If you are in the throes of a diet plan, or simply trying to eat healthier and shed some pounds that way, you should never reach unthinkingly into the refrigerators of corner stores and supermarkets. When we reach for beverages, healthy choices are of paramount importance. But it isn’t so easy to make such choices. A ton of common, everyday beverages are actually loaded with hidden calories.
And poof, there can go any progress made in the weight category. The usual culprits are certainly here, namely soda. But virtually any sweetened drink will send hidden calories hurtling down your throat as you guzzle away your thirst. Could be juice. Could be sports drinks. Could be tea.
The problem with many beverages is that we pick them up and drink them without really thinking, in an effort to satisfy our thirst. But they do not satisfy, obviously, our hunger. Yet they heap on calories. Thus you will go and eat your regular snacks and meals on top of drinking calories.
Floating calories are one of biggest reasons why weight loss plans don’t work effectively. And research shows that when you swallow calories from beverages you don’t get the satisfaction, the feeling of fullness, as you do when you slowly chew food. If you were to drink, for instance, a 20 ounce soft drink you would get the same amount of carbohydrates and calories as a large bagel. Which is liable to fill you up more?
It comes down to this: you could lose nearly two pounds a month just by not drinking the 12 ounce can of soda each day that you’d normally have. The answer lies in water. Plain or sparkling? Both are good. If you splash some lemon in it, it is a very refreshing drink absolutely void of calories.
Here we’ll list some of these hidden floating calories by taking a random sampling of some popular beverages. The figures are taken from a nifty little web site called CalorieCount.com.
- Coca-Cola Classic (8 oz): 97 cal
- Coffee (take-out style with one cream, one sugar): 80 cal
- Tropicana orange juice (100 ml): 107 cal
- Cranberry Cocktail (8 oz): 144 cal
- Lemonade (prepared with water, 8 oz): 130 cal
- Gatorade (8 oz): 50 cal
- Ginger ale (12 oz): 124 cal
- Sprite (8 oz): 96 cal
- Red Bull (8 oz): 110 cal
- Lipton Ice Tea (8 oz): 70 cal
- Peach Snapple (bottle): 240 cal
- Whole milk (8 oz): 156 cal
- Cream soda (12 oz): 190 cal
- McDonald’s orange juice (small): 140 cal
- Fanta orange (8 oz): 111 cal
- Dunkin’ Donuts Iced Latte (16 oz): 70 cal