7-Eleven Double Gulp Soda
600 calories
I drank sixty-four ounces of soda on a cross-country road trip once, and it was a bad scene. My stomach didn’t feel quite right for at least a day, and my friend, who also imbibed, was so hopped up on caffeine she started giving lip to the Texas highway patrol who pulled her over for doing ninety in a fifty zone. I think there’s still a warrant out for her arrest.Soda isn’t that bad every once in a while; unfortunately, it’s hard to find anything smaller than a 16-ouncer and really easy to get things much larger. Cans of soda seem to be obsolete. The Food and Drug Administration’s official serving size is 8 ounces (100 calories), not eight times that amount. Bigger isn’t better.
A better bet: Can of soda (150 calories) or a diet soda.
Bottled Juice
300–400 calories for 20 ounces
True, juice isn’t inherently bad for you, and can sometimes provide vitamins and nutrients. However, you’d be much better off eating the fruit from which it came rather than drinking mostly empty calories. Many store-bought juices have added sugars, and most come in a 2.5 serving or larger container, making that breakfast accompaniment as many calories as the meal itself. A better bet: Stick to 8-ounce containers or kid’s containers; look for 100 percent juices; juice your own.
Pina Colada:
644 calories (approximately)
If you really like Pina Coladas, you may not only get caught in the rain, but in the fat farm. At around seven hundred calories, this drink, made with rum, coconut milk, and pineapples has more calories than a Big Mac. Other calorically heavy-hitting cocktails are Long Island Iced Teas, Margaritas, and White Russians. Damn, I love those.A better bet: Vodka and soda with lime; glass of red wine; a beer
While it’s hard to think about drinks as anything but additions to a meal, the sizes and sugar-laden drinks we’re faced with today make them more like an entire meal. Unfortunately, rarely are they as satisfying or as filling. So when I find myself having more pints of beer than slices of pizza, I get rid of them the only way I know how: by drinking water while I exercise.
Updated July 20, 2009
