What role can drinking enough pure water play in your overall fitness in the New Year?
1. Water allows you to function better by hydrating all the cells of your body, including your brain.  This is especially important because the cerebral cortex's electrons control your executive function and the rest of your brain controls such things as your emotions and your survival instincts, and they will misfire less often when they are correctly hydrated.  You will think, feel, and react better at work or school, because drinking the right amount of pure water will cause your brain to perform better, it will help you avoid headaches, it will help your self control and your empathy for others, and it will help you stave off exhaustion.  What could all of that mean to you in the new year?
2. Water flushes and cleans the inside of your body like a shower cleans the outside.  The cleaner the water, the cleaner your veins and organs will stay of unprocessed deposits from other fluids over time, regardless of your genes.  3. Water aids the mechanical flushing of waste and toxins through and out of your body sort of like a flume carries mud and dirt away from a goldmine.  The cleaner the water you drink, the fewer deposits will buildup in your body over your lifetime.  You can tell if you've drunk enough water at night when you urinate before bed and it smells bad and and looks yellow.  If there's no smell and it looks clear, you 've probably drunk enough.    Just try drinking three cups of water before 7 P.M. after work for one day and see for yourself.  4. Water cools your body and regulates it's temperature sort of like it does in a radiator. What kind of water do you want to cool your body?  Any drink that's contaminated with excess sugar, salt, alcohol, caffeine, or artificial flavors or colors or even Atlanta tap water that's contaminated with endocrine disruptors, trihalomethanes, hexavalent chromium, chlorine, aluminum sulfate, and polyphosphate will cool you; but doesn't it just make sense to cool your vital organs with clean, pure water as much as possible? As kids, Baby Boomers and their parents alike cooled down by lining up at the drinking fountain at school or work on the way to and from the bathroom.  Now 75% of the people say they would never drink from a drinking fountain. Back then, An 8 oz. Coke was a rare treat.  As a kid, I was told too much was not good for me.  Now most people drink 16-64 oz. of sugary or artificially sweetened Coke per day. Is it any wonder obesity and diabetes are epidemic in the U.S.?  Wouldn't it be better if we reinvented the drinking fountain to be an acceptably hygenic, filtered water bottle filler and taught our kids to drink water again in our schools? 5. Water hydrates all the cells of your body, allowing your vital organs to be refreshed and to receive the nutrition your body needs and it does it without the baggage or expense other types of fluids carry.  Does it not make sense to promote or sell filtered water for lunch and do away with vending machines in schools and offices that sell other fluids, and eliminate the behavioral problems linked to excess sugar and caffeine and the eco issues of bottled water? 6. Unlike other beverages, pure water rejuvenates your body without sugar, salt, artificial colors or flavors, alcohol, caffeine, or excess acidity or alkalinity.  Other fluid choices such as Beer, Cola, Coffee, sports drinks, and juice boxes all have high concentrations of things that are bad for you, but give you pleasure.  Remember, you are what you drink, so to speak. It is conceivable to drown by drinking too much water, but far less likely than the documented behavioral problems or diabetes from consuming too much sugar.  If you stick to pure water long enough, (approximately 6-13 weeks...which is the length of an effective diet and exercise program for most people) and drink enough pure water(approximately 6-8 cups per day, or double that when you are sweating from exercise), pure water without the chemicals, metals, or alkalinity of tap water will also give you pleasure because it does taste sweet.  Once you've drunk 6-8 cups of pure water for 6 weeks, your body does not need to go to the bathroom as often as it did under the diuretic affects of Coke and Starbucks and pure water has a satisfying sweetness.  After 6 weeks away from them, other sugary, sweet drinks will then taste too sweet, so pure water provides a new tactic to keep weight off for good, compared to any other artificial drink you name.  Pure water does not stimulate the brain to eat and drink like too sweet drinks do.  Pure water satisfies and 6-8 cups will keeps your hydration in balance.  In part, pure water will contribute to the pleasure you will feel because of your weight loss, so you feel better, both emotionally and physically.   If pure water is part of your diet and you stick to your diet and exercize routine long enough to be effective at losing weight, then Dr. Phil says you have formed a habit and changed your lifestyle.  At this point, pure water can be the main fluid that gives you pleasure for life, because it is the only fluid you can drink that won't contaminate your new body with something undesireable and that tastes too sweet. Think of this...when you drink mainly pure water, you are a role model for your children, doing your part to prevent childhood, and parental obesity for that matter...right in your own family. 7. Drinking pure water can save a family thousands of dollars, if you buy a filter and refill a reuseable bottle that you carry daily, instead of buying sugary drinks or bottled water from stores and restaurants. 8. Water lubricates your joints and muscles allowing them to move freely like oil lubricates a motor so you  move better right down to the wiggling of your toes.  Freer movement of your muscles and joints helps you complete your exercise routines more easily. You might say that drinking pure water helps your fitness from the top of your head to the tip of your toes!