By Carla Schuit -Registered Dietitian
What is hiding in your cup? Is it helping or hurting your diet and fitness goals? One of the craftiest places those calories hide is in the things we drink. We spend a great deal of time carefully choosing the foods we eat but rarely do we consider our beverages and their contribution to our calorie intake. I am not talking proteins shakes and smoothies. I mean that soda at lunch and sweetened tea or coffee drink in the morning. It is hard to fathom that all that hard work you put in at the gym can be sabotaged by your beverage choice.
Consider your morning coffee. Is it black? Do you add sugar? Cream? Or do you have your daily caramel latte that the barista has ready for you every morning?
A 16 oz cup of coffee black has calories-1, sugar-0g, fat-0, carbs-0, protein-0 vs. the same size caramel latte containing- calories 250, sugar-35g, fat-6g, carbs-37g, protein 12g.
That caramel latte packs almost 9 teaspoons of sugar and as many calories as some breakfast sandwiches.
Through out the day it is easy to get sucked in to sweetened beverages for a sweet fix or for a quick pick me up but try to with hold. It is an automatic surge of empty calories typically providing little to no other nutritional value. An average can of soda has 150caloires and almost 10 teaspoons of sugar. Juices and teas can be just as bad. A 10oz glass of a leading brand of apple juice has 150 calories and as much as 33g or about 8 teaspoons of sugar!!!!
Take a look at a typical average Americans daily fluid intake. Breakfast- coffee with cream and sugar – 150calories, Lunch- sweetened tea- 150 calories, snack- can of coke- 140 calories; dinner sweetened tea- 150 calories. Added together that is an additional 590 calories. If you are on an 1800calorie diet you have drank over 30% of daily calories. To lose 1lb a week of body fat you need to decrease your calorie intake or increase your calorie output by 500calories/day. In our example above by just switching out the sweetened drinks we could easily accomplish that calorie deficit.
Another trap is serving sizes. Often we will get a bottled drink from a vending machine or grocery store and drink the whole 20oz with out blinking an eye. What we don’t consider is that in that one 20oz bottle are actually 2.5 servings. Read nutrition facts panels carefully! This goes for popular sports drinks as well.
So what should you drink? Water of course is going to be my number one recommendation. You can add flavor with fruits such as cucumber, lemon, lime, orange and herbs such as mint, the list goes on and on. Teas- green, black and spiced are great options as well as coconut water and one of my new favorites aloe vera water. If you are going to drink juice buy natural organic juices or better yet make them at home. That way you control the ingredient and sugar content.
Hydration is very important and essential for proper body function. Be careful to not drink away your hard work.