Drinking a Pint of Water Before Eating Could Help You Lose Weight

Losing weight is difficult for many, but new research suggests that something as simple as drinking plenty of water could help you out. Researchers from the University of Birmingham say drinking a pint of water before each meal could help overweight people shed more pounds.

The study involved 84 obese participants and took place over 12 weeks. Participants were given weight-loss advice, including information about healthy lifestyle habits, beneficial diet changes and how to become more physically active.

41 of the participants were also told to “preload” before their three main meals each day, which meant drinking 500ml of water. The other 43 were told to imagine they had a full stomach before eating.

Those who reported consistently preloading before all three meals lost an average of 4.3kg (9.48lbs) over the 12-week period, while those who preloaded less or not at all only lost an average of 0.8kg (1.76lbs).

“The beauty of these findings is in the simplicity,” says Dr Helen Parretti, NIHR Clinical Lecturer at the university. “Just drinking a pint of water three times a day before your main meals may help reduce your weight. When combined with brief instructions on how to increase your amount of physical activity and on a healthy diet, this seems to help people 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.”

Dr Parretti and the rest of the team are now hoping to conduct a similar study over a longer period of time, with a larger number of participants, to confirm the findings.