Have you thought about liquid vs solid food, and how it may be affecting your health or weight?

We explored this question in our private Ray Peat group recently—how many cups of liquid do you have a day? Whether its juice, coffee, water, milk or anything else that is liquid.

Responses ranged from 5 to 12 cups a day.

My curiosity around this topic came from an observation in my own life, because I was feeling bloated around the middle. Also I could see what looked like jelly-like deposits on the insides of my biceps, more like cellulite, as well as on the tops of my legs. I wondered  – where this has come from all of a sudden?

What was the cause?

The only thing I had been doing differently lately was drinking a little bit of water at the end of meals, more so to rinse my teeth—as per the teeth care routine. But drinking it rather than rinsing and spitting it out. Sometimes I would have a cup of boiled water too at the end of the meal and sip it slowly. Again, more of a teeth protection thing.

If I did it after every meal, I may be drinking three extra cups of water a day.

It became an accidental habit, where as I knew logically that extra water is NOT necessary, and in fact dilutes the cells of electrolytes (minerals.) This interrupts many functions of the body including metabolic rate, electrical signals in your body like the peristaltic action in your bowels and heart function.

3 Cups of Water

So this was three extra cups of water on top of the regular fluid in the ZEN Beach Diet, which is a cup of juice at each meal (3 per day) and 2 cups of coffee. So 5 cups total. Plus one cup of milk in my breakfast. Total 6 cups. Then when you eat the required 2 cups of fruit at each meal which are also 90% water – 6 per day – can you see how the overload occurs?

The benefit though of juice, milk, coffee & fruit over plain water, is that they contain most of minerals required in the body, so at least your electrolytes wouldn’t be diluting as much, if at all.

Solution First Step

So first of all I stopped the water altogether & just rinsed my teeth with water after a meal & spat it out. No longer extra water going in. Improving my liquid vs solid food ratio.

After a week, the excess jelly/bloating everywhere disappeared. It was kind of like a water-retention type edema.

Second Step

Next, I took out my measuring cups to make sure that the amount of liquid I was drinking was the exact measure. I tend to have giant cups that are well over the standard 250ml (8.45fl oz) of regular cups, because I like to linger over my coffees and drinks because I enjoy them. However this was a super bad habit for my teeth – keeping sugar and acidic fluids like juice on them for far too long  – and also bad for excess fluid as it turns out.

I switched drinking my fruit juice to 1/2 a cup only BEFORE a meal & nothing during or after a meal. Then just rinsed my teeth with water & xylitol and spat it out.

This had many benefits:

1. Limiting the amount ensured that if I was thirsty later in the day, I could still have more & stay within liquid & calorie limits.
2. It enabled the juice to be absorbed freely & prepare the liver with glucose for any protein that was coming next. (Ray Peat has actually recommended this liver glucose preparation.)
3. Digestion improved because I wasn’t adding cold juice to my stomach contents, which may slow digestion. Also enzymes wouldn’t be diluted.
4. Elimination also improved, I think for a couple of reasons—one is not diluting electrolytes, as this is necessary for your bowels to function properly. Also another is that you are ensuring the gap of time between meals and not continuing to drink anything. It’s called the Migrating Motor complex and I’ve written about that here.
5. I was more satisfied after a meal and less hungry between meals. I could easily wait until the next meal time, where as normally I was hungry hours before.
6. It ensured I was not accidentally having excess calories. Fruit juice is especially notorious for this and it’s so easy to have too much.

Another week passed and my bust began to shrink a little as well. It made me wonder whether the bust enlargement part of my dairy issues was because of all the extra liquid in milk? Maybe?

Was the extra liquid in milk part of my issue with dairy too?

I’m still not having any more than one cup of any kind of dairy a day, however in my breakfast fruit bowl, I usually add a cup of skim milk. With this exercise though, I limited it to half a cup of milk and added 2 heaped tablespoons of skim milk powder. This had the effect of making skim milk more creamy. It adds more protein and calcium rather than fat and excess liquid. This whole exercise ensures I am getting all the nutrients without extra liquid, which my body doesn’t seem to handle very well.

Do you have this problem too?

So I just wanted to pass on these observations /findings in my own life, because it may be happening to others as well. Some may drink far more than this on a daily basis, and have no negative effects at all. They are likely super active or live where it is hot and perspire all the time, or it just may suit their body and lifestyle.

When I search online for things like—does drinking liquids slow or impede digestion—all the results said “No it doesn’t.” But I found that YES it does. My stomach is flatter, I get far less gas or digestive discomfort, as well as the other benefits mentioned above.

This is why continued experimentation in your own life is really important, to find your own answers. Perhaps consider what other’s say and try it in your own life. If it doesn’t seem to work for you, then dismiss it and move on.

Example: the OJ & Milk Diet Experiment

For example, I had read in some of the forums where Ray Peat said that you would get most of the nutrition you need, if you just drank orange juice and milk, and had nothing else. Always looking to the easiest way possible to implement this diet, I thought it was a great idea – until I tried it!

OMG it was awful!!

I was constantly hungry yet felt water logged. The acid of that much orange juice in my mouth made my tongue feel sharp and teeth immediately became super sensitive. (Because you needed to be drinking about 2 litres or 0.5 gallons a day to reach the calories.)

Outside of the Ray Peat sphere, others caution against a liquid diet, advising that the chewing action of solid food was a necessary part of the digestive process. To me it all just felt bad and wrong, and it was the experience that demonstrated that this was not good advice for everyone. So we move on to find what does suit.

How about you?

If you conduct your own reduced liquid experiment, let me know what happens!

Note: I did add any missing calories from less juice back in with extra fruit – so the changes were purely due to less liquid vs solid food and not a reduction in calories.

Always learning,

Kristy x