With any diet or weight loss regime one would drink plenty of water simply because it is needed to flush out the toxins from all the fat that your burning.  I think your right in that it takes motivation for any diet or exercise.  Will power and wanting something are 99% the battle half the time.  I want this bad enough to stick with whatever it takes to get it.  I am so not into being over weight really... it just happened by chance in having frequent pregnancies and not working at getting my fitness levels back to normal.  When fitness levels decline, so does your metabolism---it slows down to match the fitness level....and of course this makes it easy for your body to start storing fat instead of using it as fuel.  It is that simple.  Diet alone or drinking lots of water will not keep the weight off when you get to your goal weight.  You need to maintain that weight with the level of activity that is befitting.   That I expect not to be six sessions per week then but much less really.  one has to work more at activity to burn the fat, but if one continued in that mode you would keep losing.  So dropping back after reaching your goal weight is fine...it is just having the perserverance to stick with whatever you are doing. 

The common mistake people make when doing exercise AND diet at the same time is that they don’t take in enough calories.  When your exercise every day as you do with BFL you burn 250 calories or so and when dieting some peop,e drop back 500 calories, but they forget that when exercising---you don’t need to drop back quite so many.  otherwise you body is 750 calories down everyday..senses your on a diet or that there is a famine and it hangs onto the fat levels.  This is what happened for me essentially and then after further research and tweaking and believing in myself and my body’s ability to kick back...I stuck with it and overcome the need to be fit and slim fast.  My goals are so much more long term than that and I am not easily beat.  I know eventually in eating the right portion sizes and taking exercise that there will be weight loss. 

I even did TOO much at first and of course this goes against you because your cortisol levels sky rocjket and this stomps all over muscle repair.  So I was going backwards and eating the wrong things.  With Body For Life or Atkins which I have also done in the last few weeks to kick off a platue) there are healthy ways of doing that and bad ways.  For instance you may grab a fistful of carbs and a fistful of protein, but you could be eating high saturated fat on your protein or adding lot’s of unhealthy salad dressings and even taking in the wrong type of carbs such as the shakes and diet bars etc instead of having say lean chicken and a sweet potato steamed and some nice fresh vegies on the side.  With Atkins you could be eating lean chicken and lots of green vegies or a yoghurt or cottage cheese or you could be slugging back cream and sour cream and wading in butter and eating pork rinds and bacon.  You may get weight loss, but you have to ask yourself the question can I maintain this and keep the weight off when I get to where I want to be.  if you retrain your eating habits to eat the healthy versions of either of those, then your most likely to keep it off and succeed.  I mean I have done BAD BFL and BAD Atkins...been there done that and know exactly where I need to be going now to make it work for me.  I’ll be damned if I am going to give up after six weeks on it and half way to my goal.  When I reach that goal I know I will look tons better and feel better...and if I am not completely happy...I will set myself another 12 week goal.  Simple... I know folks that are on challenge four and they have before and after picutres to prove it works.  For now that is all I need to keep me going.  That and discovering that I am a physically strong person..feel lighter in my step due to being stronger.  Anyone can select a plan of sorts but they have to believe in it really and believe in themselves and keep perservering.  Just one look at my "before" picture keeps me on track..hehehehe.

The scales are not exactly your best friend when you are gaining lean muscle at the same time as losing fat either because it can appear your not really losing at all and this in itself can cause you to give up.  So I would recommend anyone embarking upon such going to a few of the forums available out there for support.  There is tons of encouragement and advice for anyone and you will find like minded people that are AS determined as you are to make a success of it.