Author: Tiffany Curran
3 Beverages to Avoid
Avoid – hmmm…..it’s not my favorite word, especially when it comes to your dietary intake. When you tell someone to avoid certain things, it can often become a deeper problem. How about limit and choose. Let’s try to limit the amount of these beverages consumed instead of avoiding them. And if you happen to not have them for a while, then that’s a great choice you’ve made.
1. Fancy Coffee
Things like Lattes, Mochas, Frappuccinos. These fun, and yes, very delicious drinks are typically very high in calories, loaded with sugar and even unwanted fat. A 16oz Mocha (medium size, which is most popular) can be upwards of 360 calories, 51g of sugar, and 11g fat. You could trade a good amount of food for those numbers – like 2 scrambled eggs, with 2 pieces of turkey bacon, and toast. I definitely would prefer to eat my calories!
It’s not quite the same, but try a regular coffee with a splash of cream and sugar free syrup instead. You’ll save yourself about 300 calories….wow!
2. Regular Soda
These sneaky drinks are loaded with calories, again because of sugar. The sugar content might help the drink with its sweetness, it’s not helping your overall caloric intake. A typical 20oz soda contains 65grams of sugar, which attributes the only calories in the drink, for a total of 240 calories.
A simple switch would be to try a diet soda drink.
Don’t expect them to taste quite the same, but again saving calories. Which definitely adds up because many people don’t just drink one soda a day. You could also try sparkling waters (but check the nutrition label) many have little to no calories and the carbonation helps to satisfy that want of a fizzy drink.
3. Alcohol
This can get you into calorie trouble for many reasons. First, just from the calories in alcohol, and second from the calories you tend to consume from food while drinking alcohol. And in most instances, we consume multiple alcoholic drinks in one setting.
Beer: 1 can has roughly 150 calories; Wine:5oz glass has about 125 calories; Liquor: 1oz has 70-100 calories depending on what you’re drinking.
Alcohol is difficult to provide suggestions for replacements. The idea is to try to limit when you have them, and also to limit how many drinks you have.