Sugar Sweetened Beverages as a Tool

Hi, quick stats. 31 year old male, 6’, 190lbs, 35.5” waist, eat a generally pretty healthy diet, doing the low fatigue strength template with extra cardio on the side, also work a pretty strenuous job (~20,000 steps/day plus plenty of heavy lifting), and all general blood work markers are in line. In the past I have always struggled to eat enough, and even eating till I feel kinda sick still doesn’t stop the weight loss at points, and I am ultimately trying to slowly gain weight. Over the last while I have started utilizing sugar sweetened beverages (ie. good host iced tea, around 300-400cal worth) to help with controlling my weight without eating to point of feeling gross. I’m still eating till I feel pretty full every time, but these beverages, due to their non satiating nature, are useful to hit a higher calorie target and reduce the weight loss when needed, and slowly create controlled weight gain when needed.

Long story short, in someone where these liquid calories are used as a tool to actually control weight loss and gain within healthy parameters where just eating that much healthy food is too difficult, are there any health detriments?

Thanks

Howdy! Welcome back to the forum :slight_smile:

I don’t think sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) are universally bad, though they do tend to cause most folks to consume too many Calories. If people were able to consume SSB and compensate, I don’t think there are likely to be any negative health effects.

-Jordan

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