Water keeps your skin and organs healthy, and helps you lose weight. If you're out of touch with providing your body with enough water, it's easy to eat without realizing that water is what you need. Reaching for an extra-large glass of water boosts your metabolism, curbs your appetite and replaces unnecessary calories -- a painless shortcut for healthy weight loss.
Hydration
Staying hydrated keeps all bodily processes, including digestion and elimination, running smoothly. Dehydration slows the rate at which your body burns calories and breaks down fat. If you're 1 percent dehydrated, your metabolism drops significantly, says Dr. Melina Jampolis, a physician nutrition expert with CNN's medical unit. Eating water-rich foods such as whole fruits, vegetables and broth-based soups reduces the calories of your meals, keeping you hydrated and helping you achieve a calorie deficit for weight loss without becoming hungry.
Metabolism
Drinking larger quantities of water speeds your metabolism. It raises the metabolism in normal-weight and obese people, says a study in the November 2010 American Journal of Physiology. This effect is independent of the temperature of the water, so it isn't necessary to drink ice-cold water to burn more calories.
Appetite
Drinking more water, especially drinking 16 oz. before each meal, reduces your appetite. In a 12-week study of overweight and obese middle-age and older women and men, the subjects who drank 500ml water before meals consumed fewer calories and lost 44 percent more weight on a calorie-controlled diet than the control group. The findings were reported in the February 2010 Obesity journal.
Reducing Unnecessary Calories
Sweetened beverages -- including sodas, lemonade, sweet tea and juice drinks -- raise your blood sugar and increase hunger. Drinking a sweetened beverage before a meal results in a greater than 7 percent increase in calorie consumption compared to a group who drank water before meals, according to a study reported in the February 2011 Nutrition & Metabolism. These are excess calories in addition to the empty calories in the beverage. Making a habit of drinking water before meals helps you increase water intake and practice portion control for efficient weight loss.
References
- CNN Health; Can Drinking Lots of Water Help You Lose Weight?; Melina Jampolis, M.D.
- American Journal of Physiology: The Osmopressor-Response to Water Drinking; Marcus May and Jens Jordan; November 2010
- Obesity: Water Consumption Increases Weight Loss During a Hypocaloric Diet Intervention in Middle-Aged and Older Adults; E.A. Dennis, et al; February 2010
- Nutrition & Metabolism: Effects of Grapefruit, Grapefruit Juice and Water Preloads on Energy Balance, Weight Loss, Body Composition; H.J. Silver, et al; Feb 2 2011
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