Drinks That Could Be Destroying Your Diet
When you’re trying to lose weight, everyone tells you to focus on a combination of diet and exercise to meet your weight loss goals. But when most of us think of “diet”, the first thing that comes to mind is the food we’re eating.
The truth is, what you’re drinking can affect your weight loss just as much as the chewable calories.
4 Drinks That Could Be Damaging Your Diet
1. Alcohol
Most cocktails are loaded with empty calories. They also can be sneaking fat and carbohydrates into your diet, depending on what you’re mixing your alcohol with. If you’re working hard to lose weight, it’s very important to limit or eliminate alcohol from your drink menu.
2. Soda
Soda, or as my fellow Midwesterners call it, pop, is especially damaging to your diet because it’s easy to drink so much of it. One can of regular Coca Cola contains 97 calories, which doesn’t sound like much unless you drink several cans a day or take advantage of the free refills offered at most restaurants. Your best option is to stop drinking soft drinks all together – they certainly aren’t adding any nutritional value to your diet. If you can’t kick the habit all together, try switching to diet soda.
3. Hot drinks
Rest assured, heat itself is not going to make you gain weight or prevent you from losing weight. But many of us load up our coffee with creams, sugars and sugary flavored syrups – and those things certainly will sabotage your diet. Coffee chains like Starbucks are especially dangerous for dieters with their seasonal coffee and cappuccino offerings that sound so good, but rely on fat, calories and sugars to liven up plain old coffee.
If you’re craving something hot, try a cup of herbal tea which is available in many flavor varieties without added sugar or fat. If you want to add something to your team, try some lemon for a refreshing and healthy flavor
4. Fruit juices
How can fruit be bad for you? First and foremost, many fruit juices are labeled “fruit cocktails” or “fruit drinks”, which usually means they’re made from fruit and a whole lot of sugar and other unnatural ingredients. But even straight fruit juice can be harmful to your diet because of the natural sugars and carbohydrates. Though it is true that fresh fruit juice is loaded with healthy vitamins and minerals, it is also loaded with calories so you are much better of eating the entire fruit instead of just its juice.
The most diet friendly way to quench your thirst is to drink a big glass of water. Keep a water bottle with you at all times and you’ll also find you’re less hungry throughout the day.
