Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Get Healthy - Lose Weight - Cut Those Sweet Drinks

How To Cut Out Sweet Drinks

 LABELLE, FL. -- Searching for ways to regain a healthy lifestyle, lose pounds, and improve one's health while saving money brings us to today's tip.

Cut out sweet drinks. Beverages with added sugar, and even fruit drinks have a surprising amount of calories and sugar content that are harmful to keeping the body healthy.

Look at the chart above and see how many teaspoons of sugar and excess calories common drinks contain. A healthy amount of sugar per beverage serving to aim for is probably one to two teaspoons.

Reasons to Limit Sugar Sweetened Beverages:
• Sugar + Germs = Tooth Decay
• Drinking sugar sweetened beverages can lead to becoming overweight or obese
• Sugary beverages provide empty calories with few nutrients
• Sweetened drinks can make kids (and adults!) feel full and not want to eat healthy food

There is some evidence that even artificially sweetened "no-calorie" food and drinks may be troublesome. Research is showing that artificial sweeteners confuse the body, making it think there's sugar and carbohydrates being consumed when actually no nutrient from the artificial sweetener enters the digestive system at all, causing the body so sent a signal to eat even more.

The bottom line: Substitute healthy food for less desirable ones. When your body "craves" something sweet, substitute a piece of fruit, or a serving of vegetables, plain water, anything that doesn't have added sugar or artificial sweeteners. Train yourself to substitute healthy eats and drinks for the less beneficial added sugary eats.

-thanks to Mary Ruth Prouty, Hendry-Glades Health Dept. for some of the health tip suggestions

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