Are Liquid Calories Sabotaging Your Weight Loss Goals?

What you drink matters. Water, alcohol, protein shakes. Coffee, pre-workout, diet soda. What helps you reach your goals? What halts – or even harms – your progress? Find out if liquid calories are holding you back or pushing you towards your weight loss goals.

One of the first steps you need to take on the road to weight loss and fitness success is to take a good look at what you drink. I’m not just talking about the calories you might consume from liquids, although that does matter. I’m talking about the what, the when and the why behind your consumption of everything from water to meal replacement shakes, alcohol to caffeine.

When it comes to weight loss goals, what you drink matters

Liquid calories don’t register with your brain and body the same way food does. Whether it’s a green juice, orange juice or soda, it’s a little too easy to overconsume beverages without filling up and without recognizing their caloric significance. In some cases that doesn’t matter to much (i.e. water). But in most cases, and especially cases when weight loss goals come in to play, we should all pay more attention than we might currently pay.

Water

Good old H2O. When it comes to weight loss, water is your best liquid friend. It’s calorie free, it fills you up, it flushes toxins and best of all, many studies show that water can actually boost your metabolism. Though not directly related to weight loss, increasing your water consumption pays off in a number of ways (weight loss included). Plus, drinking water benefits you in countless other ways as well, from digestion to immunity to circulation.

Drinking water throughout the day, and especially before meals, can reduce overall calorie intake. Not only does it fill your stomach calorie-free, hydration affects your hormonal reaction to food. It turns out that water might actually play a role in how fast your brain senses that you’re full, leading you to feel satiated faster.

H2O also ramps up your metabolism because of it’s affect on how your body breaks down fats and how your body produces insulin in response to nutrient consumption. Even though meal for meal the change might be small, the cumulative effect over time is not insignificant.

So how much water should you drink to make a difference? To maintain a balance, women should shoot for a minimum of 11.5 cups of water per day, and men should shoot for 15.5 cups. If you sweat a lot, aim for even a bit more as you will lose more than the average person on any given day – especially during a workout in hot weather!

Increase Your Water Intake:

• Invest in a larger, insulated water bottle with a straw. The more accessible and easier to drink, the more likely you are to drink it.
• Incorporate hydration into habits you already have. If you drink coffee in the morning try to drink 8-16 ounces of water before hand. Have a glass of water with you when you sit down to read at night. Have a glass of water before every meal.
• Set a timer or reminder.
• Add fruit/vegetables or fresh herbs to your water to make it more fun to drink. Try cucumber slices and mint, lemon and watermelon, or fresh ginger and mashed berries.

Alcohol

Alcohol’s affect on weigh loss is two-fold: there’s the actual caloric intake and there’s the affect alcohol has on digestion.

Despite the health claims made about small amounts of some alcohol, like red wine, alcohol is empty calories. That means that they provide calories without providing nutrients. So a few drinks a night, or a wild night out with the girls can end up adding hundreds of calories to your overall intake. That’s without taking mixers into the equation, or the not-so-healthy snacks that might find their way onto your plate because of lowered inhibitions.

Moreover – and this is the piece that most people don’t know about – your body considers alcohol to be a main priority when it comes to digestion. That means that processing everything else comes to a halt until the alcohol in your system is fully digested. Since alcohol is broken down into sugars, that means that extra sugars are floating around in your body and most likely to be stored as fat.

Cut Down on Alcohol:

• Swap mocktails for cocktails
• Grab a seltzer and mix up a bubbly sangria
• Drink 8 ounces of water minimum between drinks

>> Read more: 5 Tried and True Techniques to Get Back on the Healthy Track

Post Workout Shakes

There’s magic behind post workout nutrition, especially in the form of protein and carbs in liquid form. The right formula can actually retool your body composition by enhancing your ability to build lean muscle and reducing body fat. How? A post workout cocktail of liquid carbs and protein.

