Is diet soda really making me fat?

snowflake930

If you are convinced it makes you overeat, then, yes, you probably should quit drinking diet pop. Perhaps it is a psychological issue with some people.
Too many calories eaten and not enough calories burned results in becoming overweight, not diet pop, or any other single food item. It is simply too much food eaten, and not enough activity for your body to use the excess calories up.

ndj1979

amber68rose556 wrote: »

memo1974 wrote: »

I found this article on health.com. Also, to answer some of the earlier comments: being skinny or thin got nothing to do with being healthy.

The article:

When taken at face value, diet soda seems like a health-conscious choice. It saves you the 140-plus calories you'd find in a sugary soft drink while still satisfying your urge for something sweet with artificial sweeteners like aspartame, saccharin, and sucralose. But there's more to this chemical cocktail than meets the eye.

Artificial sweeteners have more intense flavor than real sugar, so over time products like diet soda dull our senses to naturally sweet foods like fruit, says Brooke Alpert, RD, author of The Sugar Detox. Even more troubling, these sugar stand-ins have been shown to have the same effect on your body as sugar. "Artificial sweeteners trigger insulin, which sends your body into fat storage mode and leads to weight gain," Alpert says.

Diet soda is calorie-free, but it won't necessarily help you lose weight. Researchers from the University of Texas found that over the course of about a decade, diet soda drinkers had a 70% greater increase in waist circumference compared with non-drinkers. And get this: participants who slurped down two or more sodas a day experienced a 500% greater increase. The way artificial sweeteners confuse the body may play a part, but another reason might be psychological, says Minnesota-based dietitian Cassie Bjork. When you know you're not consuming any liquid calories, it might be easier to justify that double cheeseburger or extra slice of pizza.

Drinking one diet soda a day was associated with a 36% increased risk of metabolic syndrome and diabetes in a University of Minnesota study. Metabolic syndrome describes a cluster of conditions (including high blood pressure, elevated glucose levels, raised cholesterol, and large waist circumference) that put people at high risk for heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, Bjork explains.

When you drink diet soda, you're not taking in any calories—but you're also not swallowing anything that does your body any good, either. The best no-calorie beverage? Plain old water, says Bjork. "Water is essential for many of our bodily processes, so replacing it with diet soda is a negative thing," she says. If it's the fizziness you crave, try sparkling water.

Excessive soda drinking could leave you looking like a Breaking Bad extra, according to a case study published in the journal General Dentistry. The research compared the mouths of a cocaine-user, a methamphetamine-user, and a habitual diet-soda drinker, and found the same level of tooth erosion in each of them. The culprit here is citric acid, which weakens and destroys tooth enamel over time.

Just one diet soft drink a day could boost your risk of having a vascular event such as stroke, heart attack, or vascular death, according to researchers from the University of Miami and Columbia University. Their study found that diet soda devotees were 43% more likely to have experienced a vascular event than those who drank none. Regular soda drinkers did not appear to have an increased risk of vascular events. Researchers say more studies need to be conducted before definitive conclusions can be made about diet soda's effects on health.

From:
http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20739512,00.html

wow that was quite a shock to the system and i would think about cutting out diet drinks completely after reading this! Thankyou!

this is the perfect example of why you should not get your information from the internet just because the title of the blog is "health"..

and equating diet soda to meth ...come on man!

complete woo woo

brittyn3

I love diet soda. If diet soda makes you fat, I guess I'm fat. mmmm

CooCooPuff

ndj1979 wrote: »

amber68rose556 wrote: »

memo1974 wrote: »

I found this article on health.com. Also, to answer some of the earlier comments: being skinny or thin got nothing to do with being healthy.

The article:

When taken at face value, diet soda seems like a health-conscious choice. It saves you the 140-plus calories you'd find in a sugary soft drink while still satisfying your urge for something sweet with artificial sweeteners like aspartame, saccharin, and sucralose. But there's more to this chemical cocktail than meets the eye.

Artificial sweeteners have more intense flavor than real sugar, so over time products like diet soda dull our senses to naturally sweet foods like fruit, says Brooke Alpert, RD, author of The Sugar Detox. Even more troubling, these sugar stand-ins have been shown to have the same effect on your body as sugar. "Artificial sweeteners trigger insulin, which sends your body into fat storage mode and leads to weight gain," Alpert says.

Diet soda is calorie-free, but it won't necessarily help you lose weight. Researchers from the University of Texas found that over the course of about a decade, diet soda drinkers had a 70% greater increase in waist circumference compared with non-drinkers. And get this: participants who slurped down two or more sodas a day experienced a 500% greater increase. The way artificial sweeteners confuse the body may play a part, but another reason might be psychological, says Minnesota-based dietitian Cassie Bjork. When you know you're not consuming any liquid calories, it might be easier to justify that double cheeseburger or extra slice of pizza.

Drinking one diet soda a day was associated with a 36% increased risk of metabolic syndrome and diabetes in a University of Minnesota study. Metabolic syndrome describes a cluster of conditions (including high blood pressure, elevated glucose levels, raised cholesterol, and large waist circumference) that put people at high risk for heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, Bjork explains.

When you drink diet soda, you're not taking in any calories—but you're also not swallowing anything that does your body any good, either. The best no-calorie beverage? Plain old water, says Bjork. "Water is essential for many of our bodily processes, so replacing it with diet soda is a negative thing," she says. If it's the fizziness you crave, try sparkling water.

Excessive soda drinking could leave you looking like a Breaking Bad extra, according to a case study published in the journal General Dentistry. The research compared the mouths of a cocaine-user, a methamphetamine-user, and a habitual diet-soda drinker, and found the same level of tooth erosion in each of them. The culprit here is citric acid, which weakens and destroys tooth enamel over time.

Just one diet soft drink a day could boost your risk of having a vascular event such as stroke, heart attack, or vascular death, according to researchers from the University of Miami and Columbia University. Their study found that diet soda devotees were 43% more likely to have experienced a vascular event than those who drank none. Regular soda drinkers did not appear to have an increased risk of vascular events. Researchers say more studies need to be conducted before definitive conclusions can be made about diet soda's effects on health.

From:
http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20739512,00.html

wow that was quite a shock to the system and i would think about cutting out diet drinks completely after reading this! Thankyou!

this is the perfect example of why you should not get your information from the internet just because the title of the blog is "health"..

and equating diet soda to meth ...come on man!

complete woo woo

I imagine this is how things would go at a soda factory

erinc5

singingflutelady wrote: »

Flavoured fizzy water has more artificial sweeteners in it than diet coke

Depends. I'm currently drinking Talking Rain Peach Nectarine sparking water, and there are no artificial sweeteners. Just water and essences from natural fruit oils.

I'll probably grab a coke zero in the afternoon and then one with dinner, so I don't really care about sweeteners or not, but just pointing out some flavored waters aren't sweet at all.

ElizabethOakes2

My sister swears she lost 5 lbs just giving up her diet soda, and says it's because she craved less sugar/sweets throughout the day. I think it's probably a metabolism thing- for some people drinking diet sodas isn't a big deal at all and has no impact on their body, and for other people, it can exacerbate cravings, or change their hunger levels. (If I drink a diet soda, my body knows darn well it didn't get the sugar it wanted, and it will go looking for that sugar elsewhere.)
Try giving up your diet soda for a week or two and see if you feel differently. If you don't, then you probably aren't affected by it.