Diet Soda and Weight Loss
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I thought water was the most researched. I think I'm going to stick with the clear stuff! Y'all do what you want. Wasn't trying to upset anyone
I don't think anyone is upset. You've just made some claims that are demostrably false. People around here tend to prefer not spreading misinformation.9 -
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Or.... you could stop putting anything but WATER into your body. You only get one body right? There are things like aspartame in diet soda. What's that do? It is about 200 times sweeter than sugar, so much less of it can be used to give the same level of sweetness. This, in turn, lowers the calories in the food or beverage.
Think about what aspartame can do... Emotional Disorders... Cancer in the brain... Diabetes.... Epilepsy/Seizures.
Think about what water can do..... make you pee.... a lot....
Nope, nope nope. Simple fearmongering. Everything you mentioned has not been supported by science.
You're being questioned due to throwing a claim with no proof.3 -
Or.... you could stop putting anything but WATER into your body. You only get one body right? There are things like aspartame in diet soda. What's that do? It is about 200 times sweeter than sugar, so much less of it can be used to give the same level of sweetness. This, in turn, lowers the calories in the food or beverage.
Think about what aspartame can do... Emotional Disorders... Cancer in the brain... Diabetes.... Epilepsy/Seizures.
Think about what water can do..... make you pee.... a lot....
Well, if you like peeing so much, have at it.3 -
My diet Minute Maid lemonade (5 calories) and diet root beer (0) have helped TREMENDOUSLY with cravings and weight loss. I don't like drinking plain water and never did. Switching from fruit juices to diet drinks has cut about 250 calories a day out of my diet.3
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bethannien wrote: »cushman5279 wrote: »Yeah it has nothing to do with the ingredients or biological process, it has to do with the number of calories. And there's this... if you're craving sugar and you eat or drink something that's sugar free, ya know, trying to trick your mind, your brain gets all ramped up for the sugar rush... like thinking "it's coming! it's coming, get ready, here it comes......" and then nothing. So you end up craving it even more which may lead to over doing it.
I can see how it's that way for some people definitely but I don't think it's that way for everyone.
Personally, I drink diet soda because it's easier to open a can/bottle than it is to make coffee and then Doctor it to my liking. It's definitely not a stand in for sweets. When I want chocolate or otherwise sugary goodness, soda is the last thing I would reach for to satisfy that.
I switched to diet soda in high school when I first started thinking about my weight and now I can't stand the taste of regular soda. The syrup feels so...I don't know thick? Diet soda hasn't helped me lose any weight but it certainly hasn't ever hindered me when I start cutting either. When I fail, my diet soda habit is the last thing I would say contributes. Regular soda is nowhere on my list of can't haves on a regular day because it's not even a temptation. So in that respect, I guess diet soda has helped me.
Your opinion and experience mirror my own.
Diet soda doesn't not give me a craving for sugar, never has in over 35 years of drinking it. I switched in high school and can't stand to drink soda with sugar now, it's just too sweet and leaves an aftertaste I can't get off my tongue unless I eat or drink something else.Or.... you could stop putting anything but WATER into your body. You only get one body right? There are things like aspartame in diet soda. What's that do? It is about 200 times sweeter than sugar, so much less of it can be used to give the same level of sweetness. This, in turn, lowers the calories in the food or beverage.
Think about what aspartame can do... Emotional Disorders... Cancer in the brain... Diabetes.... Epilepsy/Seizures.
Think about what water can do..... make you pee.... a lot....
And I will fourth, fifth or sixth the "No" on this. None of that has been proven in fact, if anything, it's been disproven over and over again.
