fake sugars and weight gain?

My experience is that I drink several glasses of fake sugar drinks (aka diet coke or Pepsi Max) per week and this has not impacted on my weight loss or later my weight maitenance at all.

Makes no difference for me. Sometimes I drink diet soda, sometimes I don't. I don't have a harder time dieting or lose better under either situation. (I also never drank much regular soda, as I switched as a teen and back then kids didn't drink unlimited soda or much at all, IME.)

Also, the theories about weight gain or loss assume that you don't track calories. People who say it helps for weight loss mean that switching out something like soda (with lots of calories) for no calorie diet soda will lead to a cut in calories. That's true if you are tracking and don't replace the calories or naturally don't replace them, but many people do replace them if not tracking, especially over time. For me it makes sense as an easy way to cut calories, since I find drinking calories less filling or satisfying than eating them, but people differ.

The weight gain theories are more that artificial sweeteners cause cravings. I don't think the evidence for that is all that strong--it's really just a theory for which there is no need (it's just as possible that there's a correlation between being fat and drinking diet because many, especially men, wouldn't bother with diet if your weight is fine or if you don't really drink soda anyway)--but even if it were true for some that wouldn't make it true for everyone. I've experimented and drinking diet soda doesn't make me crave sweets. Nor did it ever make me unable to appreciate the sweetness in a carrot or non-sweet foods (I greatly preferred drier wines and plenty of greens many perceive as bitter, etc., while also enjoying the occasional diet Coke). In any event, this assumes that you end up eating more calories due to the diet soda, so if you track you can tell if you are or not.

I've been consuming fake sugars for 20+ years. In all that time, I've never noticed any adverse effects whatsoever. Not with weight, not with health, not with any thing.

jazzy550 wrote: »

I've heard that drinking too many diet products gives women "soda gut". I know when I was in my early twenties you did not see girls with bellies the way you see them today. It's a phenomena that supposedly is attributed to overprocessed food and diet soda.

I see that body shape, relatively thin, with a spare tire more frequently as well, which I never saw 20 years ago, but it's not because of 0 calorie drinks.

I have consumed diet drinks for twenty plus years and it has had zero effect on my health.

My completely anecdotal evidence is this: I drink probably 3-4 cans of diet coke a week, and had no difficulty going from obese to a healthy weight.

JPW1990 wrote: »

Chances are if your diet is filled with low-fat and sugar-free foods and drinks marketed towards weight loss, you're retaining extra water with every meal you eat, because they add salt to make up for the lack of flavor. There's no shortage of other reasons to leave them out (migraines, GERD, enamel erosion, diarrhea - hello gummy bears), but the sweeteners themselves aren't making you fat.

This issue about added salt comes up all the time - and yet diet sodas do not have more salt than most other drinks.
Issues like migraines and diarrhoea are only an issue if they are an issue for you individually.
Diet soda does not give me either so I happily continue to consume it.

Well that is what people were posting about.

And is the claim often (and incorrectly) claimed.

The other points about migraines, diarrhoea etc would apply to all artificially sweetened products, not just drinks - ie unless they cause an individual these problems, there is no need to limit them.