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Walk into any grocery store and you’ll easily find dozens of different low-calorie and no-calorie beverages. Many of these drinks are marketed as diet elixirs that can boost your metabolism, burn fat, and help you lose weight. But not everything is what it seems. And the one zero-calorie drink that basically flushes fat, according to nutritionists, is also one that is far more basic and simple than those on your grocery shelves.
It’s important to remember that unless a food is naturally free of calories, there is some process that is required to remove calories from an otherwise sugary beverage.
When the Food Babe took an in-depth look at the list of ingredients on a few popular, no-calorie drinks, she found that many were sweetened with Sucralose, which is linked to cancer, or contain artificial colors and possibly carcinogenic preservatives like Potassium Benzoate.
Even flavored waters, which seem safe enough, can contain bad-for-you preservatives and artificial sweeteners that can actually increase your sugar cravings, stimulate your appetite, and wreak havoc on your metabolism.
There’s a much better no-calorie drink that will actually help you burn fat — and it costs way less than your average fancy, low-calorie drink.
Water
It isn’t the most glam beverage, but pure water is still one of the healthiest, zero-calorie drinks you should be drinking for both your health and weight loss.
Most health experts recommend eight 8 ounce glasses of water each day. Drinking more than that amount won’t provide a magical way to lose weight, but one study showed that 50 overweight women who drank water 30 minutes before their meals reported appetite suppression and experienced more weight loss and fat burning.
Drinking cold and room temperature water was proven in one study to increase participants’ energy expenditure and help them burn between 2 to 3 percent more calories than usual.
You need water to burn fat — both the fat from foods and drinks you enjoy today and stored fat, according to Medical News Daily. And drinking a lot of water, or just swapping most beverages that you drink with water, is a great way to reduce the number of calories you take in every day.
“Results of a large-scale study showed that men and women who replaced one serving of a sugar-sweetened beverage for water or a low-calorie drink every day for 4 years gained 0.49 fewer kilograms (kg) than a similar group who had made no changes,” reports Medical News Daily.
The next time you want to reach for a no-calorie drink that supports your current weight loss goals and allows you to save money and avoid mysterious, unhealthy ingredients like sugar substitutes and preservatives, stick to nature’s favorite beverage: water.
