Drink These Alternatives to Unhealthy Beverages for Weight Loss

Brew your own tea and coffee. Instead of buying those fancy bottled teas from the convenience store, I would recommend you actually brew your own. Many store bought teas contain very little brewed tea and are mostly sugar and water. The experts at Harvard even agree that tea and coffee in moderation are good for you. If you drink them plain, they are calorie-free and full of antioxidants, falconoid and other good substances that can be good for your health. They state that up to three or four cups a day are acceptable.

Commercially bottled teas contain extra flavorings and sugar and usually go under a name that sounds healthy when you see it on the label provided you don't go looking for the nutritional information. Arizona Raspberry Iced Tea for example, has 90 calories and 22g of sugar. If you brew your own tea at home, it has no calories; then you use a zero calorie natural sweetener like Stevia, you have a healthy tea without the calorie and sugar hit.

But just as beverage makers have taken tea to an unhealthy level, so has coffee been trussed up to barely resemble what it started out as. Enter cream, sugar, whipped cream and coffee flavorings. The example they quote is a Mint Mocha Chip Frappuccino with Chocolate Whipped Cream that weighs in at a whopping 470 calories. That's not even mentioning the amount of sugar in the concoction; but you can see how one beverage can take a huge chunk of your allotted calories and most people aren't drinking just one a day.

When it comes to water, don't get fancy. Water is the ultimate drink. It contains no calories and quenches your thirst like nothing else. However, drink manufacturers have taken a basically healthy drink like water and added flavors, coloring and sugar and taken it to an unhealthy level. If not unhealthy, it is at the least not good for your diet. Why mess with Mother Nature?

A prime example of a drink manufacturer taking a perfectly healthy and calorie free drink like water and offering up something less than appealling for someone watching their diet and counting calories is Vitamin Water. Vitamin Water Focus Kiwi Strawberry has 50 calories and 13g of sugar. Not only does the name promise a healthy drink, the product puts unneeded additional sugar and calories into your body when you could have just gone for a cool drink of plain old water.

The Harvard panel suggests you get the bulk of your daily fluids in the form of water. They recommend half of your intake be water and you should really be drinking about six cups a day. Following that, about three or four cups should come from unsweetened coffee or tea. If you are adding sugar, take in less to help with manage your weight.

Following that, they recommend about two 8-ounce glasses of low-fat milk and no more than 4 ounces of 100% fruit juice. Don't be taken in by fruit drinks that are mostly sugar and very little juice. These are high in calories and low in benefits.

Ideally they recommend you completely avoid drinks that contain high fructose corn syrup. For further information on how HFC can affect your weight; read my previous article, "The Confusion About High Fructose Corn Syrup and Weight Gain."

Resources

Harvard School of Public Health - Healthy Beverage Guidelines

MSN.com - 7 Foods You May Think Are Healthy, But Aren't

Associated Content - The Confusion About High Fructose Corn Syrup and Weight Gain　

Stevia.com - The Zero Calorie All Natural Sweetener