The recommended amount of calories for most adult men and women is somewhere around 2,000 per day (give or take, depending on factors such as weight, basal metabolic rate, activity level, etc.). Now, factor in the 458 calories the average American takes in a day from juice and soft drink consumption (source: Obesity), and it's clear that there isn't all too much room left for actual food.

Calories have to count. If getting 2,000 of them a day is the goal, wasting almost a quarter of them on sugary drinks -- many of which offer no nutritional value -- is truly doing your body a disservice. This is the same reason why I'm not much of a fan of those 100-calorie snacks, as I've written in the past. True, these so-called "healthy packs" contain far fewer calories than the more traditional size packages, but there's nothing healthy about empty calories.

If you're drinking almost 500 calories a day, in addition to popping one or two 100-calorie snack packs, a waistline expansion is likely in your future. The only way to prevent it would be to cut back on the actual real food you eat, which is probably the worst option. Rid your diet of the soda and snack packs instead. As for your real food consumption, if you stick to the suggested average of 2,000 calories a day, you should be just fine.