FALSE: Drinking lemon with ginger will help you lose weight in 10 days

At a glance

• Claim: Drinking lemon with ginger will help you lose weight in ten days.
• Rating: FALSE
• The facts: Drinking water with lemon juice and ginger may cause hyperacidity and damage the lining of your stomach. The healthiest way to lose weight is gradually through proper diet and exercise.
• Why we fact-checked this: The video with this claim has over 770,000 views, 13,000 reactions, 3,700 shares.

Complete details

A video circulating on Facebook has claimed that drinking a mixture of water, lemon, and ginger will make you lose twenty kilograms in 10 days, without a restrictive diet or any exercise.  

This claim is false. 

Lemon juice does not have any proven weight loss benefits. In animal studies, ginger has been shown to have some positive effects on fat metabolism, but whether this directly translates to human physiology is yet to be seen. In addition, this mixture would be quite acidic and cause hyperacidity, which may cause vomiting and stomach pain, and even stomach ulcers. 

Regardless, the consumption alone of a mixture of lemon or lime juice with ginger and water has no scientific basis for weight loss.   

Weight loss is only achieved through a caloric deficit. This means using up more calories than you are consuming. Diets, in particular low calory-high fiber diets, work by controlling the number of calories you consume, while exercise helps you expend more calories. This combination aids your body in entering an energy deficit, thereby signaling your body to consume body fat for fuel. 

Crash diets, or diets that involve going through days with little to no food, are not advisable, as they could pose health risks and do not aid in keeping the weight off in the long term. 

It is best to aim to lose 1 to 2 pounds or 0.5 to 1 kilogram per week. This is what is considered to be the healthy rate for weight loss and has shown to be effective in keeping the weight off in the long term. – Renzo Arceta/Rappler.com

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