don’t pay enough attention to what they drink

Research recently announced in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that many dieters may be overlooking the extra calories they are putting on every day from drinking the wrong liquids.  While they may be making good efforts to reduce their food calorie content this effort will be negated by the fact that they don’t pay enough attention to what they drink.

Dr. Liwei Chen who led the study and who works at the Louisiana University School of Public Health explained that they looked at over 800 men and women whose liquid calorie intake had a bigger impact on their weight than their food calorie intake. The results showed that when liquid calorie intake was reduced an average weight loss of 0.25 kilos was recorded after six months and the same again after 18 months. Those people who stopped drinking sugar sweetened beverages lost 0.5 kilos after 6 months and 0.7 kilos after 18 months. In fact reduction of sugar sweetened beverages had the biggest impact on weight loss of all the different types of non-alcoholic drinks.

The research team concluded that more emphasis should be put on reducing liquid calorie intake in children and adults in order to help them to lose weight. It seems to be that so many people who undertake well meaning efforts to lose weight fail because they don’t realise how many extra calories they are putting on because of what they drink.

The best thing to drink if you are trying to lose weight and maintain weight loss is water. While it may be difficult for you to stick to water if you are used to very sweet drinks after a couple of weeks you will hardly notice the difference. Other things which have been seen to be conducive to weight loss include drinking green tea and sticking to low calorie diet drinks. Fruit juice obviously is healthy for you but you should make sure that it does not come with extra sugar or in concentrated versions because it will contain a lot of calories.

This study had support from professors and nutrition specialists from the John Hopkins School of Medicine, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and Duke University.