When you’re trying to lose weight and concentrating on eating healthy foods, it’s easy to forget about the contribution your drinks are making to your calorie total. Often, we don’t really think about the impact of our juice or coffee or hot chocolate- but those liquid calories can add up fast, and sugary or sweetened drinks in particular can really sabotage your diet plan.

Try to make water your main beverage. Drinking plenty of water throughout the day is so important, not only for your weight loss, but for your general health and wellbeing. Your body needs lots of water to maintain all its normal functions properly, including metabolism. And it has no calories, which frees you up to get more of your energy from food.  

Here are some of the most common daily drinks, and what you should be cautious of…

Coffee

Coffee in itself isn’t so bad. Unsweetened coffee on its own actually has healthy compounds and antioxidants and almost no calories, and it can kick-start your metabolism, so one or two long blacks or skim lattes each day won’t impact your diet. It’s when you start adding sugar and flavourings that coffee becomes a calorie-trap.

If you’re a fan of the sugary concoctions sold at popular coffee franchises like Starbucks and Gloria Jeans, you can make a significant difference to your diet by cutting back. It might be delicious, but that mocha caramel latte could be adding more than 200 calories to your daily total!

The simplest first step is to switch to skim milk, or even go for a macchiato (made with water with a little dollop of warm milk on top). Skip the sugary flavourings and whipped cream, and try to slowly reduce the amount of sugar you add until you don’t need it anymore.

Milk

Milk is good for you- there’s no doubt about that. And studies are showing that it can even help your weight loss efforts, due to its calcium and protein content. The key is just to make sure you’re consuming low-fat or non-fat versions. A glass of regular milk can have up to 150 calories. Non-fat cuts it down to around half of that.

Juice

Many juices have added sugars, which can add up quickly. Check the label of your favourite juice for the sugar content as well as calories- it might surprise you! On average, a glass of juice will have around double the calories and sugar content of a piece of fruit, and almost none of the fibre. So it’s always better to eat fruit than drink its juice. Of course, juice isn’t the worst calorie-offending beverage, so drinking it from time to time is okay. But try to choose products with no added sugar, or even better, juice your own fruit. You can also try watering your juice down, so you get that refreshing flavour with less calories.

Soft drink

Soft drinks are full of sugar and have almost no nutritional value- so avoid them as much as you can! A 375ml can of Coke has about 160 calories and 40 grams of sugar, which is the same as about ten teaspoons. That’s the recommended daily maximum amount- so don’t blow it all on one drink. Next time you’re tempted, try to visualise ten teaspoons of sugar. It’s likely to look much less appealing then!

Diet soft drink

They’re better than their sugary relatives, but you should still practice moderation with diet soft drinks. Although they often have no calories and no sugar, there is always new research coming up suggesting that artificially sweetened beverages can mess with the brain's ability to measure caloric intake, as well as increasing sugary cravings. Plus, if you’re drinking lots of soft drink, chances are you’re taking in fewer healthy beverages like water and tea. So the occasional Diet Coke is fine- but if you’re in the habit of drinking it every day, try to break it!

Alcohol

One of the first rules of weight loss is not to drink alcohol- but for most of us, it’s probably not realistic to give it up completely. Alcoholic drinks pack in a lot of calories in a small amount, and can stimulate your appetite. Plus, the calories in alcohol can’t be stored in the body, so they have to be used up immediately. That means your body stops burning fat until all the alcohol is processed, which takes about an hour for every drink. As much as you can, try to limit your alcohol intake, but if you do have the occasional drink, try to make calorie-conscious choices! Skip the sugary cocktails, choose a lighter beer, or add soda water to your wine to make it a spritzer.