The #1 Drink to Avoid

One of the habits many Beyond Diet members find to be hardest to kick is their love of diet soda. It's important to realize, though, that that glass of soda you're having with lunch (and dinner) is one of the single worst things you are putting in your body.








Diet soda is absolutely toxic for your body. This is an incomplete list of the health issues associated with soda consumption:

·         Obesity
·         Diabetes
·         Heart disease
·         Liver damage
·         Insomnia
·         High Blood Pressure
·         Osteoporosis
·         Various cancers

Drinking soda also increases your likelihood of being overweight by upwards of 50%! If you only want one tip on how to lose weight, it’s this: stop drinking diet soda!

It turns out that aspartame, the sweetener in diet soda, may trick you into thinking you’re getting something sweet for free, but your brain isn’t fooled. Unlike aspartame (and other sugar substitutes), most sweet foods have calories. By providing that sweet boost to your brain, but denying the calories, your body actually craves the calories you’re denying it, leading to snacking, overeating, and obesity.

So even if you absolutely love a can of diet soda with your lunch, if you really want to know how to lose weight effectively, you really should consider giving soda the heave-ho. Luckily, there are a few tricks you can try to ensure success:

1)      Substitute iced tea for soda: Iced tea is a great mid-afternoon drink, especially in the summertime. Since tea is predominantly water, you get a hydration boost. Squeeze in a lemon wedge for an added boost, but forego sweeteners. One key to kicking an addiction to soda is to wean yourself off of overly sweet beverages.

2)      Clean house!: Toss all the soda you’re currently stocking. If it’s there, you’re more likely to drink it. Make drinking a diet soda more effort than it’s worth.

3)      Remember that most of the health advice you got in the 80s and 90s has been proven wrong: Fat was bad before it wasn’t. So were carbohydrates. And so were calories. Don’t be fooled by zero calorie advertisements. Calories aren’t necessarily unhealthy, and calorie-free isn’t necessarily good.

Finally, every time you’re tempted to head down to the vending machine at your office, consider this: our kids need to learn how to lose weight, too. In 2005, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study arguing that, for the first time in US history, children in America will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents, due to the childhood obesity epidemic. That epidemic is at least partly related to the fact that one in every four beverages consumed in the United States is a soft drink.