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Lose weight without noticing it: drink water when you're thirsty
If you can teach yourself to drink ordinary tap water when you're thirsty, and avoid juices and soft drinks, you'll find it much easier to reach and maintain a healthy weight. Every glass of water you drink each day is worth nearly 70 kilocalories the American epidemiologists Rupeng An and Jennifer McCaffrey calculated.
Study
An and McCaffrey used data on 18,311 American adults who had been followed from 2005 to 2012 during the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. They looked at how the participants' diet changed if they started to drink more water instead of other drinks.
Results
With every glass of water that the Americans drank daily their diet improved. An and McCaffrey were able to calculate that for every glass of water that the participants drank instead of a different drink their total energy intake decreased by 69 kilocalories. And most of those calories were in the form of sugars.
That's partly because water is a substitute for soft drinks, but it's not the whole story. Changing to water as a thirst quencher also leads to a reduction in the consumption of other less healthy foods - like the so-called discretionary foods.
This is a collective name for products with little nutritional value, such as "cookies, pies, ice cream, confectionery, chocolate, other desserts (e.g. custards, puddings, mousse), sweet rolls, waffles, cakes, pastries (e.g., crepes, cream puffs, strudels, croissants, muffins, sweet breads), biscuits, hush puppies, chips, popcorn, pretzels, party mixes, and fries."
Conclusion
"In conclusion, the present study examined plain water consumption in relation to energy/nutrient intake and diet quality among US adults using nationally representative data," the researchers wrote. "An increase in the proportion of daily plain water in total dietary water consumption was found to be associated with a decreased daily intake of total energy [...]."
"Promoting plain water intake could be a useful public health strategy for reducing energy and targeted nutrient consumption in US adults, which warrants confirmation in future controlled interventions."
Source:
J Hum Nutr Diet. 2016 Oct;29(5):624-32.
More:
Drink two glasses of water and burn 23 kcal extra 25.03.2010
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