More on Water for Weight Loss

Want to lose an extra 6.6 pounds a year without even trying?

That's the amount you might be able to lose just by drinking a half liter of water before breakfast.

According to researchers at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, drinking water before a meal appears to curb the appetite.

Researchers compared two groups overweight and obese people. One group was given instructions to drink a half liter of water before breakfast (about 16 ounces), the other was not. They found that the subjects drinking the water consumed an average of 75 less calories at breakfast than those who didn't drink up first. They didn't make any effort to eat less- they may not even have been aware of doing so.

But they did.

Think that's no big deal?

Consider that 75 calories a day adds up to... let's see now... 27,375 calories a year. By traditional computation (3500 calories per pound) that adds up to just under 8 pounds.

This is important because it adds to the growing body of research showing that small behavioral changes that don't seem to be a big deal can actually translate into different eating behaviors. Drinking water before breakfast is one of those small changes. Eating on a smaller plate is another. Leaving the chicken wings at the table after you've eaten them (instead of having the waitress remove them) is a third. All have been shown to unconsciously influence how much you eat.

All take just about zero effort or willpower!

And if you think 8 pounds a year is bupkus, consider that there are weight loss drug studies that don't produce results much better than that. Plus the fact that drinking water before breakfast is only one of many different strategies you can use to curb your appetite and cravings- put them together and before you know you're looking pretty good!

Water for Weight Loss? Yup!

You may have heard me say before that I consider water the greatest weight loss drink in the world. Why? Let me count the ways. Water is needed for virtually every metabolic process. It helps flush toxins out of the body. It helps give you energy (even 2% dehydration can negatively impact physical and mental performance). And much of what we perceive as hunger- driving us to overeat- is actually thirst.

For almost a decade I've been recommending that for weight loss, the ideal amount of water to drink on a daily basis can be approximated by taking your current weight and dividing by 2. That's the number of ounces you should aim for. For example, if you're 200 pounds, go for 100 ounces a day. (I was happy to see, recently, that this is exactly the same formula recommended by Deepak Chopra.)

But even though all nutritionists I know recommend drinking plenty of water, we didn't really have a lot of research to back up what most of us "knew" intuitively.

Now we have some!

In two separate studies, (both published in recent issues of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism) researchers found that within 10 minutes of drinking about a pint of water, metabolic rates in both men and women begin to increase as much as 24-30 percent!

They don't completely know why, but it might have something to do with osmotic pressure changes. (If you're wondering, other drinks don't seem to have the same effect, so it's definitely the water that's doing it.)

You know, if you drank this much water every day upon rising you could actually burn an extra 17,400 calories a year- for a loss of five extra pounds. Just from drinking water!

Now granted, that's not an awful lot of weight. But added to all the other benefits of water, the little bit of extra weight loss is a nice bonus!

For best results consume it first thing in the morning on an empty stomach.

And then keep on drinking all day!