If you’re looking to drop some excess pounds, but hate the gym, this might be the news for you. While in an ideal world we’d all head to the gym five times a week and preach the ‘clean eating’ lifestyle, in reality we’re usually tired after a long day in work and settle in front of Netflix with a good cup of tea and a biscuit. Now new research published in the journal Obesity has proven that the key to losing weight might be as simple as drinking a pint of water before every meal. A study conducted by the University of Birmingham asked a group of obese adults to drink a pint of water half-an-hour before mealtimes for 12 weeks. As well as being given a weight management consultation and advice on how to lead healthy lifestyles and diet, only half of the adults were told to ‘pre-load’ themselves with a pint of water before meals. The second half of adults were told to ‘imagine’ they were full before they ate rather than drinking the water. After 12 weeks, the group who drank water before meals lost on average 4.3kg. Those who didn’t drink the water only lost an average of 0.8kg over the same period of time. Dr Helen Parretti, National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) clinical lecturer at the University of Birmingham, said: “The beauty of these findings is in the simplicity. Just drinking a pint of water, three times a day, before your main meals may help reduce your weight. “When combined with brief instructions on how to increase your amount of physical activity and on a healthy diet, this seems to help people to achieve some extra weight loss – at a moderate and healthy rate. It’s something that doesn’t take much work to integrate into our busy everyday lives.” It’s definitely worth a try anyway… H/T Metro UK