Sneaky Sneaky Liquid Calories
One of the EASIEST ways to lower your calorie intake and drop the pounds is to stop drinking your calories!
The glass of orange juice in the morning, the milkshake with your burger for lunch, that delicious Caramel Frappuccino to keep you awake during the afternoon slump, the beers at your company’s team meeting, the pop with your dinner… that’s easily over 1000 calories in liquid calories you are ingesting! Some people will easily turn down a donut but won’t even think twice about getting a White Chocolate Mocha at Starbucks. Calories are calories and it’s even worse when they come from sugar because it gets you addicted and sends your hunger and cravings out of control— and it’s one of the main contributors of the obesity epidemic in America.
Sugar is sugar and it’s not only in pop but energy drinks, smoothies that are advertised as “healthy”, fruit juices (sorry, still sugar), alcohol, a lot of coconut water brands (yikes)… these are all calories with none or very little nutritional value.
I remember when I first started my current job, I loved loved loved sugary drinks. I’d get an apple juice every morning, drink multiple bottles of this honey lemon green tea they use to sell at the cafeteria, gorge on all the free pop and juice we get at meetings (although I was fortunate enough to hate beer and avoided that) and dump loads of milk and sugar into my coffee. These were all habits I had growing up and I can’t forget to mention, eating at the 7-11 across the street every single day during art school. YES REALLY.
One day I decided to start drinking more water so I set goals for myself such as “I will drink 5 bottles of water today” and carried a water bottle around with me everywhere and refilled it throughout the day. At first, I really had to force it down but soon drinking water became a natural habit like breathing. Not only did I lose a ton of weight, I actually felt light— I felt cleansed. I felt great.
Nowadays, I mainly drink water, tea and coffee. Of course I will still have my glass of wine or my dozen shots of Vodka when I’m out with my girlfriends but that doesn’t happen very often. Swear. You may think its impossible or it’s gross but I trained my taste buds to crave the bland taste of water. The new me is definitely is a healthier and leaner me, thanks to lots and lots of water!
However if you think drinking only water defeats the whole point of “living” (like how I think being on a strict diet all the time defeats that same purpose), you can occasionally replace sugary drinks with calorie-free drinks such as tea or flavoured water… or even the occasionally diet pop if you are slowly trying to cut out the evil we call sugar if you are really desperate (although you should eventually say goodbye to diet drinks forever).
