When starting to lose weight, I started tracking calories. I used to drink lots of pop, sweet tea, and always had sweet flavored creamers in my coffee. I was consuming hundreds of unnecessary calories per day. Drink just one can of pop can add 150-200 calories plus more refined sugar than should even be consumed in one day let alone in one drink! In one of my favorite coffee creamers the Coffee Mate Peppermint Mocha there are 35 calories per serving (1 tablespoon) and I was easily consuming 2-3 servings so there is at least 100 calories plus 10-15 grams of sugar to start the day off wrong.
What I began doing was backing off the creamer. Initially I switched to unflavored creamer and now I drink my coffee black. For the pop and sweet tea, I switch to drinking sugar free sports drinks. It’s important to know that anything that has a sweetener will still trigger the insulin response in the body, meaning that sugar free drinks shouldn’t be consumed all the time. However I used them as a tool to cut my sugar addiction and it worked well for me. Now I drink water when I get thirsty throughout the day and because I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables I don’t get thirsty nearly as often.
In the evening now I drink green tea which helps promote healthy gut bacteria and helps to curb your appetite. I do drink protein shakes however I count those as food rather than drinks. So Now I do not consume calories from drinks and I feel so much better day in and day out. It is so nice to not feel under the control of a sugar addiction, especially when traveling. Overall, your mood and temperament will be easier to regulate and control because you are taking back control of your mind. This is a process that involves forming new habits and new habits are not easy to form. As a general rule it takes 30 days to form a new habit to the point where it is no longer a chore. For cutting out the drinks it took me 2-3 months to fully cut the sugary drinks and after that backing off of the other things was easy. It took time for me to get fat and it took time for me to lose the fat. Cutting out the calories in my drinks really helped me to continue to drop the weight and keep it off.