Help- healthy drinks to replace tea and coffee

[maggie123]

Hello all, I seem to be stuck on a good choice of healthy drinks, fed up with tea and coffee, water is just boring, went to my local super market and stood still in took a look at a huge amount of drink and got lost in the prosses, the choice was difficult, diet drinks flavour drinks, all sorts. Oh and I don't want my teeth to fall out ha ha ha with the sugary drinks. Can anyone out there help any ideas for a replacment for my tea and coffee.

[bunblebeaz]

To be honest water is the best thing for you.

Try flavouring your water yourself, by squeezing some lemon juice into it.

Fruit juice drinks and squash are usually the next best thing calorie wise - just check for the no sugar or no added sugar option.

I usually have fruit juice/juice drink with breakfast and plain water for the rest of the day.

Asda have a no added sugar cranberry juice drink that is only 20cals per 250ml.

The Aldi cran juice is also pretty good calorie wise but you may find it quite tangy.

Apple juice and grapefruit juice are the ones that I have found to have the next least calories.

For hot drinks try a hot vimto or green tea.

[Hidden]

Hi maggie123,

I'd rather concur with bundlebeaz. Water is the biggie, and green (or white) tea has lots of antioxidants and allegedly aids fat burn - though I'm not all that certain about the science on that one.

Actually, (ordinarly) tea and coffee - obviously not if swimming in full fat milk or cream - are quite good for the weight loss. You can also go for the de-caf ones, if that's the problem.

Be careful about fruit juices though. If you eat or drink sweet things you can cause a spike in your blood sugar which encourages your body to go into fat storage mode. Fruit juices are usually o.k. because you generally drink them with food, so the sugar is mixed in with the other stuff. That's the way it is with fruit, too - the juice is mixed in with the flesh and fibre of the fruit,

If you drink, especially sweetened, fruit juices, then that can be a problem for your weight loss efforts.

And that is also one of the problems with the sweet and fizzy drinks (although the manufacturers will tell you they ONLY contain 180 Kcal a bottle or whatever). Additionally, there's no other nutrition in them - it's 'empty' calories. Which to me seems like a total waste of 180 Kcals off of anyone's daily intake.

But if you think of us as modern people in cave dwellers bodies (which is a fair description actually) then mostly our ancestors would have drunk water.

[TheEditor]

Have you tried mixing sparkling mineral water (or soda) with fresh fruit juice?

[Hidden]

Fruit and herbal teas? Sweeten to taste with artificial sweetener. I prefer the berry ones to the herbal ones.

[Technochoc]

Licorice Tea, its awesome, i drink the twinnings or the yogi teas

[maggie123]

Thank you all guys, great mix of idea's, I like the one with, Have you tried mixing sparkling mineral water (or soda) with fresh fruit juice? NO but I'm going to try lol sounds nice.

Doikosp, you went over my head with the science stuff lol.

I shall try them all, but not green tea oops I don't like green tea lol. I'm sure I will like one or two you have told me about. Good news I had to go for doctors check up today lost 5 lb's already, I'm having 3 good square meals a day, with snacks in between, no food after 8 pm and only really started diet few days ago. I think a lot of it is due to me cutting out my tea and coffee, had the kettle on all day, I must have drunk about roughly 15 to 20 cups per day maybe more. I can't stand the taste of sweeteners, so I'm having 1 cup of tea in the morning with 1 sugar and so far I've drank water all day since starting diet, but it's getting boring.

Oh while I think of it, how many times a week can I eat fish like Mackerel, just found out I love it, my husband is going fishing and said they are going to be on menu in a couple of weeks. He's just waiting for the weather to warm up a bit by few degree's, omg I'm going to have a freezer load of Mackerel I can see it now Ha ha ha ha

Maggie

[notsobigmama in reply to maggie123]

maggie123,

Have you tried flavoured green tea? If you go to Holland and Barrett, they have some made by the London Tea Company (usually on special offer).

My hubby decided I should start drinking green tea for the cancer fighting properties. I cannot stand the plain stuff, but found that the orange flavour and blackcurrant flavoured ones of the above make are actually rather nice. Another one to try is Clipper lemon green tea. All the above are also available from Amazon.

Apparently, green tea also speeds up the metabolism, but I haven't seen this reflected in my weight loss since starting to drink it. Must just be wishful thinking!

[OlsBean]

I used to hate green tea, I just could not drink it even though I was desperate to for the health benefits. I just found it too bitter and could only manage half a cup at a time, then my wife bought me TeaPigs Mao Feng Green Tea for Father's day last year and I loved it, it's a totally different drink, not bitter or sharp and very easy to drink. They do sample packs if you want to try first without paying for a big pack.

As for weight loss, I've had the opposite experience, I was stuck for 2 months at a weight plateau and on starting to drink Green Tea I started to lose again. It might be just a coincidence but who knows. I've also used something called Matcha Green Tea Powder which is basically concentrated Green Tea Powder, it traditionally drunk in Japan with Milk, in fact the Japanese rave about it properties, they even have Matcha coated Kit Kat's over there!. Over here people tend make Lattes or mix it with fruit juice, but you can also bake/cook with it, I quite often add it to my ReadBrek as I've not really ever fancied drinking it, anyway sorry for going a little off topic but I thought it was worth a mention.