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1 can of coke has 140 calories. A good rule of thumb is 3500 calories is a pound. So if you drink a single can of coke every day, after a year that's worth almo
by eridius 9y ago
1 can of coke has 140 calories. A good rule of thumb is 3500 calories is a pound. So if you drink a single can of coke every day, after a year that's worth almost 15lbs.
This observation is what led to me cutting soda out of my diet entirely almost a year ago (barring the rare treat).
And don't be fooled by the promise of diet soda. Lots of studies recently have shown that drinking diet soda doesn't help with weight loss either. Apparently the artificial sweeteners do something to your body by tricking it into thinking it's getting sugar; I'm not really familiar with the details, but studies showed that people who swapped soda for diet soda didn't lose weight, but people who swapped soda for e.g. water did. This advice is what led to me cutting diet soda out of my diet 6 months ago (which I had switched to after cutting out regular soda), so now I drink almost exclusively water.
If you're interested in cutting out soda as well, and don't think you can just switch to water, I have a couple of suggestions:
1. Start with those crystal geyser flavored sparkling waters you can get at Costco. I drank those for a while, because the hint of flavor tricked my mouth into thinking I wasn't just drinking water. I eventually stopped though, in favor of
2. Get a SodaStream and just make your own sparkling water. You can add flavor packets to this if you want, but I never have. Once you get used to it, unflavored sparkling water is pretty great. The downside here is the refill tanks for the SodaStream aren't cheap, but if you're concerned about that, there are homebrew carbonation setups as well (they just take up a lot more space; SodaStream is pretty compact).
- btilly 9y agoApparently the artificial sweeteners do something to your body by tricking it into thinking it's getting sugar... Specifically what happens is that your brain is supposed to taste sugar, and learn to shut off your appetite when it has received enough. But artificial sweeteners teach your brain to ignore that signal because you get what tastes like sugar without getting sugar. So whatever sugary things you eat, you will eat more than you otherwise would without feeling satiated.
- cornholio 9y ago>whatever sugary things you eat, you will eat more than you otherwise would without feeling satiated There is no scientific merit to this frequent claim. [1] In fact, a comparative study on dieters using diet soda versus water shown that the water group lost less mass, hypothetically because they were feeling hungrier and less satisfied with their diet, thus more likely to succumb to sugary foods. [1] Rogers, Peter J. "The role of low-calorie sweeteners in the prevention and management of overweight and obesity: evidence v. conjecture," Proceedings of the Nutrition Society
- btilly 9y agoHuh. I made the claim based on having seen it in many places. But Google showed it to be less certain than my memory said it was. Thanks for the correction. I'll try not to repeat this one blindly in the future.
- bitwize 9y agoThe primary place I heard it was Hackernews broscience. Till now I even belueved it.
- criddell 9y agoIs this true? It sounds a little like gym-science.
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- magic_beans 9y agoI literally cannot fathom why anyone drinks soda. My parents never let me drink it and never drank it themselves (though wine was always allowed). The other day I had a sip of Coke and it was so sweet it gave me an instant headache and I needed a full glass of water after. Why do people ever give their kids soda knowing how terrible it is for you?
- scarface74 9y agoAre you saying that you don't understand why anyone does anything that's bad for them? I drink soda, mostly diet, love Ice Cream and sweets and usually have a cheat day on the weekend and probably overeat once or twice during the week. I also enjoy exercising and workout about 5-7 hours a week. There is a balance. It's no different than earning more and spending more.
- ataturk 9y agoI typically order a soda when out to eat instead of beer. I have noticed that I receive lousy wait service if I don't order a drink of some kind.
- cstejerean 9y agoWhen I switched from regular soda to diet soda I lost about 15 pounds almost immediately. It turns out I was drinking a lot of soda and all that extra sugar didn't help. However the effect quickly went away as my body got used to the diet soda, and then it didn't have much of an effect (and it seems like I found other high carb things to fill my day with). More recently I cut out diet soda entirely in favor of just water, but I've actually ended up gaining weight, mostly because in retrospect it seems like I've actually replaced a lot of the diet soda with beer (or at least there was a strong inverse correlation between my beer and diet soda consumption). So now I'm working on reducing my beer intake and filling in with the occasional diet soda when I really need some tasty carbonated beverage. Personally I've never liked flavored sparkling water. When I'm thirsty I prefer plain old water (as long as it's properly filtered), and occasionally I'll drink some unflavored sparkling water. But there's something refreshing about a cold beer or a diet dr pepper that flavored sparkling water just doesn't provide, and it seems that between those two the beer is a lot worse weight wise.
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- berdon 9y agoI switched from soda to diet soda and lost 30 pounds in a month. That was 10 years ago, still kept it off, still drinking diet soda.
- jdmichal 9y agoAdditional suggestion: Drink unsweetened iced tea. That has allowed me to cut soda entirely except for treats. And has the added bonus of being available in almost every restaurant I've visited.