One of my favorite fitness hacks is one of the simplest. Before I started my fitness craze I *loved* carbonated drinks and sweet tea. I drank a sweetened beverage for every meal and snack! In a given day I could easily drink 5 Mountain Dews (at 170 calories a pop) without even thinking about it. When I decided to get serious about losing weight, however, all those sodas were the very first things to go.
Initially, I switched from Mountain Dew to sweet tea, saving me 80 calories a serving. But after a few weeks, I decided to take it even further. I went from sweet tea (90 cal) to unsweet tea (0 cal) almost cold turkey. The withdrawals weren’t even that painful 
. I let my food become my calorie source instead of the sugary drinks.
I’m trying to get to a point where I can happily drink water with every meal, but currently this hasn’t happened yet. I’m too much of a caffeine junky to go all water right now, but it is in the future plans. Plus, when you are eating a meal out, it feels good to let yourself order a drink – even if it is unsweet tea. It feels like you aren’t depriving yourself of anything. Now, I genuinely enjoy the taste of the unsweet tea and the little caffeine it still provides.
All together, this simple change in my diet has saved my roughly 800 calories a day! I’m sure most of you aren’t nearly as bad as I was (seriously, how did I drink 5 a day???) but simply taking the liquid calories out of your diet is one of the easiest ways to notice a difference on the scales.
