The whole idea of the ketogenic or keto diet is to eat and drink fat so your body burns fat as its primary fuel. Currently, your body is burning sugar in your bloodstream for its energy requirements. You get this sugar by loading up on food that is rich in carbohydrates (carbs).
Keto Compliance
Soda is one of the most popular drinks in the world. If you drink soda, you don’t feel full and you tend to consume more total calories. For many, soda is a key factor to reach keto compliance.
Keto compliance is a fancy term for saying that you should eat and drink fatty and protein items with minimum carbs.
Of course, there are a lot of high carbs products, such as potatoes, pasta, enriched flour like white bread, and grains like rice or heavily processed corn. All these starchy foods pump a tremendous amount of carbohydrates in your system. But sugary drinks are by far the worst.
Soda Is Bad For Your health
Accumulating evidences indicate the negative health effects of drinking soda on your heath, such as teeth decay, weight gain, type 2 diabetes, and much more.
- Soda contains phosphoric acid and carbonic acid which create a highly acidic environment in your mouth and make your teeth vulnerable to decay.
- When you consume liquid sugar, you usually add it on top of your total calorie intake and it don’t make you feel full, which leads to weight gain and increases belly fat accumulation
- Excess intake of sugary soda leads to insulin resistance, driving for metabolic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and heart diseases.
- Long term and large amounts of sugar intakes contribute to fatty liver disease.
- Sugary soda provides only sugar and unnecessary calories and contains virtually no other essential nutrients.
- Leptin is a hormone produced by human body’s fat cells. Sugar causes leptin resistance, one leading factor for fat gain.
- Soda has effects on human brain’s reward system, leading to addiction.
- Cancers are associated with other chronic diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart diseases. Soda increases the risk of suffering from cancer.
- Long term soda consumption increases uric acid level and contributes to the increased risk of Gout.
- Increase in blood sugar is associated with an increased risk of dementia.
Keto Diets
Insulin is the hormone your body uses to open up its cells to fuel that uses for energy. Your body needs energy for you to stay alive. Simply pumping blood, blinking, breathing, walking, going around, and more require energy. Currently, your body uses sugar in your blood for energy.
When you adopt the keto diet, you switch over from burning sugar to burning fat. This is a big deal, because when your body burns sugar due to insulin, you’re not burning fat. This is an either-or proposition. Either your body is burning sugar, or it isn’t.
When you’re not burning sugar, all that fat remains in your body’s fat cells. That nasty spare tire that you have been lugging around for many years will remain there. It’s not going anywhere if you use sugar as your primary energy source.
This is why people are all excited about the keto diet. When you eat fat and less sugar or carbs, your body begins to burn fat for fuel. It starts off with the fat that you eat, but that is not enough. It then starts to burn your stored fat. Insulin is not in the picture, so that hormone is not blocking your fat cells from releasing their contents.
Your body starts to burn fat, and you get slimmer, lighter, and better looking. What’s not to love? Here’s the good news.
If you stop drinking soda, you are well on your way to keto compliance
Did you know that the average can of soda has more than 10 teaspoons of sugar in it? We are talking about gram upon gram upon gram of sugar. As I have mentioned above, whenever you have sugar in your system, your body will produce insulin.
Insulin puts a stop to any kind of fat burning going on in your body. Kiss it good-bye, forget about it. This is why it is really important to cut down on sugar regardless of its form. The good news is you take one giant step to making that happen by simply cutting out soda or any fizzy sugared drink currently in your diet.
Soda Alternatives
It’s not as hard as you think. Believe it or not, people can reacquire their taste for water sooner rather than later. There are other alternatives. Some of the drink can be easily made at comfort of your home. For your convenience, I also list the links for you in case you would like to shop online. Here is a list of healthier alternatives to drink when you are craving for a soda. They contain no sugar or very low amount of sugar.
1. Bai Lemonade Antioxidant Infused Variety Pack, deliver delicious, fruity refreshment without unwanted sugar and calories.
2. Detoxwater Mangaloe (Mango), prebiotic aloe vera water enhanced with vitamins and electrolytes.
3. Amazon Brand – Solimo Coconut water, pure coconut water
4. Hint Sparkling Water, has zero: sugars, stevia, artificial sweeteners, preservatives, calories, artificial flavors, and GMOs; natural, HEPA compliant, and made in the USA; nature’s original refreshment.
5. Home-made Iced coffee
6. Home-made Iced tea
7. Home-made smoothie
8. La Croix Sparkling Water, lemon sparkling water.
9. Kombucha Green Tea, raw and organic, all natural.
10. Perrier Sparkling Mineral Water, zero calories and zero sweeteners.
11. Polar Seltzer, does not contain sugar, artificial sweeteners, MSG, gluten, sodium or animal products.
12. RUNA ZERO Organic Clean Energy Drink, with clean, organic ingredients – not packed with synthetic ingredients and sugar like traditional energy drinks, single-source of natural caffeine comes from Guayusa, an Amazonian jungle super leaf.
