Watery solution

When people ask me how I was able to lose so much weight, I respond by saying that I gave up a lot of foods. One of the first things I mention that I scrapped from my meal plan is soda.

Now, I like the taste of a soda just as much as the next person but I didn't find it too difficult to give up. It was pretty simple in fact when I was trying to figure out how best to use my 1800 calories. I felt that 120 or 140 or whatever the typical soda has to offer was too much to drink.

I was reminded today of just how bad soda is for you when I went to drink some water. On the label of the bottle was a paragraph on the benefits of drinking water instead of soda. Now, of course it's probably a bit of a scare tactic to try to get you to drink more water and, in particular more of their water, but there is some truth to it nonetheless.

The label informs us that the typical 12 ounce soda has about 10 teaspoons of sugar. Compared to the sugar found in water (zero teaspoons), the benefits of drinking water instead of sugar are great. So if you replace one soda daily with water, you can cut 3,650 teaspoons of sugar from your meal plan each year. That's a lot of sugar.

And really, that's an easy way to cut back. If you are looking at where you can save on calories, drinks are the first place you should look. In general, I don't like to drink my calories away so I opt for water and then the occasional diet soda, although I probably have one or two diet sodas a week, if that.

How much water should you drink a day? Well, I try and get at least 80 ounces, but I'd like to get 90-100 ounces minimum per day. Sometimes, it's not possible - if I'm going to be driving a lot for instance the last thing I want to do is fill up on water and pull off to use the restroom every 15 minutes - but for the most part I try and do well with my water intake.

It's an easy way to cut calories and an instrumental part of the typical healthy meal plan.