

The #1 Drink to Avoid
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The #1 Drink to Avoid

One of the habits many Beyond Diet members find to be hardest to kick is their love of diet soda.

"But wait, I thought diet soda was healthy! It has zero calories and none of the sugar!"


It's important to realize that the can of soda you're having with lunch (and dinner) is one of the single worst things you are putting in your body, and is a huge contributor to weight-gain, despite its lack of calories.

To make matters worse, soda consumption can lead to serious health issues such as:

  • Obesity
  • Diabetes
  • Heart disease
  • Liver damage
  • Insomnia
  • High Blood Pressure
  • Osteoporosis
  • Various cancers

Drinking soda also increases your likelihood of being overweight by upwards of 50%!


It turns out that aspartame and sucralose, the sweeteners in diet sodas, may trick you into thinking you're getting something sweet for free, but your brain doesn't like being tricked.

Think about it this way, artificial sweeteners signal to your taste buds, “Sweet stuff has arrived,” which is translated to the brain as, “Nutrition has arrived.” When the artificial sweetener reaches the small intestine, the receptors find no nutrition and send a message back to the brain, saying, “We've been tricked. There's no nutrition here.” The appestat (the part of your brain that triggers satiety) therefore signals to “keep eating … to help process all this nonfood” and keep the body functioning (Chek 2004). For this reason, many people who constantly drink diet sodas are overweight and always hungry.


Luckily, there are a few tricks you can try to ensure success:

    1.Try iced tea or a smoothie, instead. Iced tea is a great mid-afternoon drink, especially in the summertime. Since tea is predominantly water, you get a hydration boost in addition to your choice of herbal flavor and aroma. Squeeze in a lemon wedge for an added kick of Vitamin C. You can also gather inspiration from one of my favorite Beyond Blood Sugar Smoothie Recipes, packed with Vitamin C, healthy fats, and only natural sweeteners.

    Berry-Ful Smoothie

  • 2.Clean house! Toss all the soda you're currently stocking. If it's there, you're more likely to drink it. Make drinking a diet soda more effort than it's worth.

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  • 3.Remember that most of the health advice you got in the 80s and 90s has been proven wrong. Fats, carbohydrates, calories - all very healthy when you choose the right fats (avocado oil, extra-virgin olive oil, coconut oil, grass-fed butter), the right carbohydrates (leafy greens, sprouted grains, fruits) and calories (clean, unprocessed ingredients without the chemicals) - which allow you to eat more of the "good stuff" yet still LOSE WEIGHT! Never again let a "zero-calorie, low-fat, sugar-free" food label trick you into thinking you're about to eat something that will help you in the long run, because I promise you that it will do more harm than good.

  • 4.Lastly, every time you're tempted to head down to the vending machine at your office, consider this: our kids need to learn how to lose weight, too. In 2005, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study arguing that, for the first time in US history, children in America will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents, due to the childhood obesity epidemic. That epidemic is at least partly related to the fact that one in every four beverages consumed in the United States is a soft drink.

I get it, temptation is everywhere and we have only a finite amount of willpower each and every day. So, if you are ready to ditch the soda , what comes next? How can you keep up with the good habits without sacrificing taste and throwing in the towel? How can you help your family?

Change can be overwhelming, but I've created a program that outlines exactly which types of sweeteners are safe for weight-loss, how to get back on track with your health goals, and best of all, you'll be able to kick that nasty soda habit once and for all.

»Your Beyond Blood Sugar meal plans, shopping lists, and even tasty desserts are all right here.