Drinking a glass of water before eating
helps you lose weight
.
The phrase, repeated as advice a thousand times, was studied by specialists at
Harvard University
, who showed scientific evidence as to whether it is
true or myth.
A priori, the health suggestion of filling your stomach with water before eating seems sensible since it will make you
feel full and stop eating
.
But is it true that it works?
And when a person drinks water constantly during the day?
First of all, it is worth clarifying that
you should always consult a doctor or nutritionist
before making a decision related to food and health, so that they can provide the best diagnosis and treatment to follow.
That said, "it is essential to appropriately select what we are going to add to our daily diet, accompanied by
physical activity
and other
changes in habits
," they explain from the
Mayo Clinic
site , a non-profit entity dedicated to clinical practice, education and research.
Precisely with this formula, specialists affirm that only by choosing well what we eat,
we can burn up to 300 calories a day.
When we eat foods that were pre-processed, the body is forced to work harder to break them down, so we burn off more calories and store less fat.
What Harvard says about drinking a glass of water before meals
According to what is published in
Harvard Health Publishing
, there are
three theories
that the prestigious US university makes known and they are the following:
What happens if we drink a lot of water before meals.
Photo Shutterstock.
Feel full, eat less
Filling up on water before meals has intuitive appeal.
The stomach has nerves that detect stretching and send signals to the brain
that it is time to stop eating.
Presumably, drinking before a meal could send similar signals.
Short-term research supports this idea, say Harvard.
For example, older study subjects who drank a full glass of water before meals tended to eat less than those who did not.
Another study found that people who followed a low-calorie diet and drank more water before meals had
less appetite and greater weight loss over 12 weeks
than those who did not drink additional water.
It is worth noting that none of the studies evaluated the impact of drinking more water on long-term weight loss.
Burn calories
Recent studies found no evidence that drinking water burned many calories.
Photo: Getty Images
The water we drink must be heated to body temperature, a process that requires the body to expend energy.
And then this expended energy (called thermogenesis) could
offset the calories from meals.
Recent studies
did not find evidence that drinking water burned many calories
, in contrast to what work from a long time ago did show, the American study center admits.
In this way, it calls into question the thermogenesis explanation for water-induced weight loss.
You are not hungry, you are thirsty
Many times we go to the kitchen to eat something when we are actually thirsty.
This explanation suggests that sometimes we head to the kitchen to grab a bite to eat
when we are actually thirsty rather than hungry
.
If that's the case, drinking calorie-free water can prevent us from consuming unnecessary calories and that could promote weight loss.
The regulation of thirst and hunger is complex and varies throughout a person's life, specialists say.
For example, they say,
thirst can decrease in older adults.
Still, they couldn't find convincing human studies to support the idea that drinking water could help you lose weight.
Other truths and myths about hydration and losing weight
Robert H. Shmerling
, MD
, senior faculty editor at
Harvard Health Publishing
, also took other considerations into account.
Some of them are linked to whether hydration improves exercise capacity and, therefore, weight loss, which could not be corroborated by the expert.
Being hydrated improves exercise capacity and weight loss, something that could not be corroborated by Harvard.
Also,
replacing high-calorie beverage intake with water
could certainly lead to long-term weight loss.
And finally,
burning fat does not necessarily require water.
Dehydration affects the body's ability to break down fat for fuel.
So, perhaps drinking more water will encourage weight loss.
But he also found no evidence that this is the case.