Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Is Your Beverage Sabotaging You?

One of the things people forget when engaging in a healthy eating plan, is evaluating what they are drinking. According to NHANES 99-04 the average American consumes 22.5 teaspoons (tsp) of sugar every single DAY, half of which are coming from sodas & fruit drinks! Wow, I think it would be a great exercise if we all measured 22.5 tsp of sugar. That is 360 calories in just sugar daily or yearly weight gain of 38 pounds! Stated differently we are consuming 22% of our calories from beverages. If I consume 1800 calories daily, then 396 calories are from beverages and at the end of the year I will have gained 41 pounds!

The calories in our beverages keep creeping up; it's no wonder our obesity rates are also going up. Take a look at this table I compiled with popular drinks. Keep in mind that the most popular size in America is more like 20 oz, so the numbers would have been much higher for the 16 oz beverages.


BEVERAGES
OZ
CAL
GRAMS
TSP
WEIGHT



SUGAR
SUGAR
GAIN/YR
McD Choc McCafe shake
16
720
98
24.50
75.09
McD Choc Triple Thick shake
16
580
84
21.00
60.49
McD Frappes
16
550
71
17.75
57.36
McD Smoothie
16
260
55
13.75
27.11
McD Hot Cocoa-nonfat milk
16
310
47
11.75
32.33
McD Hot Cocoa-whole milk
16
380
45
11.25
39.63
Coca Cola bottle
20
240
65
16.25
25.03
Mountain Dew bottle
20
290
77
19.25
30.24
Rock Star Energy Drink
16
248
62
15.50
25.86
Gatorade Orange
20
122
30
7.50
12.72
Fruit Flavor Pedialyte
20
63
16
4.00
6.57
Vitamin Water Guava
20
125
33
8.25
13.04
Sobe Mango
20
280
78
19.50
29.20
Arizona Lemon Ice Tea
24
270
72
18.00
28.16
Minute Maid Lemonade
20
260
67
16.75
27.11
Minute Maid Orange Juice
16
220
48
12.00
22.94
Apple Juice
16
240
52
13.00
25.03








Is your favorite beverage on this list? How do I use this table? Let's say you drink a 20 oz Coca Cola, that will set you back 240 calories, 65 g sugar or 16.25 tsp sugar. If you have 1 soda daily, at the end of a year you will have gained 25 pounds! Now let's say you enjoy a daily McD Frappe at 550 calories, at the end of a year say hello to over 57 pounds.

I never realized how much Gatorade people consumed until I worked clinic. What I encountered in clinic were parents who had no idea that Gatorade had sugar and thought it was good for their kids.  After doing some digging around I learned that the Pediatricians were the culprit of this misinformation. Instead of telling parents to give kids Pedialyte when they had diarrhea or vomiting they would tell them they could also give Gatorade. When I would tell them how much sugar is found in Gatorade they were shocked. Not only were they giving their kids Gatorade when sick, but also regularly. If you have a daily Gatorade habit you are going to gain almost 13 pounds a year.

True Lemon Crystallized Fruit Wedge ~ 100 Pack Box
Even Vitamin Water has sugar. If you want to reduce the calories coming from beverages my recommendations are to drink mostly 1% or skim milk, black or green tea and water. I drink 2 cups of coffee in the morning, although I'm trying to change over to black tea. I'm also trying to drink a cup of green tea before bed. Did you know that both green and black tea are considered Superfoods? If you want some flavor in your water I recommend True Lemon, True Lime or True Orange, they have no sugar.

I have to be sick to drink soda like Ginger Ale or 7 Up for the bubbles. Recently I purchased can unflavored sparkling water (contains no sugar). Next time I get sick I'm going to add some True Lemon to the sparkling water and save the calories from the Ginger Ale.

If you are a visual person check out http://sugarstacks.com/. Please check out Beverages and Shakes and Smoothies. I have used this website with many clients.

To conclude, watch what you are drinking just like you watch what you eat. They easily go down but the calories in drinks can be sabatoging your weight loss efforts.

What are some of your favorite beverages?

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