I drink plenty of water. That's not going to change the fact that I like my morning, and sometimes afternoon, Diet Coke.4 -
I thought water was the most researched. I think I'm going to stick with the clear stuff! Y'all do what you want. Wasn't trying to upset anyone
No, just telling them if they drink diet soda with aspartame they'll get " Emotional Disorders... Cancer in the brain... Diabetes.... Epilepsy/Seizures".8 -
There is no evidence that artificial sweeteners cause insulin spikes. There is some evidence to the benefits of long-term use, however. More research is still being done, but general consensus is that when the body thinks it getting calories, but doesn't, it messes with sated/not sated triggers and your body doesn't always recognizing when enough calories have been consumed. This can lead to overeating because you still feel hungry, which leads to weight gain. I personally don't do artificial sweeteners because they are chemicals - it has nothing to do with my insulin resistance.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-drinks/artificial-sweeteners/
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There is no evidence that artificial sweeteners cause insulin spikes. There is some evidence to the benefits of long-term use, however. More research is still being done, but general consensus is that when the body thinks it getting calories, but doesn't, it messes with sated/not sated triggers and your body doesn't always recognizing when enough calories have been consumed. This can lead to overeating because you still feel hungry, which leads to weight gain. I personally don't do artificial sweeteners because they are chemicals - it has nothing to do with my insulin resistance.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-drinks/artificial-sweeteners/
You do know that everything is made of chemicals, right? Everything. And not all "artificial sweeteners" are actually "artificial", either. Stevia is a plant, for example.4 -
There is no evidence that artificial sweeteners cause insulin spikes. There is some evidence to the benefits of long-term use, however. More research is still being done, but general consensus is that when the body thinks it getting calories, but doesn't, it messes with sated/not sated triggers and your body doesn't always recognizing when enough calories have been consumed. This can lead to overeating because you still feel hungry, which leads to weight gain. I personally don't do artificial sweeteners because they are chemicals - it has nothing to do with my insulin resistance.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-drinks/artificial-sweeteners/
Water is a chemical too.5 -
There is no evidence that artificial sweeteners cause insulin spikes. There is some evidence to the benefits of long-term use, however. More research is still being done, but general consensus is that when the body thinks it getting calories, but doesn't, it messes with sated/not sated triggers and your body doesn't always recognizing when enough calories have been consumed. This can lead to overeating because you still feel hungry, which leads to weight gain. I personally don't do artificial sweeteners because they are chemicals - it has nothing to do with my insulin resistance.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-drinks/artificial-sweeteners/
You do realize that everything you eat and drink is made of chemicals, right? Water is Hydrogen (H) and Oxygen (O). Proteins are long chains of Hydrogen (H), Nitrogen (N), Carbon (C) and Oxygen (O). Carbohydrates are chains of Hydrogen (H), Carbon (C) and Oxygen (O). Fats are composed of Hydrogen (H), Carbon (C) and oxygen (O).
Aspartame is composed of Aspartic Acid and Phenylalanine, which are two commonly occurring amino acids (proteins). The molecular formula is C14H18N2O5 (notice all the Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen and Oxygen in there? That's the exact same things that carbohydrates, proteins and fats (all the things in the foods you eat every day) are made of.
The scare of "OMGZZZ, teh chemikillzzzz!" has been thrown around in dieting myths for a long time, as if chemicals are somehow bad - when the truth is that "chemicals" make up everything we eat and drink. In fact, every part of our body is made of those same chemicals. So it's pretty hard to say they're dangerous.
To the OP - read the links that stevencloser and queenliz99 provided for the actual science without the scaremongering and unscientific hype.
As a personal anecdote, I've drank at least one diet soda almost every day for decades and it hasn't impeded my weight loss one bit, nor has it triggered cravings or had any adverse effect upon my health.9 -
Cheetos are my favorite
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Or.... you could stop putting anything but WATER into your body. You only get one body right? There are things like aspartame in diet soda. What's that do? It is about 200 times sweeter than sugar, so much less of it can be used to give the same level of sweetness. This, in turn, lowers the calories in the food or beverage.
Think about what aspartame can do... Emotional Disorders... Cancer in the brain... Diabetes.... Epilepsy/Seizures.
Think about what water can do..... make you pee.... a lot....
