Drop soft drinks to drop pounds and save money

If you’re like most of the people I know, you drink soda and drink it often.  Why wouldn’t you?  It’s delicious and refreshing!  It’s in every restaurant, grocery store, and gas station you visit, and it’s relatively cheap.

I personally gave up soda over five years ago.  In my first real attempt at a New Years resolution, my girlfriend and I gave up drinking soda and eating McDonald’s.  Of course since then I have had a few sodas and eaten at McDonald’s, but I could probably count the number of times I’ve “strayed from the path” on my fingers and toes.

I gave up soda for two simple reasons: my health and money.

If it looks toxic, that's because it is

First and foremost, soda is not a healthy drink.  The only arguably good components in soda are water and caffeine.  That’s it.  Everything else is some form of sugar, salt, artifical colors and flavors, and is nutritionally empty.  Most non-diet sodas have well over 100 calories per 12 oz. serving.  I rarely see anyone drink one 12 oz. can of soda with a meal.  Most fast food restaurants offer drink sizes like the 16 oz. “Small” at McDonald’s and the 42 oz. “Extra Large” at Taco Bell (which happens to be the standard drink size with any combo meal).  If you get a Mt. Dew at Taco Bell, you are adding 580 calories into your meal.  To put that into perspective, that’s drinking the same number of calories as eating three (3) Crunchy Taco Supremes!  And that’s assuming you don’t get any refills.  When you consider 1 pound of weight is about 3500 calories, you could cut 3-4 pounds worth of calories out of your diet weekly by dropping soft drinks altogether.

Even if you don’t care about the unruly amounts of sugar and calories in soda, let’s look at how much money you’re spending.  I’m going to use general (but realistic) numbers here.  Obviously many people drink more and some will drink less, but the point remains the same.  If a soda at a resturant is $1.50 and you eat 3 meals a day, that’s $4.50 a day spent on soda.  Over the course of a year, you’re spending over $1600 on soda.  That’s not even including between meals.  I know quite a few people who buy 20 oz. bottles of pop everywhere they go (gas, grocery, etc).  If you add in the $1.50 for even 2 of those extra drinks a day, now you’re spending almost $2800 every year on soda.  Not to mention all those extra emtpy calories!

So what do you do instead?  Drink Lemonade?  Sweet Tea?  Not really.  That’s more or less a different way to achieve the same results.  I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that water is your ticket out!  Now I don’t know about you, but nothing quenches my thirst more than water.  Add in a pinch of lemon juice and you’ve got a refreshing, delicious, and most importantly healthy drink!  And 99% of the time, it’s free!  Luckily our world hasn’t spun completely out of control to where we are forced to pay for water and air (yet) so take advantage.  The most I’ve ever been charged for water (not including bottled) is about $0.20 for the cup’s cost.  I’m okay with that.  It rarely happens anyhow.

So give it a try.  I think this is both a small and big way to change your health and wealth.  Even if you have to choose between buying water and buying soda, buy the water because even though it contains less, it does more for your body.

To read more articles by Zack Pennington, check out his blog at www.road-warrior-fitness.com