My lemon with water experiment Day 5

Going well on my new experiment. I definitely am less hungry in the morning after I have my lemon with water first thing. Doesn't seem to have any effect on my appetite during the afternoon or evening but that's exactly what I what have expected. It's a morning only thing.

The lemon with water delays the start of my morning hunger. If I wake up at a 1 or 2 on my 10-point Hunger scale, the lemon with water pushes me up to a 5 for about half an hour which gives me enough time to do a couple of yoga stretches or jot down a few ideas if I'm writing something big and have lots of brilliant ideas when I wake up (I wish!).  The fullness effect doesn't last that long however. I'm back down to a 1 or 2 an hour later so I only delay the return of my hunger for a while. Still it's interesting to track.

Squeeze the fresh

I like to squeeze half a fresh lemon each day for this.  When I'm racing out the door and don't have much time, I just drop in a slice of lemon into the water and leave for a couple of minutes before drinking. It taste ok but I don't feel I get the same 'hit' of lemon-iness or acidity as with the half lemon.

The bottom line

Interestingly I was surprised to see that I extract 3 tablespoons of juice (60ml or 2 oz) from half a lemon. That's a lot more than I expected. That would explain why I get more of an effect when I use this freshly-squeezed lemon as opposed to just a slice in a glass of water.

Well, that's a wrap on this experiment. What have I learned? That a glass of water with a squeeze of lemon juice works to stave off my breakfast pangs and flattens my glucose curve. In other words, the acidity of the lemon works to keep my glucose from rising too far up. What I've noticed is that it takes a little longer after breakfast for me to feel hungry again - which is a small bonus. 

• Read how my experiment kicked off
• Follow my morning testing from Day 2, Days 3 & 4