Weight Loss Myth? Drinking a Beverage with Your Meals Increases Your Daily Water Consumption

When you are on a weight loss program, one of the things that's important to track is how much water you're getting daily. If you have a certain amount of daily water consumption that you'd like to accomplish each day, then you will need to count not just those drink you have between meals, but also those you imbibe during meals. While this may sound obvious, there are those that claim otherwise and support the popular myth.


Proponents of This Weight Loss Myth

Cambiati Wellness Programs, a group of self-proclaimed alternative weight loss gurus, claims not only that this is an aphorism people actually think about, but also is completely and utterly untrue. Ti Caudron, the Chief Inspiration Officer of Cambiati, has recently begun claiming to debunk a number of different weight loss myths on television talk shows and on weight loss blogs across the Internet. One of the "myths" she debunks repeatedly is that of drinking a beverage with your meals to increase your daily water consumption. Her argument for why this is a myth is by saying that drinking during meals dilutes the enzymes in your mouth that work to digest your food, making your body incapable of absorbing nutrients from your food effectively. When you're working on weight loss, it's especially important to get the nutrients from the food you do eat, so some people then worry about drinking during their meals on a diet.

Flaws in the Myth

There are a number of reasons why Ti Caudron's "debunking" explanation is flawed. First, even if her assertions were true, it still would not refute the initial "myth". Regardless of what any of this has to do with enzymes, it nonetheless remains completely and fully true that any drinks you take during your meal will increase your daily water consumption. In truth, we could stop here, as this proves that the initial "myth" is indeed true, but it turns out that even Caudron's explanation is undeniably incorrect.

Digestive Enzymes and Water Consumption for Weight Loss

Caudron speaks of digestive enzymes in the mouth. While such enzymes do exist, they are only a very small part of the entire story of how digestive enzymes work in the human body. Even if all of the digestive enzymes in the oral cavity were somehow neutralized, it would not much matter at all. Digestive enzymes also exist in the stomach, pancreas and intestines, and they can easily accomplish the work apart from what saliva does to your food. The only important enzyme not found in abundance in other parts of the digestive track is amylase, which helps to break down starches.

However, Caudron is incorrect when she says that diluting the enzymes somehow decreases their effectiveness. Enzymes are not affected by "dilution" in water; in fact, they cannot technically make a homogeneous solution at all, meaning that what dilution does exist is not even chemical in nature. When Caudron is saying that the enzymes are diluted by the beverage, she is pretending she is saying something chemically relevant, when in fact what she is saying has absolutely no effect on the digestive enzymes at all.

Myths and Independent Thinking

So, it ends up that the truth is that drinking water does increase your daily water consumption, regardless of what some weight loss clinic may claim. You should never just believe what people tell you, especially when they're trying to sell you something at the same time. Make it a point to think for yourself, even when you encounter skeptical articles like this one. The weight loss industry is a billion dollar industry, and not all of its participants have your best interests at heart.

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