If you take a moment to think about healthy eating, you’ll quickly see that it’s all about… well, eating. Dieting is about eating; losing weight is all about the calories and carbs that you eat. It’s all about food, what you eat, and how you choose to cook it.
This obsession with the foods that you consume can lead anyone wanting to embark on weight loss to a real problem. Namely, they will forget about the other form of calories and carbs that they consume: beverages.
There are very few beverages that don’t contain calories, most specifically from sugar. We load up coffee and tea with sugar and milk, which in itself is another form of sugar (lactose). If you opt for herbal teas you might think you have escaped this, but if you add a dollop of honey to your cup then that’s another dose of sugar.
Then there’s the inherently calorific beverage. Smoothies, for example, might be posited as the health drink we all need – but they can contain a truly huge amount of calories and carbs thanks to all the fruit they tend to contain. Then there’s alcohol, with the fermentation process required to make alcohol including – yep, you guessed it – sugar.
It’s pretty obvious then that if you’re going to get to grips with your diet for the sake of weight loss, you’re going to need to ensure you’re not forgetting those hidden calories in the things you drink. Here are a few simple strategies to help with that.
1) Shop In Advance
Buy as much as you can of your regular food and drink preferences in advance, in bulk. This doesn’t just apply to beverages, either; you can order meat direct from a butcher, alcohol stores online can help with your favorite post-work tipple, and you can even order vegetables direct to your door.
Why do this? It gives you the chance to really scrutinize what you’re buying in terms of the calories in the drinks you buy. You can take the time to look things up, find full calorie details of every drink, and place an order accordingly. If you usually just buy your drinks quickly, grabbing them without much thought while doing other shopping, then you’re rarely going to make the best choices for your health.
2) Switch Sugar For Sweeteners
If you can’t get through your morning cup of coffee without loading it with sugar, get the taste without the calories by switching to an artificial sweetener. There’s been a lot of ridiculous press regarding the idea that artificial sweeteners are bad for your health, but there are plenty of alternatives to the commonly known “bad guys”. Choose one of these instead of sugar – and, of course, you can have your coffee black like I do. I recommend putting less and less cream and sweetener in your coffee over time. I used to order my coffee with eight sugars and eight creams – then I switched to sucralose and all that cream and then less and less of both to now only black coffee and I find the taste with the cream and sweetener to be horrible! I never would have thought I’d feel this way!
3) Get Smaller Glasses
One of the big problems regarding calorific beverages is that we drink too many of them. “One glass” shouldn’t be half a fishbowl’s worth of liquid, but the majority of modern wine glasses are absolutely huge. Switch to smaller glasses so you know you’re measuring the calories for a single glass correctly.
