Many people feel that the reason weight struggles happen is because of what they’re eating. They carefully track calories and keep their meals within a certain recommended calorie range and yet still the pounds don’t seem to want to come off. They try all kinds of diets and can’t understand why their bodies don’t seem to want to comply with the goal of all their efforts. Oftentimes, the problem has to do with what they’re eating, not what they’re drinking.
It’s easy to think about the calories that we’re eating in solid foods but we tend to forget about what we’re adding to our totals through what we’re drinking. After all, unless it’s a big thick milkshake, many drinks feel as though they’re completely harmless. The problem is that they’re not.
Recent statistics show that 48 percent of Americans drink an average of 2.6 glasses of soda every day. This adds an incredible 1,680 calories to our weekly totals, which equates to about one half pound of body fat. When you’re trying to lose weight that half pound makes a huge difference and it really adds up. When you’re trying to maintain your weight, it places you in a position of continual battle.
Before you buy your next Super Big Gulp, think about the fact that it’s putting an added 127 grams of sugar and 512 calories into your body. That’s an incredible 37 teaspoons of sugar in that one beverage, and one third of the average woman’s recommended daily calorie intake.
Fortunately, there is a pretty easy way to overcome this problem and make your weight loss much faster and simpler at the same time. If you consume the same amount of soda as the average person, you can cut half a pound from your body fat every week just by cutting soda and replacing it with water. If that’s all you do and don’t change a single other thing, it will help you to gradually lose weight each week.
In fact, if you usually drink a Super Big Gulp every day, replacing that beverage with water could knock a full pound off your body every week. This, even if you don’t change any other part of your diet or the way you exercise.
That said, you can speed your results even further just by paying a little more attention to your nutrient and calorie intake and by boosting your fitness efforts. By combining a healthy lifestyle with a swap of soda for water, you could speed up your weight loss to a surprising rate.
