This time around, I have brought with me into battle the acute awareness of cholesterol and hidden salt traps. Most women know about water retention and the bloated feeling, but cholesterol isn’t something we normally “feel”. Now I know what the RDA of cholesterol is, I know I need to measure it. The lower my “bad” cholesterol, the shorter my journey becomes to the finish line.

Last diet around, I learned about the value of lemon in your water . It seems bitter or sour foods stimulate the liver to produce bile, and that helps to remove bad cholesterol and fats from your body. The process is a bit scientific, but worth reading up on. Water can also be dangerous if you’re not careful!

Two diets before, I brought in the knowledge of vitamins and essential fats that do a whole host of wonderful things for your body. They reduce inflammation (I discovered this with my carpal tunnel/overuse syndrome by accident), pick up your mood by feeding it “good” fats it needs, and naturally curbs your appetite. They also help lower triglycerides and bad cholesterol as well as lowering your blood pressure. They also help to prevent blood clots. There is a whole laundry list of positive effects omega-3 can do for our bodies.

There are diet fads I’ve decided they are worse off than they claim to be. For instance, if you’re to believe the information about red wine, well then there are some caveats you need to think about.

By now, every woman has heard of what’s called the “French diet”, which claims French women are not fat and nor do they get fat. That’s a lie and I bet it’s a creation of the wine manufacturers to boost sales figures. French women aren’t fat because they eat fresh, healthy foods, they do drink wine, but they also move! France has a good transportation system and many take advantage of it, plus if you’ve ever noticed, they have a lot of bicycles and they rollerblade in a special section of the city on Friday nights. They move, and that’s why they’re not fat. We jump in our cars, drive to Burger King, and we drink four ounces of wine and wonder why we’re not getting skinny!

Another major flaw in the win drinking solving all problems has to do with the amount of red wine a person actually must consume to gain the supposed benefits. Should your intake be high enough to match the effects on mice then you’re bound to suffer from cirrhosis of the liver. Not my idea of a good trade off!

I read (and followed) one diet that required you to drink one ounce of water per pound of body weight you carry. At the time, I was two hundred pounds, so that meant I needed to drink 200 ounces of water, amounting to over six liters of water per day. That advice turned out to be near fatal for me, and what I want to warn you about. I’d much rather have you learn from my dumb mistakes than make your own that could result in tragedy.

Reading this weekend an article from a doctor saying you can’t drink too much water pushed me into writing this article. I also emailed the site and informed him the advice he had given was wrong and dangerous and why it was bad.

"Can we get too much water?  Not easily; your body is naturally mostly water.  Your blood is mostly water.  Your food is mostly water.  Your bowels and kidneys require water for excretion of wastes.  Why, you were conceived in an aquatic environment.  Too little water is associated with kidney stones, urinary tract infections, febrile illness, dehydration, and worse.

So drink yourself slim."

This is the dumbest advice on the planet. We are all trained to think of water as our friend, and it is, but there is truth in the old axiom of, “you can get too much of a good thing”.

I was consuming six liters of water a day, trying to flush out as much fat as I could. I was eating, taking vitamins, and watching my fat and salt intake. One day, I felt physically weird, but I figured it was nothing more than the process of flushing fat and toxins out of your body. Every woman has been through this stage where you feel so lousy and sick you want to stop the diet just so you can feel better. Emotionally, you know you have to ride the detoxification wave until it’s finished, but most of us stop after a few weeks because we’re tired of being sick, tired, mentally foggy and generally lethargic. I kept drinking water, knowing I had to be near the end of the wave since it had been two weeks.

It was around 8 PM when the first signs of something seriously wrong set in. I felt dizzy, confused, and shaky. As the symptoms grew stronger, I got terrified; it was nothing like I had ever experienced before in my life. I had enough sense still left in me, so I got on the computer and started to search on my symptoms. I accidentally stumbled across a mention of something called “water drowning” and “ water overdose ”. These conditions perfectly outlined my symptoms and also stated it could be fatal if not treated. I didn’t know what to do because I had no insurance and I couldn’t pay for the bills, so I called the emergency room and confessed I didn’t have insurance and needed help. Their advice? “Sit back and ride it out – you’ll be fine.” I was glad I didn’t listen or else I probably would’ve died.