Exercise is the ultimate stimulus for weight loss. Your body is ready for fuel after a hard workout. We’re talking depleted energy stores and muscles primed to build and just feigning for nutrients! Post workout carbs trigger the muscle building hormones in your body, prompting them to transport nutrients to your cells to start repairing and building lean muscle. Protein, when added to the mix accelerates the process. *

*It feels worth it to point out – simply because I know how demonized carbohydrates are in today’s diet culture – just how important those carbs are to lean muscle tissue growth and repair.

Keep in mind that while the muscle building effects of post workout shakes are obvious, it’s easy to get carried away calorically. Chugging a protein-and-peanut-butter-laden smoothie every time you walk out of the gym isn’t always necessary or conducive to your weight loss goals. They should always be accounted for in your overall calorie and macro intake.

The Perfect Formula:

• An effective dose of protein: 20-25 grams of whey protein
• An effective dose of carbs: .5-.7 grams of carbs/pound of bodyweight of fast digesting carbohydrates

Caffeinated Drinks

Caffeine has benefits and downsides depending on how much you consume, when you consume it and your personal tolerance. Understanding your own preferences and tolerances is key to safe consumption, but there are some overlying factors to take into account when thinking about caffeine and weight loss.

Caffeine directly effects the nervous system. I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t already know when I say that the effects of caffeine range from increased alertness and energy, to feeling jittery and anxious, to making you have to pee more often. When taken as a supplement caffeine can produce beneficial effects on your workouts. You might feel like you have more energy and more focus. Especially when it comes to endurance training, caffeine can have a real benefit.

That said, caffeine is a stimulant. It has an effect on your quality of sleep, female hormonal health as well as certain health conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure and anxiety. So consult with a doctor and try to limit caffeine after lunch time so as not to affect your sleeping pattern.

*Keep in mind that caffeine does not count as water intake. So if you wait to finish a giant of thermos of coffee or tea before starting in on water, you aren’t doing yourself any favors in the hydration department!

Pre-Workout Boosters

Pre-workout supplements are designed to (drum roll please), be taken before you workout. The goal: to boost energy, increase the intensity of your workout and help your body get the most out of the challenge. Can those side effects boost weight loss? Certainly. The harder you workout, the more energy you have to prolong your workout and the better equipped your body is to recover from the stress, the faster you’ll see results.

That said, not all pre-workout supplements are created equal. Most pre-workout supplements contain a few main ingredients including caffeine (see above), and BCAAs (branched chain amino acids) which support repair and growth by providing the building blocks of muscle in very accessible form. While these ingredients don’t trigger fat loss directly, they can boost your performance and therefore indirectly increase weight loss.

*That all said, my personal opinion is not entirely positive when it comes to pre-workout supplementation. For one thing, relying on a supplement to give you a boost of energy is nowhere near as effective as good sleep and proper nutrition. And I’ve had some personal experiences with headaches and nausea caused by pre-workout boosters that are enough incentive to forgo them.

Green Juices

Green juice is trendy, there’s no doubt. And it does have a place on the healthy food spectrum. But there are benefits to green juice and there are downfalls.

If you don’t eat enough veggies during the day, green juice is a great way to hit that 5+ serving goal. Green juice is easy to make at home and is a good way to pack a vitamin and mineral punch into one sitting. But if you don’t pay attention, the green juice trend could actually be halting your weight loss efforts.

First, there’s definitely a difference between an organic veggie juice that you make at home and one that you buy at the grocery store. Always read the label. What you’re drinking could contain way more calories per serving and way more sugar per serving than you want. And there’re often 2+ servings in a single bottle!

Second, juicing separates the liquid from the pulp. While you still benefit from the hydrating effects and some of the vitamins and minerals, you aren’t getting any of the fiber. So while eating kale, for example, can fill you up…you won’t get the same satiating effects from a kale drink.

Soda

While I’m sure you already know the pitfalls of soda, it would be untoward of me to not at least mention it here. Any sugar that comes in the form of liquid is a no go. If you have weight loss goals, if you want to be healthier, if you simply want to feel better, ditch the soda. And yes, that means the diet soda too (sorry).