Drink till you drop

A magic elixir is shown to promote weight loss

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A simple physico-chemical explanation: water could interfere with fat absorption in the small intestine.

Try a simple experiment: 1) pour a tablespoon of oil on a paper towel. When the paper is removed, most of the oil will be on the surface underneath; 2) thoroughly mix a cup of water with a teaspoon of oil and pour the mixture on the paper towel. Remove the towel. There will be very little oil on the surface, just water. The oil will not get through the towel.

Another possibility, water dilutes digestive enzymes, such as lipase, which break down lipids in the intestine allowing them to be absorbed.

It is possible that drinking a lot of water prior to fatty food consumption could reduce the number of calories absorbed and act just like Xenical which also work by decreasing fat absorption by the intestine.


Our body is made up of %70 of water on average. However, there are people, who consume very little water, and a lot of food, therefore their bodies are comprised of a higher percentage of fat and a lower percentage of water than the body of a person that consumes more water and less food. And both categories are able to survive equally well. You can go without food for at least 40 days subsisting exclusively on water, but without water and food, you'll probably expire in about a week or less depending on your health condition and other accompanying factors like heat or cold. You can survive without consuming water or other fluids for a while,probably for 40 days or so, if your food contains water, like fruit and vegetables. This means that whether you drink only water without food or consume only food that contains water, you'll survive for approximately the same amount of time. Try it! I have.

Sensible GaTech Student

In this article, we discovered that TE's "readers" do not, in fact, read the article. You all flunk the reading comprehension test. Calories were statistically controlled.

Sense Seeker

I don't have too much confidence in the calorie counts - they are calculated based on what the participants reported they ate and are not precise at all. But it's harder to get the weight loss wrong, so the study is very convincing.

BTW I am sure tapwater works just as well as bottled water and saves a lot of waste. (Even if you believe plastic waste mysteriously disappears in our oceans, that's a bonus.)


This is misleading. What you are acutally doing is filling your stomach with a zero calorie liquid prior to eating, therefore your stomach is slightly full when you start eating and you will not consume as much food a.k.a calories since your stomach started out partially full. Where is the data showing that it is actually water that helps you lose weight. These people lost weight because they did not consume as much food/calories. This is not a revelation, it is an old idea: if you want to lose weight, you will have to consume less calories. This would have worked out exactly the same if they were given smaller portions of food.


While a simple mechanical bulking effect is the most straightforward answer, it is possible there may be something else going on. Interestingly, the elderly often conflate feelings of hunger and thirst. It is possible something may be going on at the regulatory level.

brown snake

Your stomach needs to break down the food you eat, so it doesn't need any extra water sloshing around in there. This will just dilute the digesive 'acids'. Best to drink well before the meal, about an hour I have read, and don't drink at all when you eat. I have trouble digesting all sorts of food, but if I stick to this ritual, I just make it and can sleep at night.


So far I count at least half a dozen distinct and very confident explanations, each at odds with the other. This will be great fun to watch.

In the meantime, I'm off to the water cooler.

Cardinal Blue

A word to the illustrator of the story. Very cute picture. But, which parent would use a stemmed glass container of water for a child that age? Child's age defined by the pacifier lying next to the glass ...


If I tried to survive on 1300 calories a day I would be a weak, cranky, forgetful, overly-emotional mess. Just how stationary are these people, or does the metabolism really slow down that much with age?

Super Weh

I lost about 7kgs by drinking water (or some other low calorie drink) every time I got hungry, water stills at least part of the hunger in my experience.

ps drinking too much water is dangerous so I'm wondering how long until we see the first teenager drink themselves into the er.


The number of commenters who cite 'common sense' tells you all you need to know about the general public, if not the science of weight loss. Science has been defined as 'the rejecting of common sense.' It is common sense that the earth is flat.

This is a single study. It needs to be replicated under different controlled conditions. One thing we know is that most such medical research is proven wrong within just a few years. That's not common sense - it is a demonstrable fact.


