Drinking 500 ml of tap water at half an hour before eating main meals may help lose weight, according to researchers from the University of Birmingham. They believe that the simple intervention could be hugely beneficial, and be easily promoted by healthcare professionals and through public health campaigns.
Obese adult participants were recruited from general practices and monitored over a 12 week period. Each of the participants, all adults with obesity, were given a weight management consultation, where they were advised on how to adapt their lifestyle and improve their diet and levels of physical activity. 41 of those recruited were asked to preload with water, and 43 were advised to imagine that they had a full stomach before eating.
Those in the group who were instructed to ‘preload’ with water lost, on average, 1.3kg more than those in the control group.
Those who reported preloading before all three main meals in the day reported a loss of 4.3kg over the 12 weeks, whereas those who only preloaded once, or not at all, only lost an average of 0.8kg.
When combined with brief instructions on how to increase your amount of physical activity and on a healthy diet, this seems to help people to achieve some extra weight loss at a moderate and healthy rate. It’s something that doesn’t take much work to integrate into our busy everyday lives.
Source-University of Birmingham