Friday Mythbustin': Gatorade Is A Diet Drink

Myth: Gatorade is a good drink to have if you're trying to lose weight, because it's for healthy people.

Truth: Gatorade is sugar water.

Yup. You read that right. Gatorade is specially formulated Kool-Aid.

I'm not saying Gatorade is bad. It works. It does exactly what it's meant to do. But it's not meant to make a person healthy.

What it's meant to do is give you energy, and Gatorade does this really well.

There are several kinds of sugar, each of which your body processes at a different speed. Some can be absorbed into the bloodstream directly from your stomach. Some have to be processed by your kidneys first.

Gatorade contains a special mix of these sugars. By giving you some of each, it creates a "time release" effect, where by the time your body has finished processing one set of sugars, the others are starting kick in.

Now, as with all energy, if your body doesn't use it, it stores it. Which means if you aren't running around or working hard or somehow giving your body things to do with that energy, it's going to store it--and to your body, stored energy means fat.

So if you aren't up and moving when you have It in you, it will stay in you, on your waistline.

Which leaves you with two options. Either stop drinking it or go out and give yourself a reason to need it. Both should help a lot.

And it's not just Gatorade, by the way. Lots of so-called "healthy" drinks are basically sugar water, and just as bad as soda. I stopped drinking Sobes when I noticed the ingredients list was exactly the same as Mountain Dew, except the water wasn't carbonated.

Be careful when the first ingredient in your juice says "High Fructose Corn Syrup." Fructose is the sugar your body processes instantly. That means it spikes your blood sugar levels, and unless you're doing something to burn it, your body will instantly start pulling that stuff out of the blood and storing it as fat in order to get your levels back to normal. Not even Gatorade, the stuff designed for athletes who are giving 110% every moment, tries to pump that much sugar into the body right away.