Stop Drinking Your Sugar

Don't Drink Your Calories.

This is one of the simplest changes you can make when you're trying to lose weight and clean up your diet:

Stop drinking your sugar.

When you're trying to reduce your sugar and carbohydrate intake, one of the easiest places to start is with what you're drinking. That's already built into the PayToCommit approach: eliminate ultra-processed foods, then stop drinking sugary beverages.

A lot of people pay attention to what they're eating but don't pay nearly as much attention to what they're drinking.

They'll say:

“I didn't really eat that much today.”

But maybe they had:

A soda.A sweet tea.An energy drink.A sweetened coffee.A glass of fruit juice.A smoothie.A sports drink.Or a mixed alcoholic drink.

Those drinks count too.

Your own outline specifically identifies all eight of these as the drinks I want you paying attention to.

And I want the rule to be extremely easy to remember:

Don't Drink Your Calories.

Soda

Let's start with the obvious one.

Regular soda is basically an easy way to drink a lot of sugar.

You don't have to chew anything.

You don't have to sit down and eat a meal.

You can drink it while driving, working, watching television, or eating something else.

That's one of the reasons I want sugary drinks to be one of the first things you remove from your diet.

Your existing kitchen-cleanout section already identifies regular soda as one of the sugary drinks to get out of the house.

Don't make this complicated.

If you're drinking regular soda every day and you're serious about losing weight:

Start there.

Sweet Tea

Sweet tea can fool people because they think:

“It's tea.”

But once you've added a lot of sugar to it, that's not the part I want you focusing on.

I want you looking at the sweetened drink.

If you're drinking glass after glass of sweet tea throughout the day, you're still drinking sugar.

Your material specifically puts sweet tea in the same sugary-drink category as soda, energy drinks, and sweetened coffee.

Tea itself isn't what I'm talking about here.

I'm talking about turning it into a sugar delivery system.

Energy Drinks

Energy drinks are another big one.

Don't assume:

“It gives me energy, so it must be helping me.”

If you're drinking a sugar-sweetened energy drink, I want you looking at the actual drink and what's in it.

Again, this is why I'm teaching you to stop thinking only in terms of food.

Your calories and carbohydrates don't disappear because they're in a can.

Energy drinks are specifically included among the sugary beverages your PayToCommit material tells readers to remove.

Sweetened Coffee

Coffee can go from something extremely simple to something that looks more like dessert.

Coffee.

Then sugar.

Then syrup.

Then sweetened creamer.

Then whipped cream.

Then more syrup on top.

At some point, ask yourself:

“Am I drinking coffee, or am I drinking dessert?”

Your material already specifically says:

Whether it's sugar in your coffee or tea, stop drinking your sugar.

That doesn't mean the coffee itself is automatically the problem.

It's what you're putting into it.

If you're serious about reducing sugar, don't overlook what you're adding to your coffee every morning.

Fruit Juice

Fruit juice is where I think a lot of people get confused.

They think:

“It's fruit, so it must be fine.”

But remember the rule I'm teaching here isn't:

“Only avoid soda.”

It's:

Don't Drink Your Calories.

Your own Zapp the Fat material specifically includes fruit juice and fruit products among the carbohydrate sources you're removing as you transition toward the diet.

And in the visceral-fat section, fruit juice is specifically included in the instruction to stop drinking any sugar.

So don't give fruit juice a free pass simply because it came from fruit.

For the way I'm teaching you to eat:

Drink water. Don't drink the fruit.

Smoothies

The same idea applies to smoothies.

People can put:

Fruit.

Fruit juice.

Honey.

Sweeteners.

Yogurt.

Other ingredients.

into a blender and then think:

“This is healthy because it's a smoothie.”

But again, I want you looking at what you're actually consuming.

Your PayToCommit material specifically identifies both fruit juice and smoothies among the liquid sources to remove.

If the goal is to reduce sugar and carbohydrates, blending those ingredients into a drink doesn't make them disappear.

That's why I keep coming back to the same simple rule.

Don't drink your calories.

Sports Drinks

Sports drinks are another product people often give a health halo to because there's an athlete on the bottle or the marketing talks about performance.

But I don't want you deciding whether something fits your plan because of the picture on the front.

Look at what you're drinking.

If it's a sugar-sweetened sports drink, then for the purposes of this approach, it belongs in the same conversation.

