Diet Drinks

bjbrown4

I hear so many different things about if you should drink diet drinks or not. What is everyone's thoughts on this?

smuehlbauer

You just opened a can of worms. Ha!
I say as long as you are getting your 64+ oz of water a day, have one or two.
I don't think that it's ok to drink a 2 liter a day, but a little isn't going to kill you.
(No watch the aspertame police come and get me!)
Have fun.
Steph:flowerforyou:

mostein

I'm not really for or against them but I recently read something that made a lot of sense for me personally. Sometimes when I have the artificially sweetened drinks I find I get really bloated and I read the reason for this is because your body doesn't recognize artificial sweeteners as food so it does not know how to process them which can cause gas and bloating. I think that is why "they" say they can cause you to gain weight it is bloating or water weight I guess.

jrich1

I drink 2-3 diet cokes a day

1Steph1

Diet drinks are 100% absolute garbage, and they dont help you lose weight they do the opposite. They are sweetened with dangerous chemicals (artificial sweeteners). I dont understand why people would rather put poison in their bodies to supposedly lose weight, isnt the point of weight loss to be healthy in the first place?

daniface

im offically scared of aspartame and artifical sweetners and so should you be! i say no to the diet drinks

Kamila02

I lose weight faster when I'm not drinking soda pops. My work outs are better and harder when I'm not drinking soda pops. There is so much that is innately bad for you in a soda, water is GOOD. Having said this, I drink about one (8 oz) a week... with something salty.

Liz75

I try to avoid them, its all so artificial and causes bloating. If you drink fruit juices instead, watch out though, they contain a lot of sugars and can really push up daily calorie totals, as I've recently discovered! I've drank 2 litres of water today for the first time (on purpose), and its not been too much of a struggle!

molberts

have a look at this video and decide for yourself http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/07/31/aspartame-update.aspx?aid=CD945

smuehlbauer

So, all of you that are against aspertame - If I go check your food diary - I'm not going to see anything that's processed? Nothing that has any chemicals in it.....
Riiiight!

KPaden1221

The only diet drink i drink is Diet Sprite. other than that, i've been cutting out cokes and sodas except for on weekends, then i allow myself one.. they just make me feel EW and bloated and weighed down..

ArmyWife815

I drink one from time to time. Not daily but if I want a diet Mount Dew I am going to drink it. I've just noticed that since I am trying to get 8 to10 glasses of water in a day I don't have "the room" for diet drinks.

As far as insulin resistance/ sugar/ and sugar substitutes slowing down weight loss maybe someone else would care to explain that.

toddgaines

I'm a bit of a pop-aholic. I would typically drink 3 cans of coke a day before I decided I needed to lose weight. I don't drink coffee or tea and so it is where I got my caffeine from. I switched to diet (Coke Zero), and it does take care of my pop cravings and gives me my caffeine boost when I need it. Many people say it actually increases your appetite, but I find it fills me up and quenches my craving for sweets.

The other issues are that aspartame is linked to every side effect in the book, including cancer and Alzheimer’s. However, at the rate I was going I was going to die of a heart attack or stroke way before either of those other things got me. And really, what doesn't cause cancer these days? The air, the water.. unless you live in a bubble you are going to be exposed to carcinogens. It's all about trade offs, but I personally have no issues with diet pop.

tsalter2004

As long as you are drinking your water, I don't see why you can't have 1 a day. I've heard they are bad for you too. I am a recovering Dr. Pepper-aholic and I have 1 diet Dr. Pepper a day.

jenism

My sister suffered from really bad migraines since she was a teen. She went to doctors, specialists, holistic specialists and no one could figure out what was wrong or help her.

She cut aspartame out of her diet completely, and guess what.... no more migraines.

browneyesbb89

I grew up drinking diet sodas because that is what my parents drink. I was doing really good not drinking so much soda. I would only drink it about once a week as a treat. Now i am back up to three to four times a week. In the process of cutting back again because I know i feel better when i don't drink at much. I just love my diet pepsi. Its not good on my stomache though. I have problems with heartburn and it does not help at all.

Aamilah

Diet drinks are 100% absolute garbage, and they dont help you lose weight they do the opposite. They are sweetened with dangerous chemicals (artificial sweeteners). I dont understand why people would rather put poison in their bodies to supposedly lose weight, isnt the point of weight loss to be healthy in the first place?

That is so true!!!!!!!!! great post!!!!!!!!

