Cut Sugar Water From Your Diet to Reduce Weight Gain
Many people wish to lose weight, although few are very successful at it.
The people who lose weight initially and then manage to maintain their ideal weight long term are usually those that combine exercise with a healthy diet.
However, just because the majority of people who are successful at long-term weight loss use diet and exercise as their tool of choice doesn’t mean that everybody who uses diet and weight loss are successful.
For the weekend warriors and the casual exercisers, there’s a hidden danger that you may not think about that is preventing you from reaching your goals.
We all know that beverages such as sodas probably aren’t the most healthy choice, and a great place to start in limiting your calories is to replace the daily or hourly can of soda with a glass of water.
We don’t think anything of the other beverages that we drink throughout the day, however.
Research from the World Health Organization shows that your body does not feel full after consuming liquid calories, such as those in sodas, energy drinks, coffee, or juice. If you are trying to lose weight, you should limit these types of beverages.
If you exercise intensely you may be worried about getting an electrolyte imbalance or some other problem described in the latest advertising by the sports drinks companies, so you may be used to drinking Gatorade or similar drinks while you workout.
Consuming those sorts of drinks can be beneficial to your workout, and I wouldn’t suggest that you avoid them completely.
However, if your main focus on living a healthy lifestyle is to lose weight, then you probably do want to limit the amount that you drink of any beverage other than water.
Sports drinks can help you perform better while you are actively sweating or immediately after a workout, but try to avoid them at other times of the day when you aren’t as active. They can often carry as many calories as more solid food without preventing you from being hungry.
The healthiest baseline from which to start is to drink water regularly throughout the day and with all of your meals to stay well hydrated, and to treat the other drinks as special treats. If you must have a glass of juice or coffee, try to limit yourself to 1 glass in the morning.
Try that for 30 days and see what sort of results that you get compared to your current routine. You may find that even without changing your diet in any other way or increasing the amount you are currently exercising that you will start to make the gains (or should I say, losses) that you’ve been hoping for.
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Blaine Moore is a running coach in Southern Maine with 20 years of training and racing experience that he shares on his blog at Run To Win.com. Download his free report, The 3 Components of an Effective Workout, to learn why the work you put in during your training is only the third most important factor that determines how well you improve as a runner and an athlete.
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