Diet Soda/Aspartame - The Fat Maker or Diet Helper?

it's terrible. chemicals etc. I wouldn't drink it. and if so, I would almost go for the real thing or a natural soda like Jones Soda.

yes, it has zero cals...but if you think about, how can it possibly be zero cals and not have a billion chemicals and crap in there.

For me i found a conection to wanting to continue to eat sweet foods after having artificial sweeteners in my coffee. I dont drink soda's or pre packaged foods very often so i cant speak for all "diet" foods.
But after switching from artificail sweetners to stevia ( i use unprocessed "green"stevia) i swear i found a difference in my appetite!
Mind over matter? i'm unsure, but not putting anything artificial in my body cant be anything but good... right?

I used to drink diet pepsi as well and also diet Sierra mist but since I have stopped drinking soda altogther and started drinking water with some flavoring like Crystal light or 4C totally light Green tea I have been losing weight.

I used to drink diet Coke like crazy. I can't speak directly to whether or not it affected my cravings, since almost anything triggers cravings for me (boredom, stress, frustration, exhaustion...). All I know for sure is that I feel MUCH better now that I don't touch the stuff.

My husband convinced me to stay away from things with aspartame, so I found Diet Rite and drink that rarely. When I need a carbonation fix, it does the trick. I hope it is truly what it says it is...0 calories, sodium, caffeine, sugars, no aspartame. I have done only a little research on it at this point.

Honestly I don't know the answer to your question, I'm not a soda drinker, but I thought I'd just throw this out there... I do drink naturally flavored carbonated water. I like the La Croix brand, but there's a lot out there and it's zero all the way across no calories/sodium/artificial anything and it's got that bubbly fill you up feeling to it -- I started it as substitute for beers and for in-between mixed drinks... kinda got hooked!

If diet soda and aspartame causes weight gain, I'd waste away to nothing if I stopped consuming it.

I have some form of diet Pepsi every day, usually with breakfast because I love caffeine and hate coffee, and diluted Crystal Light in my 96-128 oz water I chuggalug daily. (One "packet" per 32 oz.)

I'd never eat or drink something with so many artificial additives, even if it is zero calories, even if it promised a miracle weight loss! Losing weight is only one part of eating healthy; the main part is what is actually going in your body. I wouldn't like to be be thin if it meant putting all sorts of chemicals in myself. Plus, it may fill you up, but the bloated feeling is disgusting, it's much better to take hunger pangs away with a warm cup of green tea or glass of chilled water.

When I was growing up, my parents were strongly against fizzy drinks and aspartame, and never allowed me to have them. They explained to me why, why it was bad, and brought me up on tea, water, and the occasional smoothie. I will be forever grateful for this, because I know a lot of people who are trying to give up sodas and fizzy drinks and are finding it so hard because it's become a habit, ingrained in their life!

Ditch the fizz, it's just water with needless additives. And drink green tea!

honestly, i consume so much aspartame i bet my urine tastes good. =P

:laugh: My laugh for the day. Thank you!
AWESOME weight loss, btw.

OP ...
I tried eliminating splenda and crystal light and it was a big fail.
I don't drink pop as a rule but I'll have one every so often. I do drink a lot of Crystal Light.
I eat quite well and figure something is going to kill me in the end anyway. For now, I'm using the sweeteners.
I've never noticed a difference in weight loss/gain with either having them or not having them.

I have cut way back on aspartame-containing drinks and foods, and feel SO much better. I still have the occasional lo-carb energy drink (bad i know) or diet soda or light yogurt, but the less I have, the better I feel. I no longer get migraines, dizzyness, body shaking or stomach aches like I used to.

i drink a diet soda every couple days, it doesnt make me crave anything sweet any more than i already do.

A natural sweetener alternative is Stevia. It's a natural source... no calories and man is it super sweet the biggest thing you have to worry about is putting too much it'll become bitter if you add too much. My new favorite drink homemade lemonade with stevia, or even ice tea with it added to it.

On my last diet I had two diet energy drinks a day (the splenda-sweetened berry rockstar in the blue can was my favorite). I lost 80 lbs in 5 months. Didn't seem to slow down the diet any (helped, if anything). Of course, neither did my then-heavy liquor habit, so I dunno.

I think there are damn fine reasons to drop diet soda other than whether or not it impacts your diet. That **** is straight poison, frankly. But first, just cut back to one a day. Drink WATER. Your body needs it, and is designed to enjoy it, even if you've trained yourself not to. You don't need to put flavor in it, it tastes good by itself. If you really want it to taste like something, just squirt some lemon juice into it or squeeze a chunk of lime (a lime is <$.50, and you can make an entire gallon taste strongly of lime with that). Stop buying these products all the time, it's such a waste of money and doesn't actually do anything for you that isn't entirely in your head. You are meant to enjoy drinking water. I used to drink two to four liters a day of soda, and now all I drink is water, and sometimes a little milk or dark beer (though I really shouldn't, beer exacerbates the gout). That **** really does mess with your system.

If you cut your sweetener intake way back across the board, you will quickly find even an occasional diet soda tastes incredibly sweet, and real soda tastes just sickly sweet, syrupy and a little disgusting, even the ones made from real sugar. But when you get to that point, a piece of fruit will do things for you that you can hardly imagine, just an explosion of sweet flavor. Your unsweetened cereal will taste sweet, because of the milk. A piece of the darkest chocolate in the store will be as sweet-tasting as that over-sugared hershey's bar is now. Candy will have no hold over you. Pastries will be too sweet, to the point that you'll prefer your donuts old-fashioned, because the glazing is disgusting. At this point I scrape most of the frosting off a piece of cake just because I don't like it anymore, when I used to eat frosting with a spoon. You can change your relationship to sugar, but you've got to cut back the sweeteners if you want to get there.

I lost 160 lbs drinkiing diet pepsi. Have kept it off for 3 1/2 years drinking diet pepsi. Put 20lbs back on from a combination of breaking my hand and not working out. Have lost 8 lbs in the last 2 weeks drinking diet pepsi. and I drink at least 5 a day.

Oops. I meant to respond specifically to this post. Thank you for posting this! I'm sure there are better things we can drink than diet soda--but honestly if it means cutting out cookies and potato chips...I'll take the diet soda. I'm happy to hear that you've had so much success while still drinking it