Beverages and Weight Loss

There is a lot of emphasis placed on what you eat when you diet. However, there is very little emphasis placed on what you drink. The truth is that many common and popular beverages contain empty calories that can work
against your weight loss success.

What are Empty Calories?

Empty calories are calories in foods and beverages that don't contain enough calories to support the body's nutritional needs. When you are on a diet, you need as much nutritional value in each calorie as possible since your caloric intake is limited.

What Beverages Should I Avoid?

Soft drinks, sugar based drinks, alcoholic beverages, and high fat beverages should all be avoided.

Soft Drinks

As far as soft drinks go, regular soft drinks contain a lot of empty calories-some 250 calories for a 20 ounce bottle in some cases. Diet soft drinks may be calorie free, but they usually contain sugar substitutes and more than 30 mg of sodium, both of which can work against your diet program.

Sugar Based Drinks

Kool-Aid, fruit punch, some fruit juices, lemonade, sweet tea, and any other sugar sweetened beverage should be avoided or restricted when you are trying to lose weight. These beverages contain sugar, which means they have empty calories.

Alcoholic Beverages

Alcoholic beverages contain empty calories, carbohydrates and sodium. Empty calories, excess carbohydrates and too much sodium can all help you to keep your weight on, and possibly add more weight to it. On average, beer contains 85 calories, 6 g of carbohydrates, and 12 mg of sodium per 12 ounce serving. Alcohol also slows down your metabolism, which makes weight loss difficult.

High Fat Drinks

Drinks such as milkshakes or malts that are made with whole milk, coffee products that contain full fat cream or milk and other drinks with a high fat content should be avoided when you are trying to lose weight. When you want to lose weight, you have to limit your fat intake, but you must also get the most nutritional value from the fats you do eat.

So, What Can I Drink?

Water is the best beverage to drink when you are dieting. If you don't like the taste of plain water, add fruit to the water to change the flavor. Sliced strawberries, oranges, limes, cranberries, blueberries or lemon can all help with the flavor of water. When you add the fruit, don't add any sugar or sugar substitutes. You can also enjoy 100% fruit juices or fat-free versions of some traditionally high-fat beverages.