Do you drink clean?

“Clean food” is a common expression in the modern culture of health and fitness. From cooking to shopping lists, we know that a whole, unprocessed diet is the key to our efforts to make us healthier and get better fitness results. And yet we do not pay the same close attention to what we drink. The drinks we consume can have as much impact on the results as the food we eat, but few people spend a lot of time thinking about whether their favorite drink is nitro-cold “clean.” Let's look at some not-so-clean drinks that you might be drinking, and some ways to enjoy healthy drinks that support your efforts to keep fit.

The juice

Juice is made up of fruits, and fruit is a whole meal, so what's the problem? The problem is that when you drink an orange or apple, you remove all the important fibers and nutrients and leave one thing behind: sugar. In addition, sugar is added to many of the so-called more wholesome juices, such as cranberry or vegetable mixtures, to improve taste. Think about it: you had to fill before you could do it through 10 apples, and you probably only did it after a few cranberries before the tart taste got too big, but you can easily drink a glass of juice each in the morning or add a splash of juice to your favorite cocktail.

If you are really focused on slicing sugar, you need to drink 86 servings of a morning cup of juice, or at least go for whole fruits. If your favorite wake-up drink is antioxidant green juice, try mixing calcium-rich leafy greens instead of juice. When you eat whole fruit or vegetable instead of juice, you get the same vitamins and food, as well as a healthy dose of fiber to start your day. If your morning glass of orange juice is your only source of vitamin C, at least try to reduce sugar by filling half of your glass with plain or sparkling water and the rest with juice. You get the same taste and even a little extra hiss with zero calories and half sugar – a win-win!

Coffee

Nothing beats a cup of good joe to start the day, and, fortunately, this is one energetic, low-calorie drink that can fit into most fitness plans. However, beware of sugarless syrups and artificial sweeteners. Studies have shown that artificial sweeteners can actually increase weight gain and interfere with energy regulation.[1] This is due to the fact that eating foods and drinks that have a sweet taste, but without calories, undermines the consequences of eating sugary foods, making us mistakenly think that eating more is normal. Basically, adding artificial sweeteners to our coffee, we forced ourselves to crave a sweet taste and believe that this does not affect our waist – although often the opposite happens.

If you really aim to lose weight and try to reduce as much sugar as possible, it is best not to let it in your coffee. You don’t need any sugar or caffeine to wake you up, and when you try something sweet first thing in the morning, you are determined to crave more sweets that day. Give yourself a few weeks, and you will find that as soon as you cut sugar from your coffee, you will not crave sweets as much as you did before, and your other sugar addiction will also decrease. You can always include low-fat milk or your favorite alternative to milk, such as almond or soy milk. To supplement Java without calories, try sprinkling with cinnamon or nutmeg.

Calorie-Free Diet Drinks

Diet drinks are not at all safe for a diet, and again, it’s all about artificial sugar. While the craze for low fat in the 90s and early 2000s made the use of low-fat and non-fat foods widespread, we now learn more about the negative side effects of artificial sweeteners.

Unfortunately, the versions of the most popular drinks with full sugar content are just as bad, which means that you are best off drinking zero-calorie and sugar-free drinks and sip unsweetened tea or carbonated water with a natural taste. If the craving for soda is strong, there are new healthy drinks made with natural sugar and natural flavors, and some supplement companies have even developed pre-workout carbonated energy drinks and natural flavored sports drinks to keep you hydrated. There are also natural drinks such as Kombucha, a fermented drink that offers many health benefits. Just make sure you keep your high sugar drinks before or after your workout to get the most out of this excess blood sugar.

Wine

We can’t ignore the fact that alcohol is just empty calories that the body must process, and empty calories that offer zero nutrition do not work well with any serious fitness program or weight loss program. However, a healthy glass of red wine after a long week can have a good time, and there should be a way to enjoy this glass without worrying about what's in it. Wine is a drink with ingredients that have been exposed to many weed control products, so choose an organic, nitrate-free crop whenever possible to avoid the harmful chemicals that might be hiding in your bottle. For sugar control, find the ABV or ALC number on the bottle label. As a rule, the lower the number of ABV or ALC, the less calories and sugar he will have. And remember: wine is basically an adult grape juice, so if you need to reduce calories, you can follow the same rules that are described for juice and pour wine with sparkling water. Hooray!

Vitamin Water

Not all vitamin waters are created equal, and some of them are loaded with sugar, in particular fructose. This commonly used ingredient causes vitamin waters to have such a sweet taste that keeps you coming back for more, but now researchers say that a high fructose diet can contribute to some serious health problems, such as metabolic syndrome, illnesses heart and type 2 diabetes. ,[2]

Shockingly, one bottle of vitamin water contains 120 calories and 32 grams of sugar. In the USA, where it is sweetened with crystalline fructose, it contains as much fructose as regular Coca-Cola. Non-calorie vitamin waters contain artificial sugars that can harm your diet and harm your long-term health goals. For a cleaner option, create your own vitamin water by adding chopped fresh fruit, lemon, mint leaves, cucumber, a drop of organic fruit juice, apple cider vinegar, which is good for the intestines, green tea powder, or coconut water. These healthy, all-natural supplements are a great alternative to processed sugary drinks and a great way to tune your water to create your own favorite flavor.

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Recommendations

1. Davidson, T.L., Martin, A.A., Clark, K. & Swithers, S.E. (2011). The consumption of high-intensity sweeteners changes the ability of a sweet taste to signal caloric effects: consequences for the scientific control of energy and regulation of body weight. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64(7), 1430-1441.
2. Stanhope, K.L., Schwarz, J.M. & Havel, P.J. (2013). Adverse metabolic effects of fructose: recent epidemiological, clinical, and mechanistic studies. Current Opinion in Lipidology, 24(3), 198.