No, no, and no. It's your choice on drinking it or not, but please don't spread misinformation and fear.There is no evidence that artificial sweeteners cause insulin spikes. There is some evidence to the benefits of long-term use, however. More research is still being done, but general consensus is that when the body thinks it getting calories, but doesn't, it messes with sated/not sated triggers and your body doesn't always recognizing when enough calories have been consumed. This can lead to overeating because you still feel hungry, which leads to weight gain. I personally don't do artificial sweeteners because they are chemicals - it has nothing to do with my insulin resistance.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-drinks/artificial-sweeteners/
Everything you drink is made of chemicals, even water. Chemicals are not scary. Your body is full of them.1 -
Yes, everyone, I am aware that EVERYTHING is made of chemicals - my apologies for using the word in more colloquial way. Let me clarify - my personal preference is to eat and drink things that occur in nature, not developed in a lab. I gave up artificial sweeteners years ago and I don't miss them. Do your research, mind your sources, and make whatever informed decision you feel is best.
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Or.... you could stop putting anything but WATER into your body. You only get one body right? There are things like aspartame in diet soda. What's that do? It is about 200 times sweeter than sugar, so much less of it can be used to give the same level of sweetness. This, in turn, lowers the calories in the food or beverage.
Think about what aspartame can do... Emotional Disorders... Cancer in the brain... Diabetes.... Epilepsy/Seizures.
Think about what water can do..... make you pee.... a lot....
The diet world is full of misinformation and rumor spread equally by unknowing dieters and corporations out to make a buck off us. There is so much of it out there that even seasoned health buffs have a hard time separating fact from fiction at times. The side effects of aspartame include migraines and possibly bloating in a small number of people. Those people should probably avoid it. But for the rest of us, epilepsy, brain cancer, these things have not been shown to be caused by aspartame. It would be great if you could take a look at some of the resources put forward so that we can stop spreading any more misinformation here.5 -
Yes, everyone, I am aware that EVERYTHING is made of chemicals - my apologies for using the word in more colloquial way. Let me clarify - my personal preference is to eat and drink things that occur in nature, not developed in a lab. I gave up artificial sweeteners years ago and I don't miss them. Do your research, mind your sources, and make whatever informed decision you feel is best.
Do your research? Yes please, explain to me how I should do my research because I don't agree with you that aspartame is dangerous.
By the way aspartame is just a dipeptide of two amino acids, phenylalanine and aspartate, with the phenylalanines carboxy terminus methylated. What was that about nature again?
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OP as far as your comment goes, injesting pretty much anything including water can stimulate insulin. The very act of consuming stimulates insulin.
Second, stimulating insulin to put you in "fat storage mode" (whatever that is) does not somehow create energy and mass out of nothing. You cannot just gain weight at of thin air or make something that has 3500 calories (a pound of fat) out of something that has none or very little.
Lets say drinking diet coke "stimulated" insulin more than anything else. That still wouldn't make you fat unless you were overconsuming food anyways.
Lets put it this way. If drinking diet coke (zero calories, no energy content) would allow your body to then put on fat (fat contains energy) in a way that it would not have already done from consuming the no energy drink then we have a way of producing free energy.
Get people to drink diet coke, liposuction the fat and you will literally create energy from nothing. Energy crisis solved.
Its B.S. and if you think about it critically its clearly B.S.
And yes, I understand that the claim being made is that somehow...like magic...diet coke makes your body require less energy and since your body now requires less energy you can eat the same amount of food but you have reduced your caloric need so you store the now excess as fat. But that has the exact same problem. If you can create energy from something that has no energy you have broken reality. Your body's BMR is mainly to just maintain your body temperature and your heartbeat...that isn't something that just goes away because you imbibed X or Y.7 -
alexreyn13 wrote: »"Artificial sweeteners trigger insulin, which sends your body into fat storage mode and leads to weight gain."
I've seen this phrase a few times in articles that discuss the effects of diet soda and weight loss. Is there actually any evidence or real science behind this statement?
aspartame doesn't trigger an insulin response...but it's irrelevant anyway...people need to do some research on insulin...everything you eat triggers an insulin response...if it doesn't then that's the problem. People are generally pretty ignorant about insulin for some reason and act as if an insulin response is a bad thing...it's your body doing what your body is supposed to do.3 -
I always liked the joke .. Have you ever seen a skinny person drinking a diet coke lol.
I drink regular when I do have them
Good luck2
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