I have a morning soda, instead of coffee. I have one with my food at lunch. Followed up with another soda to drink after lunch and throughout the afternoon. I then have another soda with dinner and since I am a night owl, to make things even worse, I’ll have a soda at about midnight. 

But…..that’s not all. Until resently these cokes have not been your run of the mill 12oz can’s. These are the super ultra macho double big gulp buckets varieties. Okay, well the ones up through the day are normally 24oz’s but the anything outside a normal working hours….well that was time to pull out the big guns.  If free refills were an option I’d take 4 (or 5).

As of late I have been drinking Coke’s from a can instead of buying them from a free refill fast food fountain. For two reasons primarily. (1) It’s way cheaper @ $.30/can versus $2.05 at Del Taco. (2) I’ve been working out a lot more lately and why that is is a completely different story.

Anyway, I started thinking how many calories are in a can anyway? It’s an easy answer to find, for 1 can a day:

140 Calories in 12 oz can of Coke. (64 oz = 747 Calories)
64 g of Sugar and 50 mg of Sodium 

Then I started to wonder what does having one can of coke a day for a year equal?

140 calories x 356 days = 51,100 calories / year

Okay great, then I started to wonder, how many calories were in 1 pound of fat? With a little bit of online research I found it,

3500 calories in 1 pound of fat.

So you ask, how many pounds of fat do you put on every year because of one can of soda a day?

51,100 calories (in soda per year) / 3,500 calories (in 1 pound of fat) = 14.6 pounds of fat per year.
39 g sugar x 365 days = 31.4 pounds of sugar a year.

Okay, it’s true your body will probably burn a lot of those calories from the soda, and you won’t actually put on all those pounds. But look at it this way, your body needs x amount of calories a day to burn in order to live. If your body is using the calories from the soda to burn what do you think it’s gunna do with the extra 140 calories it has let over from that double cheese double burger you had for lunch? It’s going to save it for later. 

Now, if 14.6 pounds of fat per year wasn’t scary enough, let’s look at it in my scenario. I was easily having at least 5 cans of soda a day:

5 x 140 calories x 356 days = 255,500 calories per year

255,500 calories / 3,500 calories = 73 pounds of fat per year. 
5 x 39 g sugar x 365 days = 156.9 pounds of sugar per year. 

Okay so that’s not exactly realistic to think that if I cut out soda all together I’ll lose 73 pounds. In fact I wouldn’t want to. I don’t know about you but a 119 pound, 6’2″ man isn’t exactly healthy or good looking.  I’ve been gaining weight, because I’ve been weight training for the past 4 months. So what I’ve gained is mostly muscle. Realistically though by simply eliminating the sodas, within 1 year I could loose the extra 10 pounds of fat that I’m carrying and I’d look that much better without working out any harder than I currently am. 

So if you’re a habitual soda slurper like me, looking at these numbers is a bit gross. Tomorrow, I’m drinking water. What about you?