Why should I drink less soda?

Sodas are a beverage that's main ingredient is sugar and some varieties also have a good amount of caffeine. The calories from soda do not contain any additional nutrients, vitamins or minerals, that aid in body functions and health. Drinking less soda and replacing it with water, which contains no calories and is needed to hydrate the body, will reduce your overall calorie consumption daily and over a span of time will help you reduce your weight.

A healthy diet includes 8-10 - 8 oz glasses of water daily. Replacing that with other sugar laden beverages, sodas that offer no other nutritional value is consuming a large amount of empty calories; and will cause you to gain weight.

NOTE: Empty Calories-Also known as a discretionary calorie, an "empty calorie" has the same energy content as any other calorie but lacks many accompanying nutrients such as vitamins, dietary minerals, antioxidants, amino acids, or dietary fiber. Although carbohydrates, fats and water are also nutrients, they are typically ignored for this analysis, with the exception of essential fatty acids.

Diet soda can affect weight on both a physical level and on a psychological level. On a physical level, diet sodas are full of artificial flavors and sweeteners. Even though diet soda has no calories, the artificial flavor and sweetness trigger the digestive process via your taste buds. And your intestine starts to secrete digestive juice in preparation for digestion. Problem is there is nothing to digest. This in turn, leaves your cells hungry for the sweetness that they thought they were getting but never did, sugar cravings ensue. Many people ultimately eat more later in the day.

On a psychological level, when someone drinks diet soda knowing it has less calories it creates an attitude that they have extra calories to eat other foods. Often this leads to more eating. A good example of this phenomenon is when someone orders a diet coke with his or her double bacon cheeseburger and large fry. At that point the soda is minor compared to the burger and fries.