You are doing your best — even going above and beyond the call of duty. So why are those pounds not leaving?  We’ve looked at a couple of reasons.  Maybe you are underestimating your calories, or you need to step up your exercise plan.  Possibly you aren’t drinking enough water.

Speaking of drinking — that’s another possibility.  Maybe it’s what you are drinking that is causing your weight loss to stall.  You might have cut out the sweet foods in your diet, but sweet drinks can be just as destructive  to your insulin balance – if not more so.  Foods, even starches which are quickly digested, have to spend at least a short visit in your digestive tract before the sugar is dumped into your bloodstream.  With drinks, it is almost instantaneous.  If you drink a Coke, about 16 teaspoonfuls of sugar are dumped almost immediately into your system.  Your autopilot which controls the hormones sends out an emergency message to the pancreas to pump out a big batch of insulin, and the insulin rushes through your system, telling your body to store up the fat.  The hormone response of your body does far more damage than the 100 calories that you spent for the soft drink.

What about diet drinks?  Sorry.  I’ve heard for a long time that people who quit the diet pop habit lose about five to seven pounds almost immediately.  I didn’t lose that much, but I did see my weight loss begin to speed up. A study released last month confirmed that it’s true.  They did a study on hundreds of diet pop drinkers over ten years.  They found that people who drank diet pop gained more weight.  Not only that, but people who drank two or more diet sodas a day had increases in waist measurement 500 percent greater than those who didn’t drink the stuff.

How can it do that when it doesn’t have calories?  One theory is that your autopilot can’t tell the difference between real sugar and artificial. Perhaps it is the “sweet” signal that causes the insulin-release message.  You have the insulin response, even though you don’t have the calories.The study was done on artificial sweeteners, so it is possible that a natural replacement, like stevia, might not have the same effect. If it is just the sweet taste causing the problem, though, even healthy sugars might slow down the weight loss.

What can you do?  Try cutting out all sweet drinks for a while and see what happens.  Drink water instead.  It will be better for you anyway, and you may see this small change makes a big difference in your weight loss.

Eating to live and living for Christ,
Susan Jordan Brown