Choose your own adventure

What if I told you there was a way to knock 200 calories out of your diet with almost no effort or change to what you eat? Care to find out how? If you do, turn to page 126. If you don't, turn to page 241. Sorry, I digressed to one of those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books from my childhood. What I meant to say is that if you do, simply join my in the next paragraph (Besides, if you chose page 241, you would have ended up falling off of a cliff and landing in a pool of volcanic magma).

Great, you made it safely. Now, back to what I was saying about the 200 calories being stripped from your diet. Before I tell you how, keep in mind what it takes to even burn 200 calories. It could mean a 30 minute jog, 20 minutes of Tao Bo, or 25 minutes in the pool. The bottom line is that it's not exactly easy to burn 200 calories. Now, the opposite of that is what it takes to consume 200 calories. Needless to say, that's much easier -- to the extent that listing foods that contain that many calories or more would take hours. Going full circle and returning to my initial question, researchers at the University of North Carolina last year tested almost 5,000 people and found that if you drink 7 cups of water daily, you will consume 200 less calories per day than people who drink less than that. Maybe 200 calories doesn't seem like a lot to you, but over a year's time, we're talking about 73,000 calories -- or about the equivalent of 20 pounds!!

So does this mean if you are downing water that you can stop exercising and start eating Twinkies three times a day? Of course not. What it does mean, however, is that you now know a way to cut an extra 200 calories per day by doing something as simple as drinking more water. Remember, that can result in a loss of about 20 pounds over a year if you keep it up. Not too shabby, eh? (if you disagree and think it is, in fact, too shabby, turn to page 243. If you agree and feel that it's shabbiness is not too much, turn to page 78). Hint: Page 243 ends your adventure by having you lassoed and tied to railroad tracks by Twinkie the Kid.