Drink Away Five Kilograms

While there are a number of ways to lose weight, simply changing your drinking habits can enhance weight loss and the overall health of your body and mind.

A Bottoms Up Plan for Losing Weight

Seven hundred and fifty litres. That’s the amount of liquid the average man guzzles each year. Approx 130 litres of beer, 200 litres of cooldrink, 90 litres of milk, and a whole lot of litres of other stuff.

Feeling a bit bloated? You should be. But the great thing about drinking so much is that all you have to do to lose weight is make a few adjustments to the type of drinks you’re already pouring down every day. Juice with pulp instead of pulp free. Green tea instead of regular. Do it all and you’re gulping approx 150 000 fewer kilojoules in four weeks. That’s a saving of nearly five kilograms.

Your Morning Juice

Unless you’re an astronaut or a skinny 10 year old boy, trade in that old favorite Cabana for the thick fruit stuff. – juice with extra pulp or a smoothie. It may help you resist the lure of the office sarmie basket. Researchers found that people stayed full longer when they drank thick drinks than when they drank thin ones – even when kilojoules, temperatures, and amounts were exactly equal. Thicker drinks help fight off hunger longer.

Your Mid Morning Break

Even if your taste in tea runs more toward Long Island than iced, there’s a reason to consider adding a bit more of the stuff to your diet. It’s a natural fat burner. But not just any tea will work. You need to buy the stuff marked ‘green’. A swiss study found that substances in green tea called catechin polyphenols can significantly increase your body’s metabolism of fat so you burn the stuff at a faster rate. Buy green tea at any good health shop and brew some up.

Lunch in a Can

Meal replacements really work. Researchers found that regularly drinking meal replacements increased a man’s chances of losing weight and keeping it off for longer than a year. But which one should you drink? Men trying to lose weight need about 2500 kilojoules per meal, with 25% of those kilojoules from protein, 25% from fat, and 50% from carbohydrates.

Post Work Out Smoothie

Bananas don’t just fend off muscular cramps. They also fight hunger. The scent of bananas tricks your brain into thinking you’ve eaten a lot more than you really have, making you fuller faster. Men who drank yoghurt shakes that had been blended until they doubled in volume ate 400 fewer kilojoules a day than men who drank shakes of normal thickness. The extra volume helps to fill you up and curb your appetite.

Cooldrink for the Drive Home

The best place to get used to the taste of diet cooldrink is a café. The cooldrink at those places is always ice cold. The colder a diet cooldrink is when you’re drinking it, the less you’ll notice the difference in taste. Wean yourself off regular cooldrink altogether.

Evening Beer

There’s nothing wrong with ‘lite’ beer, except of course the embarrassment factor. Make better beer choices and see your weight come back to normal.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR