Diet gun

Water is essential in all biochemical processes that take place in our body.

Water helps transport nutrients to the body’s tissues, eliminates harmful metabolic products, maintains healthy joints, controls body temperature, and helps treat constipation.

Does drinking water before meals help suppress appetite?

There is a possibility that some people have managed to lose weight by drinking water before meals, but this happened because they also followed a specific weight loss program. It does not mean that drinking a lot of water just before meals leads to weight loss.

The liquids we drink pass through the gastrointestinal tract very quickly, while the food we consume remains in the stomach for several hours to be digested and we certainly feel fuller for a longer period of time than if we only consume liquids.

That is why in weight loss programs we limit soft drinks and juices quite a lot because they contain many calories in the form of liquids that quickly leave the stomach, resulting in us soon feeling hungry.

Water does not contain calories, therefore its consumption will not increase our body weight. However, it will not help us lose weight by suppressing our appetite, simply if we drink a lot of water (e.g. 2 liters) a short time before eating we will feel a short-term satiety due to the distension of the stomach from the amount of water we have ingested. This short-term satiety will NOT stop our hunger.

Hunger is a different feeling from thirst and is based in a different area of ​​the brain. There is no way we can deceive our brain that we are not hungry because the stimulus from the presence of water in the stomach will be directed to the part of the brain that controls thirst and not hunger.

Drinking a small amount of water just before a meal, 1-1.5 glasses of water about 15 minutes before eating, may help us not to immediately “attack” the food in front of us and to chew our food well even though we may be very hungry, so as to give time for the stimulus from the presence of food in the stomach to reach the center of the brain that controls hunger, resulting in us feeling full a little faster.

We are testing whether drinking water just before a meal helps us not to eat our food greedily, and if it helps us then we can do it.

A small amount of water (1 – 1.5 glasses, 15 minutes before a meal) does not cause a problem for the body, as on an empty stomach you absorb it in about 5 – 7 minutes, just as it does not cause a problem to consume up to 1 glass of water with our meal and no more because it can dilute the stomach fluids and the digestive enzymes found in them, delaying the digestion of food.

Water is life and when we are properly hydrated it helps our body to function properly, but we should NOT expect that we will lose weight because we drink a water before a meal.

To lose excess weight if we follow a properly balanced hypocaloric nutritional program for our needs it will definitely have the expected results.