If you've been struggling to lose weight and wondering why the process is so difficult for you the answer may lie in how much water you don't drink.

Increasing your water intake is one of the simplest and yet most effective strategies for losing weight. Even if weight loss is not your primary concern then you will still benefit from glowing skin and generally look better.

Water naturally increases your metabolism whilst filling you up at the same time so you don't feel so hungry and it also flushes toxins out of your system. if you have blotchy, pale skin then setting yourself a target of drinking a gallon of water a day should be the first step you take on your diet journey.

Many people suffer from chronic illness or skin diseases because they are dehydrated. The cumulative effect of drinking alcohol and not rehydrating properly can destroy your skin and your looks so if you just starting out on the weight loss journey you will get a double whammy effect from drinking a lot of water. if your pee is consistently yellow then that's the easy way to spot that you are dehydrated and it's not until it starts coming out clear regularly that your body will start working properly and be able to flush out all the toxins.

The drawback is that in the beginning, it is very hard to drink that amount of water. I mean, eight pints is a gallon and drinking a gallon of water a day sounds impossible right? In addition to physically downing that much water, you'll also be needing to pee all the time because your bladder muscles are not strong enough to hold on to this new sudden water intake. Over time you'll get used to it, but it will take a few weeks to adjust.

Be sure to drink pure tap water or bottled water and not anything that has sugar or flavourings added to it. If you mistake a sugar flavoured bottled water for regular water then you'll be making a huge dietary mistake!

This is how I started drinking eight pints of water a day:

Firstly, download the "water reminder" app for your smartphone and set it to remind you to have a drink every hour. Begin at 6 am and drink a full pint glass as soon as you get up. This will help to rehydrate you from all the water you will have lost whilst sleeping overnight. By 2pm you will have drank all the water you need and when it comes to bedtime you won't keep needing to get up every hour to go to the toilet and pee.

If you want to go ahead and buy one of the new trendy gallon containers that sit on your desk and is marked by the hour so you know how much you have left to drink then that's also a great idea.

Drinking this amount of water is hard work but remember that your body is made up of around 60% water and it is also used as a lubricant and cushion for your joints. Drinking plenty of water enables your body to excrete waste through persp[iration, urination and defecation and the kidneys and liver use it to help flush out the toxins from your body.

After a month of drinking eight pints of water a day, you might want to scale back to five or six or whatever you feel comfortable with but in the beginning, this regime will quickly rehydrate you, and get you used to drinking plenty of water throughout the day.