Don’t Drink Your Calories!
November 24, 2009 by Deb · Leave a Comment
Here is a nutrition tip for today. It is plain, simple and blunt. Do NOT drink your calories away. That’s right, eat, eat and eat. That’s not hard for most of us, but NOT drinking calories is a tougher thing to do. Now that it’s getting colder out it is real easy to want to drink the warm fu fu drinks to warm us up….beware of the amount calories that this warmth can pack in.
This Peppermint Mocha from Starbucks could have 410 calories (I bolded the stats that you want to pay attention to).
Serving Size 16 fl. Oz .
Amt Per Serving
Calories 410
Fat Calories 140
Total Fat (g) 15
Saturated Fat (g) 9
Trans Fat (g) 0
Cholesterol (mg) 45
Sodium (mg) 120
Total Carbohydrates (g) 63
Fiber (g) 2
Sugars (g) 54
Protein (g) 13
Caffeine (mg) 175
Think about it. If you eat sugar it takes a little bit of digestion and it hits your blood stream to spike insulin. Now compare that to liquid sugar, next to no digestion to buffer the rate at which the sugar hits your blood stream and spikes that fat storing insulin. Not to mention a liquid sugar will deliver almost 100% of the calories to your bloodstream while a solid food, even as simple as white sugar will be reduced just a little bit by the calories it took to process the sugar to pass into the blood stream.
OK so some of the technicalities out of the way. Think about this. The stomach can only hold about 120 ounces of solids at anytime to be “full” and satisfied. The rate is the same for liquids, but the perception of full or satisfied is much less with liquids than it is with solids. Even crazier is that you can pack in almost 10x the calories in liquid form than you can with solids.
So now you know why I suggest for an instant reduction in fat storage and personal satisfaction to EAT your calories. This is especially true as we rock our way into the next of the triple threat holiday feasts: Thanksgiving!!