Easy Diet Tip: Beware of Soda, Energy Drinks and Fancy Coffees

I often see patients who have experienced the ups and downs of dieting and the most common long-term problem is unexpected weight gain. I have written extensively about why diets don't work -- and the benefits of using easy tools for shedding and keeping these excess pounds away. One simple tip is to watch what you drink. Like a Trojan horse, fancy coffee drinks, sports drinks and sodas sneak their way into your daily meals and pack on the pounds without your noticing.

It's understandable how this happens. Many of us choose our beverages based on taste associations. We crave soda with a burger, creamy coffee drinks with a bagel. These drinks are often packed with empty calories and usually do nothing to help us satiate our nutritional needs.

Take for example a can of regular cola. A 16-ounce can carries as many as 200 calories, all resulting from dozens of grams of sugar inside it. This is the equivalent of drinking a cup of water with 13 packets of sugar in it, something not even the biggest sweet tooth in the world would enjoy.

Sports drinks are no different, and they are unfortunately overlooked due to their association with athletes. But unless you're in dire need of electrolytes and sugar due to intense fluid loss and dehydration, the typical 16-ounce serving of 200 calories (mostly from sugar) is nothing more than added calories without the healthy benefits. These drinks were created with the image of an athlete in mind, not someone sitting behind a computer all day at the office. Water and good meals are as much as you and I need throughout a normal work day, and that's it!

Serving Size is Another Culprit

And beware of serving size! Many drinks say that they contain only 100 or so calories per serving, but neglect to highlight that there are 2.5 servings in the entire bottle. Make it your duty to always check the back label for the number of servings; otherwise your 100-calorie drink will find a way sneak in an extra 150 calories.

Another heavily sugared drink we often overlook is the fancy coffees sold in coffee shops around the country. You might ask, "How bad could coffee really be?" The short answer is that coffee itself -- with minimal additions of sweetener and low-fat or non-fat milk -- is OK for you. In fact, maximal performance usually is helped by one or two cups per day. But, it's not a cup of regular coffee that is a worrisome culprit of weight gain. It's the medium-sized, whole-milk latte drink with flavoring (approximately 250 calories) that is your enemy. That drink alone carries dozens more calories than a cola drink, even if you try to health it up by using 2% milk. That's 250 calories in addition to your breakfast!

And we haven't even touched on the infamous coffees with dome lids!

A colleague of mine always tells his patients, "Don't drink anything with a dome on it! It's trying to kill you!" In reality, these are just melted milkshakes in disguise. Many top the charts with more than 400 calories, mostly a result of the fat and sugar making up the drink. That's 400 calories that won't leave you remotely full... dangerous territory for those looking to drop a few pounds.

Then there are the juices. One 16-ounce glass of juice can be the sugar equivalent of four to five apples, with none of the fiber benefits. Most juices are also full of high-fructose corn syrup... which, in layman's terms, is just another word for "sugar." The same goes for additives like fructose, glucose, sucrose or galactose. Your body breaks all of these down into the same sugar as you put in your coffee. These are not the enemy -- but they are when taken in abundance.

So, remember, the point here is that you need to be careful about what you drink. Read the labels, watch the serving size, and when in doubt, hydrate with water. The empty calories in sugared sodas, sports drinks, fancy coffees and juices lead to weight gain, and you're far better off saving that sugar fix for your birthday cake anyway.