When it comes to healthy weight loss, certain drinks can easily derail progress and have a negative impact on your gut health. To gain a better understanding of which sugary beverages can be especially detrimental to your health and weight loss goals, we reached out to dietitians and nutritionists to discuss two drinks that are “crucial” to avoid: canned, carbonated energy drinks and bottled, sweetened iced coffees.
Read on for tips, suggestions and insight from Kelsey Butler, MS, RDN, registered dietitian and nutritionist at Coastal Dream Life, Dana Ellis Hunnes, PhD, MPH, RD, senior dietitian at UCLA medical center, assistant professor at UCLA Fielding school of public health, and Lisa Richards, registered nutritionist and creator of The Candida Diet.
1. Canned Energy Drinks
If you want to healthily lose weight, choosing foods and beverages that are good for your gut are key, Butler explains. This, she says, is why sipping on sugary energy drinks can prevent weight loss, as they often cause diseases, make nutrient absorption so much harder and can lead to dehydration. "Carbonated energy drinks can negatively affect gut health because they can cause gastric distress, interfere with nutrient absorption, and contribute to diarrhea," she notes.
Butler adds that these beverages "stimulate the release of acid in your stomach" which can lead to more heartburn and indigestion. Secondly, the "high sugar content in these drinks can cause diarrhea by pulling water into your intestine" (which also leads to dehydration). The caffeine in these drinks can also contribute to diarrhea by increasing intestinal motility, she warns.
"The worst kind of carbonated drink would be highly caffeinated, sugary energy drinks like Monster or Red Bull," she continues. These drinks, she reiterates, can cause issues like "diarrhea, malabsorption, and dehydration." If you still like to sip on a fizzy beverage and want to choose one that is *actually good* for your gut, Hunnes recommends kombucha.
Kombucha, she says, is a fermented tea drink that is "high in beneficial probiotics and also high in antioxidants (from the tea)." The probiotics and the antioxidants are anti-inflammatory and can "aid in promoting GI health by helping to colonize the GI tract with healthy bacteria (known as probiotics)," she explains.
2. Sweetened, Bottled Iced Coffee
Many processed coffee drinks have added sugars, sweeteners, and fats in them, Hunnes says, and these can prevent shedding pounds. "Think creams, syrups, flavorings, and colorings (caramel coloring)," she explains. When you go to your favorite coffee shop, "many of the syrups they are adding contain a lot of sugar and that can add many extra calories, hundreds in fact," she warns.
Hunnes notes that drinking this first thing in the morning with your breakfast can also set back your weight loss, whereas drinking coffee black or with a natural sweetener can actually aid your weight loss progress.
"A black coffee is zero calories, but with common syrups and creams that are used, and any whipped toppings, this can make a zero-calorie beverage now closer to 300 or 400 calories," Hunnes says, stressing: "That's practically a meal." Instead, Richards recommends trying a monk fruit sweetener rather than sugar.
"Refined sugar, which is commonly called table sugar, is a type of sugar that is harmful for many reasons," Richards says. "This type of sugar is sucrose and is highly inflammatory as well as a food source for bad gut bacteria."
Hunnes concurs, and recommends: "I strongly encourage people to consider getting a black coffee and then adding a couple tablespoons of their favorite non-dairy beverage and an extract (ie. vanilla extract, almond extract etc) and spices like cinnamon or clove."
This, she says, will add "warmth, flavor, and far fewer calories," your gut will thank you, and you'll be more on track for healthy weight loss!
