Lose Weight Without Dieting

How often do you stop for a latte? Do you find yourself doing it more often that you used to? If you are, you’re not alone. Consumption of things like lattes, cappuccinos, energy drinks and sweetened teas have gained popularity. So much so, that liquid calories now account for 21% of our daily intake – that’s more than twice as much as 30 years ago and amounts to over 400 calories a day from beverages.

To put that into perspective, it’s the equivalent of two slices of Domino’s sausage pizza.

While that may be a startling statistic, it’s good news for you if you’re trying to lose weight! By just making some simple changes to what you’re drinking you could easily shed pounds.

A recent John Hopkins University study found that people who cut liquid calories from their diets lost more weight and kept it off for longer than people who cut food calories. By simple cutting your drink calories in half you could lose up to 23 pounds in the course of a year. Let’s look at some simple swaps you could make and the impact it could have on your waistline.

Stop drinking soda. The average American now drinks more than a gallon of soda a week. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a government nutritional study conducted from 1999 to 2000, tracked food intake of Americans and broke it into 143 different categories. A surprising discovery of the research was that the largest percentage of calorie intake came from soda, something that’s not even a food at all. More soda was consumed that chicken and fish combined!

Researchers say a person’s risk of obesity can be measured by how much soda they drink a day.

½ can = 26% increased risk of being overweight or obesern½ to 1 can = 30.4% increased risk
1 to 2 cans = 32.8% increased riskr
More than 2 cans = 47.2% increased risk

By changing this one habit you could lose up to 20 pounds in the course of a year.

Drink coffee, not coffee drinks. Researchers studied coffee habits in New York and found that two-thirds of Starbucks’ customers opted for blended coffee drinks instead of regular brewed coffee. The average calorie count of the blended drinks is 239 calories, whereas a regular coffee is only 63 calories after factoring in added cream and sugar.

You can save 176 calories per day just by making this one change.

This one swap could result in losing 18 pounds per year!

Stay away from juice drinks. Most juice drinks contain very little juice but lots of sugar or corn syrup. Ocean Spray juices contain as little as 20% juice and earns fewer than 73% of its calories from added sugar, with most have sugar content closer to 85%. That amounts to about as much sugar as two scoops of ice cream.

You could lose 19 pounds in a year with this one change.