Sugar-Free Beverages Worth The Money

i gave up sugar in March. *MOST* sugar. i consume very little. my idea now of a hot time on the town is putting a little bit of maple syrup in my oatmeal. its local syrup. probably good for me somehow.

anywhoo, i gained a lot of weight over the last winter and i knew something had to change. i was up to 260 and it scared me because i knew if i didn't do something it would just keep going up and i wasn't feeling too hot.

so, i gave up sugar and since March i have lost 50 pounds. i'm down to 210. my feet got smaller!

i gave up booze last summer. i gave up smoking 5 years ago. i figured i needed another way to make myself miserable.

i've embraced diet coke for the first time in my life. i also enjoy fresca.

mostly, i will make big drinks of plain iced tea (the store-bought kind) and sugar-free ginger ale and a slice of lemon.

that's my big night on the town. whooooooo...*someone shoot me*.....kidding.

i limit my fake sugar intake too. so, not too many diet cokes. i don't buy it by the case.
i realize that most fake sweeteners - even stevia and monkfruit - are supposed to be no good for you but whatever.

any good drinks you buy or make that don't have the demon cane in them? i really need to go to lala land aka Whole Foods.
if i'm not gonna drink and smoke or eat entire birthday cakes i gotta have some fun.

(i say *worth the money* cuz some of those tiny hibiscus and watermelon seltzers on the shelves at supermarkets are like 5 bucks now! i mean come on. its mostly water.)

(sometimes i look at an appetizing and natural-looking smoothie drink at the supermarket and it will have like 60 grams of sugar in it! i generally don't buy anything with more than 6gm per serving now.)

Not trying to be a smartass, but water is pretty great...

Also mugicha! It's barley tea, super refreshing cold in the summer...

mugicha! that's a new one to me.

i like water! i probably don't drink enough...

i am constantly trying to remember to give my father a glass of water. he only drinks juice and soda. he's a bad influence.

he moved in with me last year.

he also eats a ton of sugar. but he's 88 so he can do whatever he wants. i feed him salad and real food.

I like grapefruit soda but I have to lay off the sugar. I found Squirt Zero at Kroger one day, got a 12pack, loved it, and it hasn't been back in the store since.

Why not mix a little grapefruit juice with seltzer. There can’t be that much sugar in a splash of juice.

Actual grapefruit juice conflicts with some of my meds. Grapefruit sodas generally have a tiny amount of juice, less than 2%, acceptable risk.

yeah, i will do the juice splash sometimes. in my ginger ale or seltzer. i'm not a fanatic about zero sugar.

the one thing about no sugar is that i overcompensate with wheat. snacking on chips, etc.

so, that's not great. but i feel waaaay better and have a lot more energy now.

last october i got a stationary bike and ever since i have tried to do at least 5 miles a day.

its the first time EVER that i have done any kind of sustained exercise. better late than never.

i was a little too busy drinking to exercise for most of my adult life. at least when i lived in a city i would walk for miles.

there's a sparkling water drink called Spindrift which you might like. it's basically sparkling water with some juice in it. I think each can is like 10 calories and maybe 2-3g of sugar. it's also pretty good for cocktails I find

Coke Zero tastes 100x better to me than Diet Coke.

I also drink a lot of unsweetened iced tea — Pure Leaf is my first choice, Gold Peak my backup.

I love really, really cold seltzer, too. No flavor, just clear bubbly seltzer.

i drink a white monster ultra with a whole grapefruit scraped out in it every day at lunch. its really a great treat i look forward to. the monster sugar free drinks are half the caffeine as most of the others so they dont give me the jitters. i only like the white one and the pink one (rosa).

i am absolutely addicted to diet major melon mountain dew

that stuff is crack

so, i gave up sugar and since March i have lost 50 pounds. i'm down to 210. my feet got smaller!

i gave up booze last summer. i gave up smoking 5 years ago. i figured i needed another way to make myself miserable.

i've embraced diet coke for the first time in my life. i also enjoy fresca.

that's my big night on the town. whooooooo...*someone shoot me*.....kidding.

i did this several years ago, only vegan and i also gave up wheat. funnnnnn. in my early-mid 20's i was a "junk food vegan" and would go to bed every nite with an economy size bag of swedish fish and a 2L cherry coke at my bedside. i was super skinny but also smoked a pack of marlboros every day. sorry, rambling.

the orange vanilla flavor Polar seltzer is seriously amazing, tastes like a creamsicle i swear.

rosewater in my earl grey is how i like to party these days.

https://www.alwadi.com/ContentFiles/312Image1.jpg

Al Wadi brand or bust, seriously.

Unsweetened ice tea is wonderful. Never cared for it much before living in Vietnam, but it's available everywhere there and I got pretty hooked

second the mujicha. a good asian grocery (one that caters more towards japanese/koreans) should have this:

https://shibuyamart.com/762-large_default/house-foods-barley-tea-16pk.jpg

these sanzo sparkling waters are pretty damn good. I’ve only had the yuzu/ginger and the calamansi.

https://drinksanzo.com/products/calamansi-12-pack

hey these are good tips thanks! i take my fun where i can get it. also i get very thirsty.

i’ve had to go no sugar for diabetes reasons

sparkling waters & selters are my thing mainlly

search: limoncello lacroix (the only flavor that’s actually nice! tastes like vanilla) polar selzers, i like most flavors esp pink apple & lemon, cherry lime is ok; cocacola makes a sparkling water called A-Ha (lol) that shows up a lot in my outlet store and those flavors are nice,

destroy - all the other lacroix flavors, they all taste like scented candles & floor cleaner

i drink like 6 cans of Zevia black cherry a day. It's sweetened with stevia which I gather is safer than other non-sugar sweeteners (I'm sure someone will pop in to tell me it caused cancer in otters or something).

