When the body if flooded with free-radicals from stress, cooked foods, toxins, acidity from soft drinks, coffee and alcoholic beverages, etc., to protect itself, it's forced to move those free-radicals to a storage place where they'll do the least amount of damage - the fatty tissue. Because they have a charge, they're like static cling - they don't let go until each free-radical is individually neutralized with an anti-oxidant ion as is found in ionized water, which by the way is the most immediately bio-available anti-oxidant you can find - if your anti-oxidant is food based, your body must efficiently break the food down and extract the anti-oxidants before it can utilize them... Anyway, once an anti-oxidant meets a free radical, they neutralize each other and will be harmlessly washed from the body. That's why people who are over-weight due to acidity (probably 98% of obesity) will consistently lose 5 to 10 pounds a month without changing anything else in their diet or exercise. This is also why the reason people cannot and will not ever lose weight by drinking diet colas.