Consider this: Of the 2,115 calories the average American adult consumes daily, 18% (or 385 calories) come from beverages, according to the USDA. And sugary drinks account for the majority of our daily consumption of added sugars. That means your drinking habits can easily affect your weight loss efforts, making it harder or easier to lose, depending on what you drink. Which of the following drinking habits do you practice?
It’s a lunchtime habit for many. Soda or some other sugary drink. How about you?
“Our food supply is already packed with tons of added sugars, and sweet drinks like soda, juice, and sports drinks only make things worse,” he says. medical board expert Laura Burak, MS, RDan Eatthis.com Medical Board Member and founder of GetNaked® Nutrition. “In my opinion, the only drinks worth drinking are coffee, water, and wine, or insert the ones that are worth it to you, and water is the only one you should be consuming in significant amounts every day.”
But if you drink, say, a Dr. Pepper every day at work, consider how dramatically that can affect your body. A 20-ounce bottle contains 64 grams of sugar per serving; that’s 28 grams more than the American Heart Association’s recommended limit of 36 grams per day. That serving of soda also carries 250 calories. With one Dr. Pepper a day for a year, you will have ingested an additional 91,000 calories, the equivalent of 26 pounds of weight.
For more reasons to avoid soda, read Dangerous side effects of drinking soda every day.
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Drinking plenty of water can have such a profound positive effect on weight loss that a registered dietitian nutritionist and member of our medical advisory board made it a central tenet of her program and book, You can quit! How I Lost 100 Pounds Enjoying Carbs, Cocktails, and Chocolate, and You Can Too! Ilana MuhlsteinMS, DR recommends “water first”; drink 16 ounces of water as soon as you wake up and another 16 ounces of water before each meal.
“For me, water is really the power switch for your entire weight loss approach,” she says. “It fills you up, quells hunger and calms those growls in your stomach, it can jump-start your metabolism and it can distract you from grabbing bags of chips, bowls of dip and whatever else you like on your lips.”
Your daily stop at the coffee shop on the way to work for a great specialty coffee may be what’s holding you back from losing weight.
“Many people will skip the ‘unhealthy’ soda, but they won’t realize that their fancy $5 coffee drink could cost them more calories than a soda,” says board member amy goodsonDRwho is also a certified sports dietitian and author of The Sports Nutrition Playbook. “Many flavored coffees are full of high-sugar syrups and powders, not to mention the shake and drizzles that can coat them. Drinking 300 to 500 calories a day in a fancy latte could derail weight-loss goals.” weight”.
“This trendy habit sounds healthy. There are vitamins and minerals in juice, after all. But they still contain sugar. Twenty ounces of fresh-squeezed juice can have as many calories as a bottle of soda,” says Goodson. “Those sugar-based calories can add up fast! This dietitian’s best advice is to eat your fruit, not drink it.”
When you swap unsweetened green tea for the high-calorie beverages you normally drink, you’re saving a significant amount of calories. But green tea offers something else: It can increase your body’s ability to burn fat.
“Green tea is packed with disease-fighting antioxidants, as well as the antioxidant EGCG, which research shows can enhance fat burning and increase metabolism,” the medical board members say. Lyssie and Tammy Lakatos, RD, CDN, CFT, also known as the nutrition twins.
“In addition to the EGCG itself, investigate shows that the combination of the caffeine found in tea and the catechins in green tea help with weight loss by increasing fat burning.”
Don’t you like the taste of green tea? Try white tea. It also speeds up metabolism and stimulates the body to break down fat for energy, according to a study published in the journal. Nutrition and Metabolism. Unsweetened green, white, or black iced tea is a great calorie-free drink.
Coffee creamers and half-and-half are packed with artery-clogging saturated fat.
“Depending on how light you like your coffee, creamer can add more than 200 calories per cup of coffee,” say the Nutrition Twins. “If you drink several cups a day, cutting out the cream can result in a two pound weight loss a week. Try adding cinnamon for extra flavor, you’ll also get the blood sugar lowering benefits.”
Your regular drinks should do you good, says registered dietitian nutritionist Bonnie Taub-Dix, creator of the website and blog. BetterToDoDiet.com. That’s why he’s a fan of unsweetened almond milk.
“Almond milk is only 30 calories per cup, but it contains more calcium than cow’s milk, plus vitamins D, E and A,” she says.
The habit of drinking smoothies can help your weight loss efforts or sabotage them. Depends on how you make them (or order them). Even hunger-satisfying, high-protein smoothies can be calorie bombs if you make them with juices, sweet nut milks, and lots of fruit.
“Whether you order them from a smoothie shop or make your own at home, watch out for ingredients, especially sugary ones like chocolate syrup and calorie-dense mixes like peanut butter,” says dietitian nutritionist registered. smooth youngPhD, RDNauthor of Finally full, finally slim.
She recommends loading your smoothie with veggies instead of relying solely on fruit.
“A weight-loss shake should have fiber, which is provided by low-calorie vegetables like kale, spinach, carrots, beets, and celery,” she says.
If you find it hard to get used to drinking water throughout the day because, well, it’s kind of boring, mix it up with some sparkling water.
“Sparkling water has been shown to increase satiety to a greater extent than plain water by keeping food in the stomach for longer periods of time,” says Goodson. “And sparkling water satisfies your bubbly craving without all the extra calories.”
Craft beers are very popular. You can tell by the number of microbreweries that have turned up in abandoned buildings around your town and the number of boxes of 16-ounce cans with strange names and labels at your local beer distributor.
A regular beer habit, as everyone knows, grows beer bellies. But that’s normal beer. Craft beers tend to be higher in alcohol than traditional pilsners and lagers. And as the volume of alcohol increases, so do the calories. Also, most craft beers are served in 16-ounce cans, not 12-ounces, so you get four more ounces of calories per serving.
For example, a 16-ounce hazy IPA at 8% ABV may contain 300 calories, while a 12-ounce Budweiser at 5% alcohol it contains 145. It’s best to make a habit of a light beer or two if you’re going to drink regularly and want to avoid a drastic change in your weight loss efforts.
Another option to save calories is a low-carb cocktail: a vodka soda, for example, made with 1.5 ounces of vodka and club soda has just 120 calories and 3 grams of carbs. No matter what your poison is, downing a glass of water between drinks can cut a significant number of calories from your total Happy Hour score. And whatever you do, avoid this The worst alcoholic beverage for abdominal fat.
