As I mentioned in earlier posts, the only thing you can drink with invisalign on is water. The only thing you can eat with invisalign on is NOTHING. You will find yourself drinking a lot more water and a lot fewer juices / other beverages. It's healthy to drink 8 glasses of water a day but most of us don't even come close that. When you wear your aligners, that's the only thing you can drink! So ofcorse you're going to be drinking well over 8 glasses a day. Another reason you will find yourself drinking more water is because your mouth gets dry with the aligners on. A lot of people experience this (or so I've read on Bracereview). I have become so accustomed to drinking water that I don't even feel like drinking anything else aside from my usual morning coffee (with equal and soy milk yumm). I think after one or two years on invisalign, water will become second nature and sugary drinks will be out of the picture permanently.
HOW DOES DRINKING MORE WATER AFFECT YOU?
1) Drinking a lot of water fills you up. You'll be fuller when you start eating. You''ll find yourself intaking less food and getting fuller faster.
2) You'll be drinking sugary juices less frequently. I don't drink soda but for those of you who do, you'll stop, you'll probabaly get use to it, and you know what ... you'll probabaly like it. Water is the best thirst quencher. Suagry fluids make you even thirstier. It becomes a developing habbit. After invisalign, you'll probabaly never want to put soda in your mouth again. By the way, sugar decays teeth and is bad for your gums. So not only are you losing weight by way of less sugar intake but you are doing your gums, your teeth and your overall oral health a huge favor. If you do drink soda while you're on invsialign, make sure you brush after. Left over sugar in your aligners / on teeth = Toothe decay.
HEALTHIER CHOICES
Since you have 2 to 4 hours a day to eat / drink / brush, you have to make sure you don't go over that amount or the treatment might be less effective (if at all effective). Not to mention, by not wearing the aligners for the reccomended amount of hours per day, when you put them back in, it's painful. Your teeth have to readjust all over again. I found that my jaw hurts a lot more and I have to take advil to relieve it (and I am not one to take pills for minor pain relief). I started planning and coordinating my meals to make sure I split that time evenly for each meal. Most people rush and eat what's in front of them. Planning and coordinating your meals helps you get an overall picture of what you eat throughout the day. You might indulge once in a while but you'll find yourself making healthier choices. For instance, if normally you would rush and eat burrito while you're at work, come home and have steak and some other snacks in between, you havent put a lot of thought into your meals. When I started wearing my aligners, I said to myself "okay, today for breakfast, I'll have a banana. For lunch I'll have tuna fish with an arugula salad ... and save my indulgence for dinner. How about skirt steak?" Effectively planning and coordinating your meals helps you see a bigger picture. You might have 1 meal where you splurge, while making healthy light / choices for the other ones. When you are on the go and grabbing food without putting thought into it, you don't realize it but as humans, we mindlessly go with food that tastes better and not necesarily food that is good for us.
FASTER METABOLISM
If you are just someone who eats too much in one sitting, you're going to have a time constraint now. You will eat less per meal but you will be fuller after eating less than you normally would. Why is that? Since you are effectively planning your meals, you're not skipping any. This speeds up your metbaolism when you eat in small portions throughout the day as opposed to big meals in a few sittings. Furthermore, the overall 4 hour a day time constraint leaves you reserving those 4 hours to your planned meals instead of wasting them on snacking. Speaking personally for myself, I used to snack many times a day just because it was in front of me or because I was bored. Having your aligners on makes you think twice. You have to take them off, eat, then brush and floss ... and you have to do this EVERY TIME YOU EAT. You're going to be putting less snacks in your mouth to reserve that time for your meals, all while planning your meals more effectively.
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