Nutrition

Swap the sugary drinks

The single biggest win available to anyone who drinks their calories, and it costs almost nothing.

What it’s worth

~250 calories a day per drink dropped

Do this

→Pick the drink you have most often and swap it, rather than banning everything at once.
→Water, soda water, diet versions, tea, coffee — all fine. The point is the sugar, not the fizz.
→Keep the ritual. If it's the 3pm can, still have a 3pm something.

Why it works

Liquid calories barely register. Your appetite compensates for solid food reasonably well, but a drink slips past that system almost entirely, so the calories are added on top of what you'd have eaten anyway rather than displacing any of it.

The evidence

This is one of only three tactics here with genuinely causal weight evidence rather than association. Trials swapping sugar-sweetened drinks for water or diet versions show around 1.5 to 2kg lost, or 2 to 2.5% of bodyweight, without any other change.

The honest bit

It only helps if you actually drink them. If you're already on water and coffee, this lever doesn't exist for you, and no amount of optimising it will do anything.

Knowing it isn’t the hard part

You’ve just read the tactic. The difficult bit is the Tuesday in six weeks when you’re tired and it’s raining. Milo is a coach you text like a friend: it knows which of these you’re working on, notices when it slips, and brings it up once rather than nagging.

See how Milo works

Try next

Eat the bulky thing first — A soup or salad before the main course quietly takes 100+ calories off the meal.
Put the protein at the start of the day — Around 30g at breakfast reliably reduces evening snacking.
Sleep a bit longer, eat noticeably less — If you're under about six and a half hours, this is a bigger lever than most diets.

General information, not medical advice. If you have a health condition, are pregnant, or are under 18, talk to a healthcare professional before changing how you eat or train.