Well, it's not really a food, but it's one of the six essential nutrients and lack of it will kill a human much more quickly than lack of food. So I thought since the temperatures are climbing and we're all looking for something to keep us happily hydrated, that I'd talk about water today.
Did you know that the vast majority of your weight…is water? The less body fat you have the higher percentage of your total weight is water, but in general most people are about 65% water. If you do"quick fix" things to lose weight, and you lose pretty much anything measurable in the course of a day, the weight you lost is likely to be water.
A lot of times when you think you're hungry…you're actually thirsty. The body has the ability to do this, knowing that a lot of foods have water. I'm not a huge fan of the"drink water to ignore that you're truly hungry" school of nutrition, but I AM a huge fan of drinking a glass of water when you first feel you're hungry to see if the feeling goes away…or starts to drift back. If it went away, it was water that you needed. If it came back, you need to eat something.
A lot of times the energy low you feel mid-afternoon…is actually dehydration. Try keeping hydrated and see if it doesn't give you a brain boost and lessen your thoughts about getting your hands on something sweet. I was reminded of this a couple of days ago when I got busy, didn't pay attention to how much I was drinking, then spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out how to get back into my condo that I'd locked myself out of in my water-deficient stupor. It's probably why water is on my mind today!
A really interesting behavior I see in my clients is that they have very stable habits when it comes to eating--healthy or not. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner tend to be pretty much the same thing, day after day. But when it comes to drinking water they complain that they don't like it because it gets boring and tedious to drink it!
I love plain water, if it is ice cold. I also freeze fruit juice into cubes to zest my water with a little bit of lime, orange, even strawberry flavor. And whenever the special essence-flavored waters go on sale, I grab a few bottles. A shot of lemon MetroMint in a plain glass of water can really add flavor.
Another important strategy that gets water into you is to eat more fruits and vegetables. One reason they are so low in calories for the volume is that they are very high in water content. Actually, any time you eat a food that is more liquid--smoothie, soup, etc., you increase your water content.
So one of the big reasons you get so much benefit from these foods is not just that they're low in calories, but they're high in water content, which keeps you from falsely craving food and seeking out the wrong things to get rid of the urge to eat a food that you thought you wanted, you ate, then realized you didn't feel any differently…except maybe wishing you hadn't eaten what you ate.