Those of you who have met me in person know that I’m considerably overweight.  Maybe some of you are just too nice to say it to me, but surely at some point you might have caught the vast shadow of my profile looming about and thought to yourself “whoa, that dude is seriously fat!”.

But what you might not realize is that it hasn’t always been this way with me.  I wasn’t always so big.  In fact, I kind of grew up ridiculed as the skinny one.  When I graduated High School, I was but a mere 140-ish pounds wearing a very loose-sized 28-inch waistline (I’ll see if I can’t track down some pictures for proof).

At some point, right about the time I hit 30, I started gaining weight.  Probably due to over-eating, lack of exercise, and (I’m willing to bet) mostly because I drank way too much soda.  Coke, Pepsi, it didn’t matter… I was hooked.  I don’t recall being so guilty about it when I was younger.  Here it is, eight years later, and I still haven’t been able to pull this demon from my body.  It’s hard enough being fat, but remembering what it feels like to be skinny is double the torture and humiliation.  I really hate myself for my appearance, it’s completely embarrassing.

It’s also unfortunate that mirrors don’t always tell the whole story.  How weight can affect things like posture and how you carry yourself.  Believe me, seeing pictures of yourself in fat-mode taken by other people can be quite an eye-opener (conferences can be notorious for finding the humiliating shots).  It’s like, looking at myself in the mirror isn’t too bad, but then seeing photos (especially taken from a full-view) really leave me amazed at myself.

Finding your path to thinness is a unique journey, because everyone has their own weaknesses and problems.  My problem is that I wasn’t fully seeing just how effective something as simple as water is to controlling your weight.  You see, I don’t feel like my calorie intake is radically out of control (although it could always be improved).  I also get a little bit of exercise by walking (although again, this too can be improved).  My real weakness is the severe lack of water that my body gets each day.  Sometimes it’s zero to none.  So in turn, my liver ends up working harder because my kidneys are dehydrated.

So, after doing some research into the matter, I’ve decided to see just how much of a difference water is going to make to my own body.  And I’m going to document it here as an experiment, amounting to four posts, once a week, ending on the 14th of November (well, maybe not actually ending if it turns out successful).

The experiment is this: I’m going to keep my routine as it is, continue to maintain my intake, as well as my humble attempts at exercise once in awhile, just like I always do.  But I’m going to change one single thing in my daily life:  I’m going to drink between 60-80 ounces of water each day, and track my weight, to see if the change in my liquid intake makes any difference when it comes down to the scale.

Oh, and I’m starting today, too.  Water consumed (so far):  45+ ounces

Special thanks go to David Martin, Dan Rubin, Colin Devroe, Patrick Haney, and Mike Stickel for all the great advice and support and letting me bug you about it!  I really need you guys to help me through this - maybe keeping it public will lend some accountability to the matter.