I spent a day watching BBC health/weight programming on YouTube.
I saw some interesting information about water.
In the past I have learned:
- A person trying to lose weight should drink half of their body weight in ounces of water per day
- Not having enough water in your systems - digestive, muscular, lymphatic, endocrine, cardiovascular, urinary, etc. means that your body will pull moisture from your waste to aid these systems if it does not have enough.
In the videos I was watching I learned two new things:
1. Water that is consumed alone, on an empty stomach, literally leaves your stomach almost immediately. The pyloric valve at the end of your stomach doesn't recognize it as food, so it lets it pass immediately. To illustrate this in one of the episodes they gave two men a meal of broccoli, mushrooms and chicken. They had them drink a glass of water before consuming the meal. Then they gave another two guys the same meal (including the water), but all mixed up in a blender, heated and served as soup.
The men who consumed the soup reported being hungry AN HOUR AFTER the men who consumed the water first, then the meal.
So eating soups can help you lose weight and feel full longer.
The pyloric valve at the end of your stomach that closes shut when it senses food in your stomach. The men who drank the water expanded their stomach, then the water immediately left. The food came in to the already expanded stomach, the valve closed sensing the food. The volume of the food didn't even even fill half of the space where the water had expanded the stomach.
For the men who ate the soup, the valve closed immediately on sensing the soup, and the stomach expanded and kept all of the contents in the stomach.
2. In another episode, they had two twins. One consumed 2 liters of water per day, the other took in no water for a week. Their skin levels were tested for elasticity, dryness, etc. before and after the week. The results showed no difference between the girls. It appears that 80% of the water that our body uses comes from the foods we eat - further supporting the soup theory above, and further supporting the idea that soups could really help someone lose weight and feel full while they are losing weight.
