Drink More Water To Lose Weight, Study Says

You should probably avoid that glass of wine before dinner, but you may want to drink 16 ounces of water if you're looking to lose weight. An article published in the September 2015 issue of the Obesity journal found that obese adults who drank water before a meal lost a few pounds over the course of about three months.

The article's authors gathered 84 adults and split them into two groups. One of the groups was told to drink 16 ounces of water before a meal and the other group was told to imagine that their stomachs were already full before eating. After 12 weeks, the authors found that each member in the group who drank water lost about nine pounds.

"If you look at any sort of weight-management programs, they all say drinking lots of water is a really good thing," Amanda Daley of the University of Birmingham in the U.K., one of the study's authors, said.

Daley also noted that drinking water fills up your stomach, potentially curbing your appetite. "We all get fatter over time, so it might well work as a prevention strategy at a population level," Daley said. "We want people to drink more water anyway."