Here is an explanation:

The body’s elimination systems are a sophisticated team designed to deal with the daily onslaught of waste products (arising from metabolic by-products or chemicals found in food, drugs, and the environment). This team consists of the liver, kidneys, bowel, lungs and skin. Many factors are necessary for the elimination channels to function optimally and one of the most important is sufficient hydration.

Most of us are chronically dehydrated. It is common for the natural thirst mechanism to be subdued meaning we no longer realise we are thirsty. In fact many people confuse thirst with hunger, choosing to eat food when the body is really signalling its need for fluid. There are many common conditions directly associated with moderate dehydration, such as constipation, kidney stones, and cystitis.

The dehydrated body will not be eliminating molecular waste at an optimal level. It is unhealthy to leave unwanted chemicals and the like floating around in the bloodstream. The backup plan is to store them where they can do the least damage, which is cells that are metabolically inactive. The most metabolically inactive cells in the body are fat cells.

Dieting means that these fat cells & their contents are mobilized and re-released into the bloodstream. This is one reason why going on a diet can make us feel groggy, irritable, and lacking in energy. If someone’s elimination channels are functioning below par then the body will put the brakes on the weight loss process so that the overall toxic load isn’t too much to handle.

Going back to the study in question, I am arguing that increasing water intake can speed up weight loss because it improves the efficiency of the body’s elimination channels. The result is the body can metabolise fat at a more efficient rate. Assume that both groups were moderately dehydrated at the start of the trial (as most people nowadays are). Both followed the same calorie intake but the group who drank the water will have had improved abilities to speed up the processing of fat, hence resulting in superior weight loss over time.

The calorie-in and calorie-out model of weight loss is too simplistic and has outlived its usefulness. All calories are not created equal; some will make you fat and increase the risk of illness whilst others will give you energy and keep you healthy. Multiple factors influence weight gain or loss, including often-overlooked simple, healthy strategies such as increasing fluid intake and improving the body’s elimination channels.

Well, that’s enough writing. Time for a nice glass of water.

Dr Dawn Hamilton PhD
nutritionist, psychologist, author


Just because a trial is "randomized" doesn't mean a bias between groups is impossible, especially when there were only 48 participants. If this were a weight loss drug study, this would not be considered evidence of efficacy. Also, is a difference of 2 kg (4.4 lbs) really that much? It may seem like a lot after only 3 months, but the alternate conclusion is that this study only ran for 3 months and is therefore inconclusive.


It's a simple case of filling up the stomach with water leaving less room for food and feeling satiated, leading to lower calorie consumption.
As the article said, people were allowed a certain number of calories but did not state they had to have them.
The problem with this is (if that is how it was done) that self-reporting on daily food consumption is notoriously inaccurate.


Very interesting study. The fact that an RTC demonstrated greater weight loss by drinking water is great! But even more amazing is that the water drinking group has done a better job maintaining the weight loss.

This definitley isn't just common sense. Common sense would dictate that the law of thermodynamics would win. It's likely that drinking water helped people either stick to their diets better, or made them somehow expend more calories (the former is much more likely).


seems to me that the science behind it is backed up by common sense. Drink water before or during a meal, and you will feel more satisfied with less food. Nothing new there, my friends and I would do it in university to save on food.

But i guess this kind of studies are needed in the land of the obese. Yet I do not believe it will have any effect whatsoever in the diet industry. Fat people will never give up their cokes...

Native Son

Without knowing the breakdown of the group by sexes, but assuming 50%
of each sex in each group, the reduction in caloric intake alone should have resulted in an average 6.3 kg weight loss over three months. Add the average weight loss per group and dividing gets an average weight loss of 6 kg. Seems like the "no water" group found a way to cheat the diet, as they averaged a 5 kg loss, which they've regained since the study period!
Still, kudos to the water drinkers!



But are all calories equal? I suspect the pure sugar in drinks is more easily absorbed by the body than complex carbohydrates, which itself requires energy to process.



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