 Soda is number one on the list to stay away from, yes, even diet soda. Now, if you think diet soda is better than regular soda, you're wrong. All of these ingredients in diet soda. Now we know kill off friendly bacteria in our gut dramatically. Yes, I'm talking about things like aspartame, sucralose, which is called Splenda. Even now, the zero sodas have esculfane, which is now recognized as just as evil as aspartame and sucralose. So there's no way out of this problem. Now, diet soda fools your brain. Your tongue has no sugar receptors. It has sweetness receptors. Now, back in the day, the only time you encountered sweetness was when you were eating fruit or happened upon honey. That sugar would go into your bloodstream. It would prompt your pancreas to make insulin and that would handle the sugar. Your brain would get sugar and it would say, oh, that that's sugar. So when you have a artificial soft drink, a diet soft drink, the signal is sent to your brain and your pancreas that you're having sugar because you tasted something sweet. Your pancreas kicks up insulin, which is a fat storage hormone. But worse, your brain doesn't get any sugar and your brain says, wait a minute, you've been robbed. You've been cheated. I tasted sugar. They lied to you, go back and get some more and keep getting it until sugar arrives in my brain. That's why when I was at my peak weight, I was drinking eight diet cokes a day and wondering why I was a big fat guy because I was constantly hungry because my brain was constantly telling me, what the heck are you doing? Go find some sugar, you idiot. Well, that's why it's so dangerous. And we didn't even know back then how bad it was on your microbiome. Now, what are you going to do instead? Well, try one of my fake diet cokes. You know, all you need is San Pellegrino and balsamic vinegar. Try to get the thick balsamic vinegar. It really tastes great. It's absolutely delicious. Amaze your friends at a restaurant. You can even customize it by adding some lemon. Or if it's still too bitter for you, just add a little alulose, which is a true sugar that has no calories that actually feeds friendly bacteria. So it's a win, win, win. So if that vinegar taste or apple cider vinegar and sparkling water is just a little too tart for you, add some alulose. All right, number two on the list to avoid sports drinks. Now, there are some very popular sports drinks out there that you might think are good for you. So next time you see one, I want you to check out the label. These drinks are usually loaded with sugar. And the scary part is that that sugar can be hidden by multiple names. Sucrose, dextrose, fructose, evaporated organic cane syrup. Cane syrup is sugar, folks. And when you evaporate it, that's table sugar. Corn syrup, corn syrup solids, high fructose corn syrup. These are all ways of putting multiple sugars in hiding them throughout the label so that you think that one individual sugar isn't that high, but it's cumulative. Many of these sports drinks have artificial colors and dyes that make them look more appealing. Look out for red number 40 and yellow number six. If you see them on the label, run. Again, even if it's a diet drink, diet sports drink, where it says zero calories or zero sugar, look at the label. If you see a spartame, sucralose or eschelion, run. Now, usually the sports drinks and the energy drinks are right next to each other and they're designed to give you a buzz. Usually they have an incredibly good dose of caffeine. The caffeine may be hidden in other ways other than cola or caffeine. You may see Gorana, you may see other buzzy words, but they're usually wrecking your health. Manufacturers aren't required to show how much caffeine is in their beverages, so they will hide it. Some are very proud of the amount of caffeine, but other ones just hide it under these fruit names or names of cola berries. They can be really dangerous for your heart health. They can cause high blood pressure. So the no calorie energy drinks, that sounds like a winner. They're loaded with these artificial sweeteners. So you're getting a double whammy again. I'm all for sports drinks and electrolyte drinks, but use my favorite. My wife is addicted to it. She's a great athlete. It's a powder called element. Now, element is L, M, and T. There are no additives. There's no artificial sweeteners or flavors, but it still gives you all the properly proportioned electrolytes that you're looking for. And they even have like eight different flavors. There's even a watermelon. I kind of like the salty chocolate myself. Number four worst thing to pick up are fruit smoothies. I've said it before, I'll say it again, give fruit the boot. Fruit is full of sugar and it makes you gain weight. Now it's one thing to eat a whole fruit, but when you throw a piece of fruit or lots of fruit in a fruit smoothie and then whip it up, those sugar molecules, which were bound to fiber are now freed up. So you get a main line of fructose. And remember that many fruits sold at big box stores are sprayed with chemicals like Roundup, like herbicides that you probably absolutely don't want to consume. Be careful of the fruits in fruit smoothies that are sold at these shops. You really don't know where that fruit came from. Are there alternatives? Sure, make a green drink from the plant paradox. Easy to do. If you really want to get those little portable smoothie makers, just throw in a handful of lettuce, a half an avocado, some lemon juice, maybe a handful