Not sugar-free but lower sugar: when avoiding alcohol, I like to steep some fresh ginger in hot water, ice it, then add a little simple syrup and lime juice. It's delicious.

honestly scott it seems like you’ve got it figured out! down 50lbs is impressive. I drink more diet coke than I’d willingly share, but I think it’s basically a godsend if you’re trying to lose weight or keep it off. I’d keep that up if you like it, it’s cheaper than most of the other seltzers and I wouldn’t worry too much about the artificial sweetener scares, I haven’t looked too deep into it but it seems like woo stuff to me

well, considering i used to smoke a pack of cigarettes every day, a little aspartame doesn't scare me too much. if i was guzzling the stuff night and day it would be another thing. i drink a LOT of unsweetened iced tea. it has kind of replaced coffee and hot tea for me during the day. i have a cup of coffee or tea in the morning and that's usually it.

Don't know how widely it is available, but Milo's Zero Calorie Sweet Tea is some good stuff. It uses Splenda as the sweetener.

I quit drinking and started pounding plain soda water with lime. I go through a LOT of limes. I should probably get a carbonation machine to save money. It has just enough bite to feel like it’s a Drink but it’s just water and lime so it’s healthy. I even got an overpriced Yeti sippy cup that keeps it super cold.

Favorite flavor by brand. Tons I haven't tried, too many options, but I usually focus on these.

LaCroix

• Pamplemousse
• LimonCello
• Key Lime
• Tangerine

• Grapefruit
• Lime

• Ruby Red Grapfruit
• Orange Vanilla

• Raspberry Lime

• Grape

Usually whatever their grapefruit flavor is my litmus test for a brand.

The best manufactured drink I had recently was grapefruit / matcha, which I see now clocks at 7% sugar (it's German). I don't drink sodas, lemonades or flavored water, occasional exception is for herbal iced teas which are usually in the 4-5g/100ml range (ginger, mint, herbs). I don't touch anything that says diet or zero because nature.

You can take my Topo Chico from my cold dead hands. I don't really like any other fizzy water I've tried, the bubbles are too small or something.

Aside from Topo and plain water it's Red Zinger iced tea and canned Kirkland coffee for me.

topo chico is really good. they still don't have market saturation here. they have it at like the rite aid and one supermarket out of the three in town but i forget which one.

i like bubly but i think they are the brand where one of their waters is sneakily caffeinated and sometimes i forget and i'm drinking caffeine at 10 at night but thats just how i party now i guess.

topo chico IS different from other mineral waters too. its sweeter or something.

bubly tastes like fountain soda carbonated water to me, not a fan

i know this thread is for sugar-free drinks, but i'd just like to say gt's kombuchas taste much sweeter than they actually are. like a 16 oz bottle contains like 17 grams of sugar and tastes almost as sweet to me as a 12 oz can of coke that has like 40g of sugar. black magic, i think, or maybe the sweat from worker rights violations.

Tango Dark Berry and Paradise Punch. Both taste very sugary despite having no sugar.

I accidentally bought “margarita” flavored sparkling water instead of lime recently, it was very strange and not good.

my favorite la croix is the hibiscus berry

i drink a ton of polar seltzer. cranberry lime, raspberry lime, orange vanilla, grapefruit are the go-to flavors imo but any of the dozens of other 'a fruit + a citrus' combos they do are fine

polar is so cheap too. i think they are 30 cents a liter. okay maybe not but the most bubbly water for your money goes to polar.

polar is local to me too. springfield, ma.

i miss drinking their birch beer. birch beer is one of my most favorite things on earth. maybe they have a sugar-free one. i would go for it. just for the old time memories. of, uh, last year.

i just had my dad get me a diet coke. path of least resistance. he doesn't really know how to look for things over at the bong store next door. that bong store is getting shiftier and shiftier. they have stopped stocking their shelves but you can still buy lots of fake weed and kratom. they also sell these nitrous tanks that must weigh a hundred pounds. they are small but very heavy. sugar-free though!

they do make a diet birch beer, it's in the supermarkets here, 1 liter bottles only. i have it occasionally.

yeah now that i think of it i have mistakenly picked up the sugar-free birch beer in the past. and their cranberry drink which i enjoy a lot. well, when i'm in the mood for a lot of sucralose or whatever that might be my go-to.

sugar-free ginger ale and unsweetened tea with a huge piece of lemon in a bell jar with ice. that is my life on the verge of 55. 55! holy shit, that's the first time i've typed that. so scary. i guess i'll never really feel like an adult to myself.

yeah ultimately unsweetened iced tea or seltzer with actual fresh lemon/lime squeezed in it is the most sound option, diet soda is still junk food mentality and pre-flavored seltzers are harmless novelty but not as good as the fresh stuff