This is my favorite discussion.

We should drink water. Just plain simple water. Not flavored water. Not vitamin water. Whether we are or not on a weight loss plan.

We should an 8 oz glass of water when we eat, when we feel thirsty, when we sweat, when we wake up, when we do sports, when we exercise, when we return from work/school, when we go to work/outside, when we go to bed (assuming we do not have frequent night time urination problem).

We should drink 8 glasses of water a day, unless restricted by a physician. Just choose your time.

So are there any non-alcoholic drinks intoxicating to your body?

Well, we are seeing more and more evidence that drinking “diet drinks” in excess and regularly can harm your health. It is not healthy to drink whether you are trying to lose weight or not.

I do clinically see in my practice that the diet soda, in regular and in excess drinking has caused migraines, headaches, foggy brain, lack of energy, fatigue, palpitations, mouth ulcers or soreness. The literature has shown that even more serious conditions caused by artificial sweeteners.

The sugary drinks include regular sodas, sports drink, sugar-added fruit juice, any thing contain sugar, can give you excessive calorie and can increase the weight over time.

Approximately 500 excess calories per day can put on you a pound of fat per week.

Have you ever look at the total calorie in a serving of what you drink? One 0.5 ml (16 oz) bottle of classic coke contains 200 calorie. Let say if you drink one bottle a day, you are ensure to gain one pound of fat in 2.5 weeks(17 days), approximately 20 pounds over a year.

What is bad about excessive and regularly drinking diet and non diet soft drinks, when you are trying to maintain and/or losing the weight.

So do I give up on sodas and sugary drinks completely?

I personally do not like the diet drinks. So I do not get the diet drinks of any kind.

When I drink, I drink non-diet drinks.

I would pour out the soda into an ice fill 8 oz glass. I will drink this 2-3 times a week maximum. I will have something else to snack with either whole grain cracker or nuts or cheese or even with my potato chips. In brief, I will drink the “soft drinks” as a special drink snack.

Yes, I would gain about 75 calories from the drink, another 75 calories from the snack (nuts or cracker or so on). When you mixed the simple sugar to complex sugar, protein, or fat, it prevents drastic ups and downs of sugar in the blood stream and keeps your sugar level in the blood steady. So it does not make you fatigue, nor make you crave more to keep you energetic.

But I would not quench my thirst with soda, juice nor sport drinks. My regular daily drink is just plain water. I love water.