Cutting Down on Soda is a Must to Lose Weight

Sugary soda drinks can spell a big difference in your weight loss plan. A single can of soda has an average of 155 calories while a 20 ounce serving can pack more than 200 calories. Soda may have very little or no fat, but they are overloaded with sugar owing to their use of high-fructose corn syrup as sweeteners. You can lose weight simply by cutting down on soda and eliminating it entirely from your diet.

Calories from soda
Regular soft drinks have a lot of calories, whether they are caramel-based, citrus-flavored, or fruit-flavored sodas. A 12 oz. can of Coke or Sprite contains about 155 calories, Pepsihas 150 calories, while Sunkist orange soda leads the pack with 190 calories. No matter which brand you choose, all calories you get from soft drinks come from sugar. With close to 40 grams of sugar in every can, you get almost 13 percent of your recommended daily allowance of carbohydrates without any nutritional benefits.

Short-term benefits
Your potential for weight loss depends on how much you regularly drink soda. If you regularly consume one 12 oz. can per day, you will be cutting 150 calories from your diet once you stop drinking soda. A pound of fat is equivalent to 3,500 calories, which means you can lose a pound every three and a half weeks by cutting out sodas. You can lose even more weight if you regularly consume more calories through sodas. For example, if you currently consume 400 calories a day from sodas, you can eliminate 2,100 calories per week – or one pound every eight or nine days.

Long-term benefits
In one year, you will eliminate as much as 55,000 calories from your diet. This can result to losing as much as 16 lbs. in one year. If you consume more than 400 calories a day from soda, you can eliminate around 145,000 calories from your diet every year – leading you to lose 42 lbs. a year.

Choose the lesser evil
If you cannot avoid drinking soda, you can choose the diet variety instead of the the regular ones. They do not contain as much sugar or calories. However, this doesn’t mean you can increase your consumption of other sweets. Some studies reveal that consumption of diet soda is associated with higher risk for weight gain. The exact mechanism is not known, but it is believed that it has something to do with the receptors in the brain. The body may be confused by the sweet sensation it gets from the low-calorie sweet drinks, causing it to crave more calories. If you plan to stay healthy NY then pass on the soda and consider the healthiest drink on the planet , water.