Wednesday, 8th of September 2010 at 11:45:46 AM 
For once there is a reason to be happy that I’m “middle-aged.”
Brenda Davy, Ph.D, R.D., associate professor, department of human nutrition, foods and exercise, at Virginia Tech and her pals conducted a study examining the effect of drinking two cups of water prior to each meal.
The old diet myth is proved true; drinking water before a meal helps you lose weight. IF YOU ARE MIDDLE AGED or older. WOOHOO!
The whippersnappers’ hyper-efficient digestive system clears out the water too fast for it to do any good, but the rest of us and our sluggish guts benefit from the water trick by purportedly consuming 75-90 fewer calories. Not much, but it adds up.
I prefer to gulp at the sink from a measuring cup, because putting it on the table with my meal makes me mad. I don’t want to take water or anything else like it’s medicine. Except maybe actual medicine. I take Flintstones vitamins for Pete’s sake. Like candy, in a way!
I sort of trick myself into drinking the water. “Oh, just going to have a little sip before I go sit down, just a splash here at the spigot. ” However, I would like to know why studies never prove things like, say, two glasses of WINE before each meal will help with weight loss. Or perhaps two CHOCOLATES would make you drop eight pounds a week. My research dollars are not going to the right places.
An entire LAKE of free weight loss product! And I go there all of the time!
I’m still at 6 lbs. lost, but at least it’s staying lost and wasn’t just a fluke of the scale. I’m at 89 miles in my walk to the nerdy place I won’t mention, that’s eleven miles this week.
We’re still blundering around in the Old Forest, lost. It’s incredibly boring. Why aren’t we killing things? I’m actually looking forward to meeting a carnivorous willow tree. Notes to self: never follow Frodo; never follow Merry.
Remember that post I made about how to fake a clean house? And the tip about tossing everything into your room? That works great, but the piles of crap eventually come back to haunt you. Remember the post I made about Fat Houses?
We’re shoveling out our bedroom this week, and I think that’s worth a minimum of twelve pounds over the next month. Joshlilyn saw that room two-and-a-half years ago, and I said, with all of the confidence of the inveterate optimist, “Why, the next time you see this room it’ll be all done up!” The next time she saw it was in June and it still looked like an ancient, crammed attic. I can’t believe some of the things I’m finding in there as we clean it out. I even found leftovers of the stamps we used for our wedding invitations.
Our mini heat wave broke today. The morning started out nice and sunny (see pic) but then a cold wind blew off of the ocean and brought low clouds and fall with it. My ears are hurting just a little from the cold, and I like it. I feel fresh and clear, and my house was snug and warm when I got home.
Let’s see, we have the thinner house, my ten miles a week, the glasses of of water, the sleep makeover, and the five fruits and vegetables a day. There is no way to NOT lose weight. Right? RIGHT?
Any tricks I’m missing? What are your sure-fire modifications to your life that shed the lbs?
Sure fire may be a stretch, but I found it helpful to draw a picture of me at my goal weight (it’s very funny looking as I am no artist), standing on a scale with the target number and a calendar with the target date circled. I put it near my desk so that I wouldn’t forget my goal when tempted by the cookies and doughnuts in the office kitchen. I was also a bit OCD and made a spreadsheet to monitor calories and weight that also calculated daily total loss and week over week losses, with graphs. But really the only sure fire way to lose weight was to keep the calories consumed less than the calories used.
Good job on the walking and six pounds!
I am drinking water before meals these days, and it is helping. And I am also (gulp) middle aged, so there you go. I drink mine at the sink, too, though I drink mine out of a bottle.
I’m walking a lot, too. Still having some issues with my back, so walking is the friendliest form of exercise. My husband’s been walking with me, and we’ve found a good route that includes some stairs and some good uphills, and also apparently a tiger that dwells in the underbrush, because what else could explain that SMELL?
I like water with my meals (I’ve always hated milk. ugh.) although I like wine much better, thankyouverymuch. I’m going to try that water appetizer thing, though — not a bad trick, especially if it really helps!
Cutting out the desk snacks, and then adding in lofat vanilla yogurt or skim cottage cheese as meal fillers or snacks have been the biggest food changes to help me get back in weight control. Regularly getting out from behind the desk and, you know, _moving_ also helped, of course. (Why was I surprised by that??)