Nutritionists have long recommended drinking water before meals, to help you feel full sooner. But new research from Virginia Tech shows that people who drank two glasses of water before each meal consumed fewer calories and ate less than those who didn’t. Over the course of the 12-week study, the group that had water before eating lost five pounds more.
Participants in the study were middle-aged, but researchers think that the trick can help anyone. “We think the water helped them better manage their hunger and contributed to feeling full,” explained Brenda Davy, PhD, RD, Associate Professor in the Department of Human Nutrition, Foods and Exercise at Virginia Tech.
Staying hydrated has many benefits. If you can swap water for other beverages, even diet ones, you’ll probably consume fewer calories overall. Water is essential for the digestive system, so that means you need lots of it while losing weight to flush out the by-products of burning fat. When you start a diet, you may be getting less water just from eating less food. That makes drinking water before a meal even more important.
Via Yahoo Shine.
Have you ever tried the water trick? What did you think?
September 20th, 2010