In the study, the group given water also had their food portions slashed by a substantial amount. What happens if the portions stay the same size? How many people will read or see re-hashed versions of this study in their daily papers or news and simply prefix a large glass of water before their dinners, only to find that it has made no difference?
This is especially true of America where portion sizes are gigantic and people consider themselves primarily bargain-hunters rather than experience-seekers. It is amazing to me how much Americans will complain if a restaurant offers portion sizes just a little bit smaller than other restaurants in the area, even if the quality is much higher.
However this strategy arose, all her children have rejected it, which leads me to believe that these sorts of things can change quickly between generations. On the other hand, my parents are still erring on the side of "low-fat" style nutrition, even though I've told them repeatedly that it's been essentially debunked.
I wonder, what bad nutritional advice will I cling to desperately when I'm older?
I weigh about 70 Kg and a half portion in any US restaurant is more than enough for me. I always feel bad about sending food back to the kitchen but I'd feel even worse for overeating.
Go into a Bojanles and order a large hash brown as a side order for breakfast. It's enough potatoes for three or four adults.
The portions there really are huge.
Of course, it's not the only factor that leads to obesity, but it's extremely outdated and idiotic practice.
I can see the benefit to those who like to snack because they're hungry during the day - regularly drinking water will help ward off the hunger until meal time. In the end, though, it all boils down to common sense: the less you eat, the less weight you put on.
The way it works IMHO is not too obscure - water fills you up and gives you the impression of being 'full' earlier, so you tend to reduce your regular food intake. Feeling 'fuller' equates to being satiated for a lot of people (including me), so the tendency to chow out at random times during the day is highly reduced/eliminated.
I used to be 90+ kg in the middle of 2009. Once I decided to drink copious amounts of water during the day, by Jan 2010 I had come to about 60ish kg and lost 4 inches around the waist. My other breakfast/lunch/dinner eating habits remained the same, and the water meant I cut down on snacking between meals.
Seriously, isn't there any research showing water fills you up?
There must be an awful lot of things which are very hard to prove in a proper controlled study, but which are totally obvious to anyone who tries them. To prove something about diet to everybody's satisfaction I'd have to get dozens of volunteers, compensate them properly for their time, carefully monitor what they eat, and worry about all sorts of experimental artifacts coming from the fact that they know they're taking part in a dietary experiment. As you can see in this thread, people are still complaining that this presumably-expensive experiment still doesn't really prove its point.
Alternatively, to prove it to my own satisfaction I can try it out for two weeks and see whether it works. And that's all I really care about.
The problem is lots of stuff that people think they know and is totally obvious is completely wrong and completely subjective. Science has a harder job, it has to prove things objectively.
"It is possible that the water displaced sugary drinks in the hydrated group, but this does not explain the weight loss because the calories associated with any fizzy drinks consumed by the other group had to fall within the daily limits."
There is such a thing as good calories and bad calories - obviously getting your calories from healthy fats such as olive oil and avacados is going to be a lot more beneficial to your weight in the long run than getting your calories from sugary fizzy drinks such as coca-cola.
Still, nice article.
It may be "obvious", but I'm not sure if that's true!
"The second rule of fat loss is that healthy fat does not make you fat. Excess calories, in particular excess from the wrong calories makes you fat. This is a very hard concept to get across. People still believe that fat makes you fat and will argue without you to the grave while they eat a gallon of low fat ice cream that has the power to make you fat over night.
...
Lets get back to fat. Low fat diets equal low testosterone and low progesterone production. Both are necessary for men and women for optimal fat loss and well-being.
Without adequate levels of fat in your diet (30% of calories), you will not have adequate levels of testosterone. Without adequate levels of testosterone you will not be able to build muscle. Building muscle is the most effective way to get rid of fat and keep it off. " - Mike Mahler
3500 calories = 1 pound of fat, no matter the source.
You can lose weight eating only McDonald's if you counted calories, but you would be:
1. Hungry all the time. 2. Look terrible.
Drinking water before a meal will help you feel a little fuller and ultimately, eat less. People ignorant to nutrition will begin to use this as a free pass to eating even more poorly.
If you really take a step back and look at this, what they are suggesting is filling up with less calorie dense foods (water being the ultimate example), preferably with a high satiety index (here's a list: http://www.mendosa.com/satiety.htm).
