Drink Your Weight Away

Sept. 21 -- Two hundred gallons. That's the amount of liquid the average man guzzles each year.

Approximately 34 gallons of beer, 53 gallons of soda, 24 gallons of milk, and a whole lot of gallons of other stuff.

Feeling a bit bloated? You should be. But the great thing about drinking so much is that all you have to do to lose weight is make a few adjustments to the types of drinks you're already pouring down every day.

Juice with pulp instead of pulp-free. Green tea instead of regular. Do it all and you're gulping 35,456 fewer calories in four weeks. That's a savings of 10 pounds. So fill 'er up. This one's on us — and off you.

Your Morning Juice

Unless you're an astronaut or a skinny 10-year-old boy, trade in your Tang, Sunny D, and pulp-free OJ for the thick stuff — juice with extra pulp.

Researchers at Purdue University found that people stayed full longer when they drank thick drinks than when they drank thin ones — even when calories, temperatures, and amounts were equal.

"Thicker drinks help to fight off hunger longer," says Richard Mattes, the study author.

Calories saved in four weeks: 5,460

Your Midmorning Break

Even if your taste in tea runs more toward Long Island than iced, there's a reason to consider adding a bit more of the stuff to your diet: It's a natural fat burner.

But not just any tea will work. You need to buy the stuff marked "green."

A Swiss study found that substances in green tea called catechin polyphenols can significantly increase your body's metabolism of fat so you burn the stuff at a faster rate.

Calories saved in four weeks: at least 4,872

Lunch in a Can

Meal replacements really work.

In a study presented at the annual meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, researchers found that regularly drinking meal replacements increased a man's chances of losing weight and keeping it off for longer than a year.

But which one should you drink? "Men trying to lose weight need about 600 calories per meal, with 25 percent of those calories from protein, 25 percent from fat, and 50 percent from carbohydrates," says Liz Ward, a Massachusetts nutrition consultant.