Drinking a lot of water? How about EATING a lot of water?!
We’ve mentioned over and over in this blog the importance of staying hydrated and drinking as much water as possible in order to stay fit. However, I recently discovered that it is also important to include in your everyday meals foods with a high content of water.
It seems that if you add to your main courses lettuce, broccoli, carrots or apples (all of which have high water contents), you are able to lose more weight. Why? Well, these foods influence the fullness factor. That is, you feel satiated by eating less.
Let’s look into a practical example: you want to eat a smaller portion of pasta, but you are afraid that you won’t satisfy your hunger and you’ll end up eating more than you intended in the first place. In order for this not to happen, you can augment your small pasta plate with lots of tomatoes and cucumber slices. The amount of calories will be the same, but your meal will look bigger and you will definitely feel like you’ve successfully satisfied your hunger.
How come water-rich foods have this effect on us? Several reasons are mentioned by specialists:
- water-rich foods definitely look bigger and larger than foods which incorporate less water;
- when eating these foods, you chew more, thus, you feel you ate more;
- water is absorbed slower if it’s part of a food, so it remains for a longer time in your stomach.
Additionally, it’s been proven that hunger and thirst are processed by our organisms in totally different ways. So, a calorie-rich beverage will only quench your thirst, but it will do nothing about your hunger. On the other hand, eating soup – a water-rich food – will definitely have an effect on your appetite.
And that’s not all! The benefits of consuming water-rich foods extend to keeping you wrinkle-free. That’s because your skin stays hydrated for a longer time and makes you look fresh and young.
So remember: it’s just as important to eat water-rich foods as it is to drink water! If you want to lose weight by eating less, consider these foods:
- Lettuce, iceberg
- Pears, asian
USDA National Nutrient Database offers the complete list with the aliments and the water content.
RSS Trackback URL 8. October 2010 (08:09)
Filed under: Nutrition by Slim