12 Diet Questions Answered

One Small Fix

Your personal trainer subsists on whey shakes, your sister's sworn off dairy, and a book you picked up on barnesandnoble.com recommends watercress soup for weight loss. Is it any wonder you're stymied about what to eat come mealtime? To help you sort through the confusion, we rounded up top nutrition and weight-loss experts to answer your most burning diet questions.

Is there one small diet fix that will help me lose weight?

"Yes. Stop drinking your calories," says Walter Willett, M.D., chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health and coauthor of Eat, Drink and Be Healthy (Simon & Schuster, 2002). Fruit juices, coffee drinks and regular soda are liquid calories that don't yield much satiety, says Dr. Willett. An eight-ounce regular cola contains 103 calories; the same amount of orange juice has 110. "Research also shows that we don't compensate as well for calories consumed in liquid form," says Rachel K. Johnson, Ph.D., R.D., a professor of nutrition at the University of Vermont in Burlington. In other words, we're unlikely to eat less later to make up for these extra calories. If weight loss is your goal, opt for low- or no-calorie beverages like tea, water, seltzer and skim milk.