One danger would be that they would wash out too many useful substances out of their body by drinking to much liquid.
I would also imagine so much liquid dilutes the stomach juices and the food doesn't digest properly. I don't have any scientific basis for this btw, just a hunch.
> ... what they are suggesting is filling up with less calorie dense foods
Another way to accomplish the same thing (for me at least) is to eat spicier, more flavorful foods.
I've never heard of that happening, or anything like it. There is such a thing, supposedly, as water intoxication though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication
It's not a serious concern for anyone not running marathon distances or taking part in a water-drinking competition, though.
I'm just a little annoyed at the article, because all it offers the reader is something along the lines of "drink water before meals, it helps you lose weight, but we're not sure why!"
Any dietician could immediately them that they're losing weight because of a caloric deficit-- a result of feeling more full from the water.
I would have just preferred they point it out rather than equate a glass of water before meals to some sort of magic pill.
I guess it's wishful thinking.
Piper's in Raleigh has a really good fish n chips plate - my wife loves it. However, it's an insanely huge portion. $13.95, but it's more than enough for two people (she split it with a friend last time and they couldn't finish it). Dropping the sizes in half and making it $10.95 would still be a good value (well, in line with the rest of their portions, FWICT). The waitress has said that most people don't finish the fish because it's too much - it just ends up being thrown out. You can't easily reheat fried fish the next day as a leftover (well, I can't - any tips?)
Getting Chinese takeaway always felt a bit expensive (for the good stuff around us). However, we've cut back on portion sizes, and my wife's dinner is enough for dinner, then lunch, then usually another dinner, all from an $11 menu item. In those terms, it's a good deal. But if you tried to eat it all in one sitting, it's too much.
I just do not understand restaurant portion sizings.
Put chopped peppers, onion and garlic with butter in a pan and put it on the stove with a lid. Stir a few times until the peppers get soft. DON'T let anything become brown, turn down the heat. Next put it in a food processor or use a similar device until it's a nice smooth sauce. It can't hurt to process it too long. You don't want bits of pepper skin in it. Next put it back in the pan with a laurel leaf and some cream (optional, but like many sauces and soups, adding some cream makes it taste better) and let it cook for a minute or so. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Goes well with fish and pasta and some parmegiano. Cut the fish in relatively small pieces and mix with the sauce. This hides the fact that it has been reheated.
The food is a very small part of their costs. They can double the amount of food for a cost of $1, charge an extra $2 AND have many more customers for their great value!
It's like selling home PCs with a 1Tb drive, most users don't need it but it only costs them $5 more than a 500Gb drive.
For things like that I suggest a toaster oven. Put it on 350-400 or so and put the food in long enough to get hot. Works well for most fried foods, pizza, and other things that don't microwave well.
If for no other reason, drinking that water reduces my urges for fizzy drinks - which helps a lot. Additionally, as others have said - reducing the amount you eat, in whatever way that works for you, has helped a lot.
On the other hand, if people were eating (for instance) more proteins in place of the simple sugars of fizzy drinks, they would drastically alter how their body was interacting with those 1800 calories.
I was disappointed by the apparent attitude in the article that every calorie was equal, regardless of source. I really believe calories are to the nutrition industry what counting lines of code is to software: a number that is just too easy to calculate but absolutely meaningless in measuring anything.
This is not true, not for calories nor for lines of code. Both are not sufficient measures when used on their own, and both need context to be interpreted in, but outright dismissing any measurement of them is just as wrong as blindly relying on them.
Apart from this, this study was done by professional nutritional researchers - the article may have dumbed down their word a bit but I'd be hard-pressed to believe that they didn't account for things like that.
I ask because in the many years I've developed software or managed the development of software, I've never found it a useful metric to study because there are too many variables that impact it. However, if I'm missing something there, I'd like to know.
I mean nowadays you have to buy your water most places, you might as well get something "better" for that money, and that won't be water - some some kind of beverage, soft drink, etc.
So you would be drinking less, simply because you have to pay (yes, you pay for tap-water too, but that's done as part of all your water usage bill, and it's done at the end of the month usually, and probably way cheaper than bottled water).
Just a reminder that studies may find a typical or probable result. They do not find cause -> effect for everyone.
