Sorry, I don’t want to be a kill joy here, but I’ve said it over and over again: don’t drink your calories if you’re trying to get leaner. In fact, even if weight loss isn’t one of your goals, you really want to consider these drinks carefully as they don’t provide anything other than calories. I thought I’d go over some of your worst choices here:
- Bottled tea – SoBe’s Green Tea has 240 cals and 61 grams of sugar
- Worst Water – Snapple Agave Melon Antioxidant Water (1 bottle, 20 fl oz) has 150 calories and 33 g of sugar
- Energy drinks – RockStar has 280 calories and 62 g of sugar (the equivalent to six Krispy Kreme doughnuts…). It has more calories than Red Bull and Monster. Your best choice, if you must, is the low sugar Monster brand.
- Another bad energy drink – Arizona RX Energy drink has 345 calories and 83 g of sugar (the energy comes from the caffeine and there’s the equivalent to a weak cup of java in this drink)
- Bottled coffee – Starbucks Frappicino has 280 calories, 45 g of sugar and 4.5 g of fat
- Kid’s drinks – Tropicana Tropical Fruity Fury Twister has 340 calories and 60 g of sugar (don’t let the fruity name fool you!)
- “Juice” drinks – Arizona Strawberry Kiwi has 345 calories and 81 g of sugar (nothing healthy here…)
- Expresso drinks – Starbucks White Chocolate Mocha with whipped cream (20 oz venti) has 660 calories, 22 g of fat and 95 g of sugar
- Hot Chocolate – Starbucks White Hot Chocolate with whipped cream (20 oz venti) has 520 calories, 16 g of fat and 75 g of sugar
- Frozen coffee – Dairy Queen’s Caramel MooLatte (24 oz) has 870 calories, 24 g of fat and 115 g of sugar
- Alcoholic cocktail – Red Lobster’s Margarita (Lobsterita) has 890 calories and 183 g of sugar (Wow, that’s like 7 Almond Joy chocolate bars!)
- Floats – Baskin and Robbins Vanilla Coke Float (28 oz) has 960 calories, 40 g of fat and 136 g of sugar
- Frozen fruity drinks – Krispy Kreme’s Lemon Sherbert Chiller (20 oz) has 980 calories, 40 g of fat and 115 g of sugar
Milkshakes – McDonald’s triple thick chocolate shake has 1160 calories, 168 g of sugar and 27 g of fat
Aaand, your best choice?? Water, of course.
Many peeps ask me about diet drinks. My answer is always ‘in moderation’.
I’ve cut out diet pop completely from my diet and I can say that I feel better. The main reason I like to hydrate with water versus pop is that I know that I’m not filling my body with a host of chemicals that I can’t pronounce and so I know can’t be healthy.
The other reason is that when I use a load of artificial sweeteners, I tend to lose my taste for natural sweetness from fruits. Artificial sweeteners are SO much sweeter that natural flavors that natural flavors tend to taste bland when I get accustomed to overly sweet artificial sweetness. That alone is enough reason to cut back on the diet drinks. And if I do have a diet drink, I tend to dilute it with the same amount of water so it isn’t as sweet.
There you have it folks, the low down on the worst ways to ingest a ton of calories. Now go have a glass of water…