Doing This 3 Times a Day Suppresses Appetite, Helps Shed Pounds
Drinking several glasses of water a day has been preached by health and diet professionals for years, but new research suggests that the weight-loss benefits of the zero-calorie drink have finally been confirmed.
Dr. Brenda Davy from Virginia Tech and her team found that drinking 2 full glasses of water, three times a day, before each major meal helped dieters lose about 5 more pounds over a 12-week period than those who didn’t drink water before eating.
The study surrounding the guilt-free thirst-quencher was presented at the annual National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, and Davy said in a news release that it is the first of its kind to use a randomized, controlled clinical trial that compares dieters’ water consumption.
Previous studies from Davy’s group have found that older people who drank two cups of water right before a meal ate up to 90 fewer calories.
“People should drink more water and less sugary, high-calorie drinks,” Davy said in a statement. “It’s a simple way to facilitate weight management.”
Researchers divided 48 adults between the ages of 55 and 75 into two groups — one of which drank two 8-ounce glasses of water before meals and the other of which did not.
Though both groups stuck to a low-calorie diet during the three-month experiment, in the end, those who didn’t drink before eating lost about 11 pounds, as compared to 15.5 pounds lost by the water-drinkers.
Davy said the explanation for the participants’ weight loss could be because the water made them feel fuller and caused them to eat fewer calories during the meal.
Replacing high-sugar drinks, like most sodas and juices, with water could be another factor for why more H2O consumption led to better results on the scale.
Bonnie Taub-Dix, author “Read It Before You Eat It”, available in late August, told AOL Health that dieters need to focus on their consumption as a whole, not just food.
“Very often people focus more on the foods they eat than the beverages they drink, and in many ways it works against them,” she said. “They can feel tired and not realize that they are dehydrated.”
Taub-Dix also said fiber is an essential part of weight loss and eating watery foods will give dieters the same benefits of feeling full faster, but with the added nutritional bonus water can’t give.
“Foods that contain more water like soups, fruits and veggies — studies have shown when you eat these watery foods you become fuller and more satisfied and you can lose more weight,” she told AOL Health. “But these also contain the important fiber you need, so it’s a beautiful blend of fiber and fluid.”
To get rid of that bloated look and feel, and get a desirable flat stomach, it all comes down to hydration, Taub-Dix said.
“To help with getting a flat belly you need more fluid in your diet,” she said. “A lot of us like alcohol and we don’t realize that alcohol and caffeine have dehydrating effects.”
The Institute of Medicine, an agency of The National Academies, which advises the Federal Government on science, recommends that, in general, women should get about nine cups of fluids (not just water) a day, and men should get about 13 cups.
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