Here is a tip that is super simple to implement and doesn’t cost hardly anything. It doesn’t require hardly any effort. It is such a simple change. Drink a glass of water, 8 to 16 oz (250 to 500 ml) about 30 minutes before your main meals during the day. Let’s dig into the details of the evidence that this works and a bit of why this works.
What kind of water do you need? It should just be pure, clean water. But it doesn’t have to be special water, like alkaline water, or hydrogen water, or distilled water with minerals added back. Sure, there are benefits to those special waters, but this super simple tip doesn’t require any of that stuff. It just has to be water.
And drink it before your meal, not with your meal. Timing does matter. (More on that below.) We have been taught that drinking with our meal dilutes our digestive enzymes and makes it harder to digest our food. So, the healthy way to drink water is between meals.
Study: Drink Water Before Meals for Weight Loss, Less Appetite, Lower Fasting Blood Sugar
A study by Sedaghat and coworkers in 2021, which was published in the Journal of Diabetes & Metabolic Disorders, found that drinking water before meals led to substantial reductions in body weight, fasting blood sugar, and appetite in people with type 2 diabetes. The protocol instructed them to drink 250 ml before breakfast, 500 ml before lunch, and 250 ml before dinner, all about 30 minutes before the meal.
It appears that the water helped reduce appetite, leading to eating less. The research group also measured a compound called copeptin. It is a marker for arginine vasopressin (AVP), which is linked to insulin secretion and glucose metabolism. Elevated AVP is associated with insulin resistance and T2DM risk, possibly via effects on liver glucose production or stress responses. So, bringing down copeptin levels is a great finding.
Here is the figure of the results from the study. The control group is in the blue, and the group that drank water before meals is the orange bars. Significant drops in body weight, waist circumference, BMI, copeptin, and fasting blood sugar were impressive. Just from drinking water before meals. Who would have thought this was a thing?
This study is great evidence that this simple tip works. But this research study in 2021 wasn’t the first evidence of the benefits of drinking water before a meal.
More Evidence that Drinking Water Before Meals Works
A study by Dennis and coworkers in 2011 found that middle aged and older adults who drank 500 ml of water before meals, combined with a hypocaloric diet, resulted in greater weight loss than just using the hypocaloric diet alone. Weight loss over 12 weeks was about 2 kg greater in the water drinking group.
A simple breakfast test study by Davy and coworkers in 2009 found that overweight older adults (about 61 years old) consumed less breakfast when they drank 500 ml of water before the meal.
So, yes, there is some decent evidence, though not scads of it, that drinking water before a meal is a great idea for controlling appetite and getting your body in the right hydrated state to consume a meal.
Hydration is Good for Your Hormones
Hydration itself helps keep the body’s hormones in balance, which also boosts the benefits of drinking water before a meal. Being hydrated lowers cortisol, a stress hormone that can raise blood sugar and promote fat storage. It also reduces arginine vasopressin (AVP), as seen in the drop in copeptin in the study by Sedaghat and coworkers. Drinking water before meals may even trigger GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1, the target of Ozempic), a gut hormone that enhances satiety and insulin release so that you eat less and manage blood sugar better. Hydration also balances the appetite hormones leptin and ghrelin to reduce hunger signals. So, a glass of water before your meal does a lot more than just fill you up. It gets your body’s symphony of hormones in tune for better metabolism.
Here’s Why Not to Drink Water With Your Meal
A paper that came out in Diabetologia in 1989 on 7 healthy men and 20 people with type 2 diabetes showed that drinking 300 ml of water with a meal of meat and potatoes resulted in higher peak blood glucose and serum insulin in both the healthy men and in the type 2 diabetic subjects. Peak glucose was 68% higher in healthy subjects and 40% higher in diabetic subjects when they drank water with their meal.
So, drink your water before your meal. The protocol that worked used 30 minutes before a meal as the timing. Maybe it could be closer to the meal, like 15 minutes before, and still work. And 2 hours before you eat is probably too far away on the other end.
So, drink water between meals, and if you are trying to reverse diabetes, drink water about 30 minutes before you eat.