TrainingWithTonya

I did a research paper on sweeteners a couple of years ago. My research made me personally decide to never use them. Aspartame, for example, breaks down into formaldehyde in the body. Yeah, embalming fluid! That far outweighed any cancer risk, obesity risk, or diabetes risk of other sweeteners in my mind. My professor, on the other hand, made a comment as he sipped his Diet Coke that at least he will be well preserved and won't need as much when he dies. His opinion was that in moderation anything is okay to eat. I somewhat agree with that. If you enjoy something, by all means have some, but try not to overdo it. Thankfully, for me, I don't enjoy diet products. LOL

bluehorsesjp

Diet drinks are 100% absolute garbage, and they dont help you lose weight they do the opposite. They are sweetened with dangerous chemicals (artificial sweeteners). I dont understand why people would rather put poison in their bodies to supposedly lose weight, isnt the point of weight loss to be healthy in the first place?

I agree with this. I try to eat as clean as possible. A diet drink has too many chemical variables in it to count as clean.

LoriT129

As you can see from above...there are those that are okay with it and others not. If you have been drinking them and want to cut down on them, take your time to do it. How does your body feel when you drink them? We can't go from couch potatoe to skinny in a day and you can't cut out everything that is bad for you (or not) in a day either. Everything in moderation and setting small goals is what gets us to a good positive place. Everyone is an individual and everyone will have their own opinion. I drink 1-2 a day and I am okay with that. If I feel like giving them up I will do so and couldn't care less what others think about it. How do YOU feel about them? What is YOUR opinion of it? Go with what YOUR body says and what YOU are comfortable with.

RedneckWmn

I have one from time to time. But I wont have a regular one.

TheKitsune6

I've always favored diet soda's over regular soda. This is mostly because sugar makes me physically ill (I was raised in Germany, my body never adjusted to the massive amounts of sugar American sweets contain). I'm not diabetic. I don't have cancer and my weight gain has not been affected by whether or not I drank it (I stopped for a few months to see if it made a difference). I always drink 8-12 glasses of water per day.

My advice would simply be - don't overdo it. You can feed a bathtub full of salt to a rat, it'll get cancer and then you can wander the interwebs telling everyone that salt is bad for you but the true key to being healthy both mentally and physically is moderation in whatever you choose to do.

bluehorsesjp

And reading a couple other posts on this thread made me think. People have to wean themselves off of diet drinks. They are hard to stop drinking, like smoking. Seems like people have a diet coke addiction. So what does that say about what is in a diet drink. You never hear anyone say they are addicted to water and need to cut back.
Seems to me that if you are addicted to something be it caffeine, nicotine or whatever it is not what your body needs to be healthy.

1Steph1

Im not saying my diet is perfect, and it is hard to avoid ALLLLL chemicals and all that junk, but diet drinks are pointless in my opinion. This is a part of one of my FAV books, changed my life and eating habits for sure. Skinny ***** by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin. WARNING its long and may contain language like the rest of the book but its worth a read.

"When aspartame was put before the FDA for approval, it was denied eight times. g.d. Searle, founder of aspartame, tried to get FDA approval in 1973. clearly, he wasn't bothered by reports from neuroscientist Dr. John Olney and researcher Ann reynolds (hired by Searle himself) that aspartame was dangerous. Dr. Martha Freeman, a scientist from the FDA division of Metabolic and endocrine drug Products, declared, "The information submitted for review is inadequate to permit a scientific evaluation of clinical safety." Freeman recommended that until the safety of aspartame was proven, marketing the product should not be permitted. Alas, her recommendations were ignored. Somehow, in 1974, Searle got approval to use aspartame in dry foods. However, it wasn't smooth sailing from there. In 1975, the FDA put together a task force to review Searle's testing methods. Task force team leader Phillip Brodsky said he "had never seen anything as bas as Searle's testing" and called the tests results "manipulated." Before aspartame actually made it into dry foods, Olney and attorney and consumer advocate Jim Turner filed objections against the approval.

In 1977, the FDA asked the U.S. attorney's office to start grand jury proceedings against Searle for "knowingly misrepresenting findings and concealing material facts and making false statements in aspartame safety tests." shortly after, the U.S. attorney leading the investigation against Searle was offered a job by the law firm that was representing Searle. Later that same year, he resigned as U.S. attorney and withdrew from the case, delaying the grand jury's investigation. This caused the statute of limitations on the charges to run out, and the investigation was dropped. And he accepted the job with Searle's law firm. Stunning.

