How can you get fizzy drinks out of your diet?
Fizzy drinks are an easy drink to pick up at the corner shop, a fantastic treat to have at a meal out, or even something quick to add to the shopping list for Christmas.
Fizzy drinks can be both a fun treat and an addiction, especially when you get into the habit of just picking one up because they have a little more flavour than water. As it gets closer to Christmas, fizzy drinks will slowly make their way back into our daily diets over the seasonal fun.
Here are some tips on why to cut fizzy drinks out of your diet, and how to do this!
Why stop?
Whether the fizzy drinks you pick up are diet or not, this doesn’t have an effect on whether they’re healthier for you or not. Sugar or fructose, the intake of sugars and sweeteners both contribute towards diabetes, high blood pressure and risk of heart disease. Two fizzy drinks a day can double your risk of heart disease!
Even diet drinks cause weight gain, stopping drinking all fizzy drinks can really help with losing weight. These drinks can profoundly affect your gut as well as weight, the sugar affecting bacteria in your stomach.
Both sugar and sugar-free drinks affect your teeth, with the sugars from the drinks these react with the bacteria in your mouth making acid that attacks your teeth.
Many adverts promote diet drinks saying these can help you cut out the sugar from drinks that aren’t sugar-free – but this isn’t true.
How can you stop?
Finding ways to cut out fizzy drinks from your diet can be tricky. Start with finding alternatives and replacements for the drinks; instead of picking up a Diet Coke swap this for an iced tea, you’re still getting the caffeine that you got from the Diet Coke but without the extra sugars and sweeteners.
Other replacements could be, green tea, sparkling water on its own or with juice and flavoured water.
Once finding alternatives to fizzy drinks, start including these in your everyday life instead of fizzy drinks. Every time you find yourself wanting a fizzy drink, reach for your replacement. Every time you would usually have a fizzy drink, swap it out for your alternative.
You’ll start realising it becomes a habit, and you don’t find yourself reaching for the sugary drinks any more!
Rewarding yourself is a great way to keep going; however, try and stay away from sugary drinks when doing this. Instead, reward yourself with an extra sugar in your tea, or something sweet to have at lunch!
As you start to do this in your everyday life, you’ll find it becomes a lot easier, and you end up stepping away from fizzy drinks! If you are struggling with drinking fizzy drinks, or how to get a healthier lifestyle to lose weight – we can help! Check out our Lose Weight programme for more information on how CCH can help you today.