13. S. Pellegrino Sparkling Natural Mineral Water, sparkling water imported from Italy.
14. Sparkling Ice, zero sugar and zero calories.
15. Spindrift Sparkling Water, lime flavored sparkling water, no added sugar, gluten-free.
16. Tickle Natural Sparkling Water, preservative-free, gluten-free, gmo-free, sodium-free, sugar-free, calorie-free.
17. Zevia Zero Calorie Soda, zero calories, zero sugar and no artificial sweeteners.
There’s unlimited choice you have. Select the one you enjoy and that is good to your body. You can replace soda with any of the above drinks and gradually cut out soda. You are well on your way to keto compliance.
You won’t jump there magically. It’s not like cutting out soda pop will dramatically and magically transport you to keto land, but it’s deftly a giant step forward. Do yourself a big favor. Create a blueprint that will help you to stop drinking soda.
The blueprint guides you through the necessary preparations that you need to make so your keto journey delivers the outcomes that you are looking for.
I have heard so much about the Keto diet. I know so many people that are trying it. Your explanation of how keto’s focus is to too burn fat. So without the sugar intake it’s hard to do. I used to drink so much pop and for the past 5 years or so I have given it up. It was a hard thing to do, but worth it. Your post is so relevant and I really was interested in this topic. I learnt a lot from this post. Great job.
Congratulation on your quit on soda. It is a very difficult habit to give up, since people addict to it. I still drink soda occasionally due to my missing the taste of it. I am still in the process of find the soda replacement. So far green tea is my favorite one to replace soda and I like the special taste of the green tea when I crave for soda.
I have always wondered about the Keto diet and now I have a much better understanding of what is going on with sugar and fat in your body. It totally makes sence to starve the body of sugar so that energy is burning up fat and stored fat as well. Thank you for this article, I have learned an awful lot. I will take the information on board and be more mindful of what I am filling my body with.
It is so nice to hear that this article helps you understand the Keto diet. With the knowledge, you have the power to lead a healthier life!
You have some nice options to soda. Some I didn’t even know about. I have a question though. How long can a person be on the keto diet? I’ve been looking into it a little bit and just starting to learn. I’m wondering if this is a long term lifestyle diet or just for the short term. Also, is it safe for diabetics? (I’m not diabetic but I know people who are.). Thanks for the info..
Keot diet is life style change. The best is that you need to prepare it for as long as possible since this is the process you teach your body to use fat as the major source of energy. It take a while for your body to get uses to this, If you get used to it, you would be better to maintain the status.
Keto diet is safe for diabetes, since it reduce the carbs to minimum level. It is possible that keto diet could cure diabetes.
One of the big selling points for me of the Keto Diet is that it helps you avoid a lot of the sugars that are found in many of the foods and drinks that are commonly consumed and gets your body used to burn the fats as opposed to using insulin to process and use the sugars.
Sodas are one of the biggest sources of sugars in many people’s diet and I see so many that consume 3 to 4 cans of soda a day to their detriment when it comes to health and just taking in useless calories. This has been a big contributor to the increases in cases of diabetes and this is happening in many parts of the world.
I totally agree with you that seeking out and making a habit of drinking alternatives to sodas is a huge move that people can make to improve their overall health. It may not be easy for some, but I am lucky in that regard because I never was a fan of the sodas in the first place.
Your suggested alternatives to sodas were nonetheless interesting and useful for me, as I tend to not drink enough water. Especially in a hot environment like Dubai, where I am currently, not taking in enough water can have really detrimental effects like kidney stones and worse, finding drinks that are not soda that taste good is a must. You have listed a bunch that I will try. Thanks!
Thanks for stopping by and your comments. It is so nice that you are not a soda fun, which saves you a lot of trouble.
You are right that most foods we have now are high in carbs, which leads to increased secretion of insulin for processing of the sugar. This is not clean fuel source.
Fat is cleaner and more powerful fuel for human body. Keto diet teaches human to use fat as the source of energy, leading to consuming fat and losing weight.
There are so many healthier alternative drinks to soda. Just take your time to find the best one meeting your taste. Water is important part of keto diet, which suggest that we need to drink 1 gallon water a day. This is huge amount and a lot of people have difficult to meet this standard. But try your best, drink as much as possible in your comfort level.
Carbonated drinks are popular, indeed, and have been made more popular by being sponsored at social gatherings like sports events and weddings. This post comes up with many solutions to avoid the consumption of liquid sugar which exacerbates the sugar levels in a person’s body enhancing the common and rampart diseases including diabetes 2, heart disease and various cancer diseases. It is high time people headed this timely warning and started consuming food or liquids recommended in this post. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. Thank you for sharing this informative and educative post.
Thanks for stopping by and your comments. The soda company has very powerful advertisement machines. The carbonated drinks are popular, which will take long time to educate the general population to understand the danger of it. I wish all of us could do something to educate one at a time. Soon or late we will have a better drink habit society.