As with our popular Air Diet, the Water Diet supplements traditional diets, rather than replaces. There are no high-priced food additives, nor bizarre eating restrictions. The Water Diet focuses upon one single, vital piece of basic nutrition: water.

Nutritionists will tell you that we need to drink at least 8 glasses of water per day. There is probably no other nutritional guideline component that is so easy, so cheap, so readily available as water, but is still so little utilized.

The first question people ask is, what do they mean by a glass of water? Is it a small 4-ounce paper-cup full, half tossed back in a single gulp, the other half tossed in the garbage? Is it a 12-ounce glass tumbler, full to the brim? Is a glass of milk sufficient? Is a glass of beer? Is cola, or tea, or orange juice? There are so many variations of this question that the whole concept is just about lost.

So let's make it simple. A glass of water is 8 fluid ounces of cool, pure water. Eight glasses is 64 ounces, or two quarts. One half-gallon of water. Drink one half-gallon of water every day for the rest of your life.

That is in addition to whatever other fluids that you take in. The Water Diet does not change your current diet. It just insists that you drink one half-gallon of water every day. You should not drink both quarts in one sitting, because that would probably be uncomfortable, but it really doesn't matter. Spread them out throughout your day, or concentrate them at convenient times. Use filtered water, bottled water, rain water, or ordinary tap water. It can be hard water or soft water, whatever kind of water is available in your community. Most water is safe (do not drink unsafe water! How you can tell that it is unsafe is a whole different story.) Just make sure that there is no flavoring, additives or coloring. And make it cool.

Minerals appear in most community water supplies, and are hard to avoid. That is OK, just don't add anything yourself to the water, or buy any water that is represented as being more than just plain water. Steam iron water is fine, but do not breathe steam in an attempt to ingest 64 ounces of water. Do not eat ice cubes. Do not add ice to your water. You can keep a jug in the refrigerator, or use a water cooler, but do not bias your measurement of how much you've drunk by including ice cubes in your drink.

If you are not currently drinking that much fluids, you will probably find yourself spending a great deal of time in the bathroom. You may feel bloated, or you may hear yourself sloshing. Do not give up. It takes a bit of getting used to, but the end result is worth the effort. If you are cold, and need to warm up, go ahead and sip warm water, but only as the exception. If you are otherwise comfortable, drink cool water.

Cool water absorbs heat from your body, but this does not amount to a great deal of calories. It only takes 60 calories to heat 50 degree Farenheit water up to body temperature (remember, calories that are listed upon food labels are 1000 times bigger than the calories that you learned about in chemistry class. Of those calories, you would need 60,000 calories to heat two quarts of water up to body temperature.) However, it is believed that using cool, unadulterated water is important to the adjustment of your body's metabolism set-point. As under the Air Diet, you may feel a little light-headed but the effect is short-lived, and is easy to become accustomed to. Some people don't even notice. There is no need to worry about side-effects--humans have drunk water for thousands of years, and our bodies are 97% water. The FDA doesn't have to worry about these diets! There is no need to change any other aspect of your life.

Do they work for everybody? Of course not, but then there are a million possible factors that could be influencing the outcome. Try the Water Diet, or the Air Diet, for one month, two months, or longer, and send us a note as to how they turned out. We're particularly interested in people who think that they've been failed by the Water Diet, but of course we'd like hear from people who succeed. Tell us the details of your attempt. Please write to the Institute for Psychoactive Research at the address at the top of this article.

Do not substitute the Water Diet for any diet that has been prescribed for you by a medical doctor. This is not a miracle diet, it is a slow (but steady) process and it may take a lot of time and hard work.