The PayToCommit outline specifically includes sports drinks among the beverages to address in this section.

Again:

You don't have to make this complicated.

If you're thirsty, start with water.

Alcohol Mixers

And then we have alcohol mixers.

This can become a double issue in the way I personally approach a weight-loss challenge.

You've got the alcohol.

Then you've got the mixer.

And that mixer may be:

Regular soda.

Juice.

Syrup.

Sweetened cocktail mix.

Or something else loaded with sugar.

Your outline specifically includes alcohol mixers in this section, and elsewhere in the PayToCommit material I recommend eliminating alcohol entirely during the weight-loss challenge.

Why make your challenge harder than it needs to be?

You chose a goal.

You gave yourself a deadline.

You put something meaningful on the line.

Give yourself every reasonable advantage you can.

Liquid Calories Are Easy to Overlook

This is really the bigger lesson.

People can consume a lot through drinks without mentally treating those drinks like food.

That's why I think this is such a powerful place to start.

Your material describes liquid calories as one of the easiest places to make a major change because people can consume a lot without thinking about it as food.

Think about how different it feels to sit down and eat several things versus simply carrying a drink around for an hour.

You sip it.

Then sip it again.

Then refill it.

And you may barely think about what you've consumed.

So I want you becoming conscious of that.

Stop Giving Drinks a Health Halo

Don't tell yourself:

“It's okay because it's juice.”

“It's okay because it's a smoothie.”

“It's okay because it's a sports drink.”

“It's okay because it's coffee.”

“It's okay because it's tea.”

Ask the better question:

“What is actually in this drink?”

Is there sugar?

Is there syrup?

Is it fruit juice?

Is it sweetened?

Is it something you're drinking because you're thirsty, or are you basically drinking another snack?

That's the mindset I want you developing.

What Should You Drink Instead?

For the way I personally approach the Zapp the Fat Diet, I keep drinks extremely simple.

Water is the foundation.

Elsewhere in the material, my strict version of the diet is described as being largely meat, salt, and water.

That's how simple this can be.

You don't need to walk through the supermarket looking for:

A keto drink.

A diet drink.

A special fat-burning drink.

A cleansing drink.

A meal-replacement drink.

A weight-loss drink.

Sometimes the simplest answer is:

Drink water.

Make Your Environment Work for You

This connects directly to what we talked about in the ultra-processed-food chapter.

If your refrigerator is filled with soda, sweet tea, energy drinks, juice, sports drinks, and other sweetened beverages, every time you open the refrigerator you're making another decision.

“Should I have one?”

Why keep forcing yourself to make that decision?

Your PayToCommit material tells you to make your environment work for you instead of against you by removing the foods and drinks that repeatedly take you away from your goal.

So when you're cleaning out your kitchen, don't stop at the pantry.

Open the refrigerator too.

Look at what you're drinking.

Start Here if Everything Else Feels Overwhelming

Maybe you're reading this guide and thinking:

“There are so many things I need to change.”

Okay.

Start here.

Don't change 50 things today.

Do this:

Stop drinking regular soda.

Then:

Stop drinking sweet tea.

Then:

Stop drinking sugar-sweetened energy drinks and coffee.

Then:

Stop drinking juice and smoothies.

Then:

Stop drinking sports drinks and sugary mixers.

Do it incrementally if you need to.

But keep moving toward the goal.

As I've said throughout this guide:

Don't use “I can't do everything today” as an excuse to do nothing today.

The Rule I Want You to Remember

If you forget everything else in this section, remember this:

Don't Drink Your Calories.

Soda?

Don't drink it.

Sweet tea?

Don't drink it.

Sugar-sweetened energy drinks?

Don't drink them.

Sweetened coffee?

Remove the sugar.

Fruit juice?

Don't drink it.

Smoothies?

Don't drink your fruit.

Sugar-sweetened sports drinks?

Don't drink them.

Alcohol mixers?

Don't drink your sugar there either.

When you're trying to reduce your sugar and carbohydrate intake, what you drink is one of the simplest places to start.

Don't make losing weight harder than it needs to be.

Make the simple change.

Stay consistent.

Honor the commitment you made.

Simple = Success. Commitment = Accountability. Accountability = Results.

PayToCommit — Where You Put Money on the Line to Lose Weight by a Deadline.