Thursday, February 12, 2009

Drink Water Before (but not during) Meals


One of the best things you can do to both minimize overeating and make sure you're properly hydrated (critical for optimal fat burning) is to stop drinking caloric beverages during your meals. Instead, start drinking a full glass of water immediately before the meal.

Why drop the with-meal beverages? Because your body produces saliva in the exact right amount and the exact right speed based on whatever your current hydration level is. That assures that we take the time we need to get the food down and get to the next bite. But we're smarter than our bodies, right? Not to mention busier. Who has time to take small bites and wait between bites for each previous one to make it into our stomachs gracefully? Isn't it a much better solution to "cannonball" those big bites and gobble up as much food as possible before your body has a chance to register a sense of fullness?

And wouldn't it be ideal if you could wash those calories down quickly with a beverage that has some additional calories of its own? That way, a 400-500 calorie meal that might otherwise take 20 minutes to eat could be more like 700 or 800 calories (or more) and we could have it out of our way in about seven or eight minutes.

Hmm, wait a second...

In our increasingly more, better, faster society, sometimes it's a mark of progress. Sometimes not so much.

A glass of water BEFORE the meal will do just the opposite, helping you slow down the speed of your ingestion and feel full earlier. Follow this simple rule and you'll not only start getting leaner, but you'll feel better throughout the night.

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