Not all foods are created equally, and neither are the calories in them.
What are the worst calories for your body? Until recently I would have told you that desserts and fried foods are the worst things you could possibly eat. Then I read a research paper about the worst calories for your body, and was totally blown away!
Before we go any further let me clarify that we are talking about the worst kind of calories that you can eat when you want to lose weight. If we want to talk about the worst things you can eat for your body then perhaps desserts and fried foods may be worse in that they may decrease its ability to function properly more than the excess weight you may gain from the type of calories we talk about below.
The Surprising Results…
The worst calories for your body are liquid calories. Juice. Milk. Beer. Espresso. Anything that is liquid and has calories.
This research study was done by a team of researchers who wanted to know what would help people lose more weight, cutting out the same number of liquid or solid food calories. They had two large groups of people ranging in ages from 18 up to 78. They had one remove calories from their daily diet by taking out liquid sources of calories. Then they had the other group take out the same number of calories but instead they removed solid food calories.
The results were astounding. The people that reduced liquid calories lost weight 5 times faster.
The crazy thing is that the researchers where rather baffled at why this was the case. Overall though people that remove liquid calories from their diets lost weight much faster. Read about that study here.
A Real World Example
I had a friend that realized she was drinking far to much juice. So she stopped drinking it cold turkey. She drank only water and a glass of milk a day (I would say that women should consider this to help fight osteoporosis, especially if you get little calcium elsewhere). She was apparently drinking 4 to 6 or more glasses of juice a day. In three months without changing anything else she lost 30 pounds.
I initially attributed this to the fact that she was overweight and since she improved her diet she was able to lose some weight pretty fast. Then I saw this study and it all made sense. She was supporting a very high weight because of the liquid calories she was drinking.
Why Liquid Calories Are Bad For You
Besides the obvious results we see in the study above the interesting thing about liquid calories is they don’t do much for us. They do taste good but they don’t fill you up (making it easy to drink a lot more than we need). Juice can seem easier to just drink but the problem with that is that you aren’t getting the fiber and other things that are a part of the actual fruit which is what makes them good for us. Juice is just the extracted sugars and liquids in a fruit.
Another interesting thing about liquid calories is that they often get labeled as “healthy” and so we feel like it is okay to drink them with reckless abandon. If you want to lose weight they are not healthy for you! Not drinking calories is one of my 8 Fast Ways to Lose Weight.
So what is the take home for you? Look at your diet and take out any form of calories that you drink regularly. I used to drink a lot of orange juice. I cut that out and instead just eat an orange or two a day and have seen weight loss come far more easily.
From now on I will drink primarily water. If I was a tea drinker I would probably be okay keeping that up. Otherwise it is probably a good idea to avoid any calories that you can drink!
If you drink a lot of calories try taking them all out of your diet for the next month and see what difference you see. I bet many people are having issues losing weight because they are drinking to many calories.