of spinach leaves, some ice cubes, and you're good to go. Just stay away from these fruit smoothies. Number five, cranberry juice. First of all, cranberries or fruits. Fruit juices are a silly trend that should be stopped. They're full of sugar and they're not healthy for you. I get a kick out of seeing no sugar added cranberry juice or no sugar added orange juice or no sugar added apple juice. If you see the words no sugar added, what that really means to you is there's so much sugar in here already, we didn't have to put anymore in. That's what no sugar added means. Now, it's a common misconception, particularly among women, that cranberry juice is healthy for you, especially for preventing urinary tract infections. Now, the problem is that there is a really good chemical in cranberry juice called D-manos. D-manos is actually very effective. But there isn't enough D-manos in cranberry juice to make that much difference. You can use cranberry extracts or get D-manos capsules and you'll be far better off. And unfortunately, low sugar cranberry juices now get their sweetness from artificial sweeteners. So you're back to square one. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't stay away from juices. Let me give you one example. That's a real fun one. Ocean spray makes a cranberry juice and it says no sugar or sweetener added. There are 31 grams of sugar in an eight ounce glass of ocean spray cranberry juice. That's seven and a half teaspoons of pure sugar per glass. Coffee with milk or sweeteners. Coffee is fantastic. It's a great source of polyphenols. But if you put milk or other binders in it, you will bind those polyphenols so you won't get any benefits. You're only going to get benefits of polyphenols by drinking black coffee and putting all those other wonderful things to make coffee delicious like in a frappuccino. That is just a giant sugar bomb that has no health benefit whatsoever. Alternatives, hey, learn to drink coffee black. I had to learn how to do it. My parents drank it black or add alulose if you want a sweeter coffee. I finally weaned my wife off from adding almond milk to her coffee by sneaking every day a little bit of alulose into her coffee. And after about a week, she says, man, this new coffee is fantastic. I don't need any almond milk in it. What are you doing? And I said, I'm putting alulose in it. She's, all right, you know, you've convinced me, let's go for it. Worse comes to worse, add unsweetened coconut milk and just make sure you're looking for unsweetened. Number seven, the hip drink coconut water. Now, this is probably the most popular part of the coconut, but please steer clear of it. It's loaded with sugar. And that's even before manufacturers add more sugar and artificial sweeteners to make it taste better. The alternative, come on, stick to regular water or eat the other parts of the coconut. Coconut meat is actually great for you. And if you've got leftover coconut water, put it in your hair. It's great for hair strength and health. Number eight, vodka. Why vodka has absolutely zero benefits besides the buzz. It has absolutely no polyphenols in it. Now, why is that important? Well, most spirits are merely a way of getting polyphenols into you. So for instance, anything that's aged in wood extracts wood polyphenols. I'm blaming wood polyphenols are really important. There's a polyphenol supplement that I love called Pichnogenol French maritime tree bark. These spirits soak these polyphenols out of the wood. So if you're going to have tequila, get the dark stuff. If you're going to have rum, get the dark stuff, bourbon, scotch, that's extracting polyphenols. Even gin has juniper berries and other herbs that are part of that. But vodka, there is absolutely no benefit. Stay away from them. Red wine is aged in wood. Some white wines like some Chardonnays are aged in wood, but most of the white wines are not aged in wood. The other thing that's a problem with our American system of drinks before dinner, particularly cocktails, is we don't realize that our cells will actually preferably use alcohol for energy production. A lot of times what happens at cocktail hour is you drink vodka, for example, and then you go and eat. So what happens is that you've already met your energy requirements with that vodka. And so now all the carbs, all the proteins and all the fats that you're going to eat at dinner arrive and your cells are full. So what does your body do? It deposits them as fat. Believe me, true Skid Row alcoholics are incredibly skinny. That's quite frankly, they don't eat very much. But people who use alcohol and notice their weights going up, it's because the alcohol is being used first and then you're going to store all the rest of the things you eat as fat automatically because your cells have no more room. Finally, most of us realize that alcohol releases our inhibitions in lots of ways. I don't have to tell you in lots of those ways, but one of the inhibitions it releases is food tastes better. You want more food and you say, oh, what the heck? I normally don't have dessert, but just tonight I'll make an exception. So alcohol in general, buyer beware, act like a European. And if you're going to drink, drink wine during the meal so you don't run into that problem. More amazing episodes just like this one. Watch now. Studies show that three 10 minute sessions of exercise scattered throughout the day offers at least the same and perhaps even more benefit as 30 minutes of continuous exercise.