In a last ditch effort to avoid the emergency room and bills I knew I’d never be able to afford, I called a friend and told her what I had done. She started to walk me through the process and I’m convinced to this day, pulled my bacon from the fire.

By this time, I was becoming seriously confused and desperately struggling to keep focus. She told me to start eating salt. I didn’t have any salt in the house, but then remembered the salt packets from Wendy’s take out sitting in a drawer. With my hands shaking almost uncontrollably, I ripped open the packet and most spilled onto the floor, but there was enough in my hand to start licking. Laurie began to ask me what I had for food in the house, and as I told her, the room started spinning as the muscles began to violently contract in my legs and neck. I was eating spinach and salt, and trying hard to breathe. It felt like I was being strangled while having a heart attack, and it wasn’t until that moment that I realized how strong the will to live is so deeply embedded into who and what we are.

“Do you have Gatoraide in the house, Sue?!” I hate that stuff – it’s nasty as nasty can be, but my friend Fred and left two bottles in the house about a year and a half ago. I struggled with all I had in me to shake the contents and remove the cap. My tongue went stiff and my mouth went into “cotton mode”, and I was having difficulty swallowing. In the end, I was able to get down a teaspoon every five minutes. As I started coming back to my senses, I realized I had chicken in the house. “Eat it, Sue – your body needs the salt and protein. I don’t care how long it takes you to eat, keep at it until it’s all gone.”

I spent the next six hours fighting to stay awake, afraid I was going to relapse and die alone in my sleep. Eventually I stopped clutching my Bible and trusted in God to see me through to the next morning if it was His will for my life.

The next day I did wake up, but I had horrible all over body cramps. I called another friend of mine who has potassium problems and started to pick her brain about what happened to her when her potassium got too low. She described many of the same symptoms – the most recognizable one was not being able to keep my head up and nearly falling over onto the kitchen floor more times than I care to remember. So I went out later that day and bought some magnesium and potassium, but turns out it was almost a shock to my system and I developed a lot of the same symptoms from the night before. Unfortunately, I was in for another long night by trying to overcompensate.

Potassium, sodium, and magnesium…all had been seriously depleted with the advice of a diet guru who probably never stopped to think about the damaging recommendations he was giving out. Potassium controls the electrical impulses the brain sends to the muscle. Magnesium controls the ability of the muscles to contract and relax. Salt is a necessary evil that helps to control blood pressure and used in the muscles.

I have since set a rule for myself that seems to be working well on this diet. I suggest you find the largest cup you can (or buy one) that will contain no more than 40 ounces of water. Fill the cup up twice, and when you’re done, that’s it! Do not consume any more water. This will give you the recommended 64 ounces of water, and then a little bit more, but not enough to get your body into trouble. I’m also assuming you’re eating a sensible, balanced diet and your doctor has okayed you for it.

There are some diet plans out there that have said you should drink 100 ounces of water a day, but from experience, that’s not exactly easy to do – and I’m a water fiend! I’m not a doctor and your health is your own responsibility, but I’m conveying this information to you so you don’t end up making the same mistake I did. There are a lot of quacks out there dispensing advice, but I recommend you do two things:

1. Investigate the supplements you might want to take
2. Bring them to your physician and discuss your own ability to health issues that might prohibit you from taking them.

Also ask your physician if you can keep a bottle of Gatoraide in your house and consume it without screwing up your body. It contains a high bit of sugar that could be a problem for a diabetic. If that is the case, ask your provider for an acceptable alternative that won’t send your sugar soaring and your body into shock.

If you don’t like trying to find all the segments of this series, you can locate the links to them here and they will return you the exact spot on the socyberty.com site.

quazen.com articles by this writer can be found here

socyberty.com articles can be located here

relijournal.com articles are here

picable.com photographic images are here