In 1980, a review by the Public Board of Inquiry set up by the FDA determined that aspartame should not be approved. The board said it had not been presented with proof of reasonable certainty that aspartame is safe for use as a food additive." In 1981, new FDA Commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes was appointed. Despite the fact that three out of six scientists advised against approval, Hayes decided to overrule the scientific review panel and allow aspartame into limited dry goods. In 1983, he got it approved for beverages, even though the National Soft Drink Association urged the FDA to delay approval until further testing could be done. That same year, Hayes left the FDA amid charges of impropriety. The Internal Department of Health and Human services was investigating Hayes for accepting gratuities from FDA-regulated companies. He went to work as a consultant for Searle's public relations firm. Interesting. The FDA finally urged Congress to prosecute Searle for giving the government false or incomplete test results on aspartame. However, the two government attorneys assigned to the case decided not to prosecute. Later, they went to work for the law firm that represented Searle. Fascinating. Despite recognizing ninety-two different symptoms that result from ingesting aspartame, the FDA approved it for use, without restriction in 1996. Brilliant.

So many people have been sickened from this **** that there are aspartame victim support groups. Some of the ninety-two aspartame side effects listed by the FDA include memory loss, nerve cell damage, migraines, reproductive disorders, mental confusion, brain lesions, blindness, joint pain, Alzheimer's, bloating, nervous system disorders, hair loss, food cravings, and weight gain.

Aspartame is a $1 billion industry. The National Justice League has filed a series of lawsuits against food companies using aspartame, claiming they are poisoning the public. In September 2004, a class action lawsuit was filed for $350 million against NutraSweet and the American Diabetics Association. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is named in the suit for using political muscle to get aspartame approved by the FDA.

Nutrasweet and Equil contain aspartame. When ingested, one of aspartames ingredients, methyl alcohol, converts into formaldehyde, a deadly neurotoxin. In addition to aspartame, Equal contains the amino acid phenylalanine. Phenylalanine occurs naturally in the brain. But high levels can increase the chance of seizures and lead to depression and schizophrenia. There is no lesser of the two evils. NutraSweet and Equal are both evil. Sweet and Low is no saint, either. It is an artificial sweetener that contains saccharin, a coal-tar compound. Stay away.

Because we're having so much fun, lets bash the **** out of Splenda, one of the newer sweeteners. Splenda is made by chlorinated sugar, changing its molecular structure. The finished product is called sucralose. The makers of this poison tout its lack of calories and claim it's safe for diabetics. The FDA calls sucralose 98 percent pure. The other 2 percent contains small amounts of heavy metals, methanol, and arsenic. Well gee, at least it doesn't have any calories. So what if it has a little arsenic? Sucralose has been found to cause diarrhea; organ, genetic, immune system, and reproductive damage; swelling of the liver and kidneys: and a decrease in fetal body weight. What a splendid product!"

TheKitsune6

Seems to me that if you are addicted to something be it caffeine, nicotine or whatever it is not what your body needs to be healthy.

What about people that are addicted to exercise?

hannahlang85

In my opinion.... DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT drink diet drinks! Everyone elses post is well explainable as to why not! When I cut soda pop from my diet... I literally lost 10 pounds just from doing that! Diet sodas are not natural and do more harm then good for your body. If you dont NEED it, don't drink it. Instead have natural fruit juice, the natural sugars in those (preferrably homemade) give you a natural energy rather than one that will just make you crash later. Once you've gone a while without, it'll get MUCH easier and you'll no longer crave them.

flsunshine

i drink 2 diet dr peppers every morning since i dont really like coffee or hot drinks in the morning. its all about moderation regardless if its reg soda or diet. i just choice diet because reg soda is nothin but empty calories (12 TSP of sugar per 12 oz) i just like my little dose of caffine in the morning. its really your choice to drink it or not as long as its in moderation and you drink plent of h2o during the day...

LoriT129

addictions...hmmm...chocolate anyone? A glass of wine? The key is moderation! I like to have a quaker chewy 90 cal granola bar as a snack everyday....is that an addiction, I wonder?

flsunshine

i drink 2 diet dr peppers every morning since i dont really like coffee or hot drinks in the morning. its all about moderation regardless if its reg soda or diet. i just choice diet because reg soda is nothin but empty calories (12 TSP of sugar per 12 oz) i just like my little dose of caffine in the morning. its really your choice to drink it or not as long as its in moderation and you drink plent of h2o during the day...

dougsheldon

And also, aspartame can actually make you crave sugar. That's no good for weight loss.

yeah, people say a little of anything in moderation is okay. But I'm more concerned about the effects on my body than how things taste. If I were to even have a little bit of something I know isn't good for me I'll feel bad for eating it so I'd rather just keep my diet completely clean and feel good all the time
just my opinion though. I've been told I'm depriving myself but honestly I feel like I've been depriving myself of nutrition for all these years by eating junk food!

geicko

Artificial sweeteners are hidden everywhere, and under so many different names, it's getting harder then ever to avoid as soo as you reach for something processed. Sad.

Regarding pops, there is another reason why you would want to avoid them most of them time, keep them as an occaisonnal treat. Here is a VERY interesting video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpoAtwVyzZI