M102 – Reader Indigestion Issue 2: Maintaining the Drive

So now that we have learnt about the active methods to lose weight, we shall look at how to maintain it on a regular basis. Though a healthy diet and a consistent exercise regime are crucial in slimming down effectively, there are also other factors that cannot be neglected. Like diet, these factors are easy to incorporate into our daily habits, however they do require some level of determination and discipline to carry throughout, as it takes time for the change to become observable.

Back in our primary school health education, we were told to drink at least 8 glasses of water everyday. You might know about this minimum daily fluid intake, but how strictly do you adhere to it? How do you go about ensuring that this requirement is met?

To moderate our food intake, we eat only when we feel hungry. This rule does not apply to water however. Most of the time we have to drink water even when we are not thirsty. If we were to follow the ‘food rule’, we would become seriously dehydrated eventually.

You might have heard about the term ‘water retention’, which describes how our body retains water reserves. Water retention usually results in puffy cheeks or swelling at certain parts of our body, which makes us look fat. However this does not mean we should stop drinking water. Ironically, we should drink even more water instead. Our body retains water mainly due to low fluid intake. This will naturally lead our body to go into the conservation state, where water is stored in order to keep us hydrated. Thus if we drink more water, our body will tend not to retain much water. In fact drinking more water contributes to losing weight to a certain extent.

It is said that drinking water at night before sleeping will increase water retention. However this is just a myth. The only bad thing about drinking lots of water before sleeping would probably be waking up in the middle of the night several times for the toilet.



Besides slimming down, water is also beneficial to our overall health and complexion. Water is an effective solution to counter pimple outbreak. It helps to maintain our body temperature, and prevents a possible fever from striking. In addition to the input process, the output process also plays an important role in flushing out toxins from our body through urinating. If your urine is not colourless, that means you have not been drinking enough!

Let’s touch on the last of the ‘3 basic habits’ (Eat, Drink, Sleep). Not only is sleeping good for health, it is also proven that people who sleep less tend to gain weight more easily compared to people who sleep more. Of course that does not mean we should sleep whenever we can. We should try to have an adequate amount of sleep daily (ideally 8 hours) and avoid staying up late at night. Staying up late not only deprives us of sleeping hours, but also increases the tendency of night snacking, which is bad for our diet and weight. By health considerations, it is better to skip supper, sleep early and wake up early for breakfast rather than eat supper, sleep late, wake up late and skip breakfast.

Recently scientific research have shown that laughter can be an effective way to losing weight too. Laughing out heartily can help to expend some calories from our body. Though it might not be a significant reduction, at least this serves as an added incentive to laugh out loud, on top of stress relief and other psychological advantages.

Wanna lose weight? Drink more water, sleep early and laugh! Hahahaha...

As you might notice, these are also typical measures to stay healthy. Therefore there is no need to engage in any special diet programmes, or consume any pills to lose weight effectively.