.8 g of protein per pound of body weight each day when actively building. That is far more protein than most people need in their diets.
Aloha

2 reasons: 1) water accelerates your metabolism and 2) it gives you the sensation of being "full" so that helps you not to eat snacks, coz u have a full stomach. And for the belly fat, try doing abs, i know.. it's not that fun, but it helps! And if you do them, just 3 days a week coz if you work on your abs everyday you risk of enduring the fat! good luck!

I don't know, bu it is true taht if you want to lose weight you got to drink water. I am also trying to lose weight and I try to drink 3 litres per day.

I am doin the same thing, the thing is water takes up the space in your tummy when you drink it so you don't get hungrey any more and no matter how much water you drink it ALL comes out no matter what. so in that case you loose weight.
Your welcome

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It helps you eliminate toxins created by exercise etc. and it also helps you feel less hungry, esp. if you drink warm, herbal teas once in a while.
Often thirst is misinterpreted as hunger whenever you get the munchies between meals, have a cold drink of water first you'll be surprised how often you realise you really were thirsty.

Its the stupidest thing i have read n done. You drink lots of water n u visit the loo lots of times. The belly-adipose STAYS.

Water helps to facilitiate the fat burning! Think of it like this - when you drink water, it washes away the fat inside your body like a shower.
Other good reasons is that:
1) it fills up your stomach so that you don't eat as much
2) when you think you are hungry between mealtimes and feel like snacking, your body may actually just be thirsty, NOT hungry. The thirst mechanism is weak and often mistaken for hunger.
PS - when you drink water, drink it cold. Technically water at room temperature is better for your body, but colder water will burn more calories because your body will try to warm it up!