Diet soda and weight loss?

Your friend is wrong.

Mycophilia wrote: »

Your friend is wrong.

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Not true.

Enjoy your diet soda.

Even if it were sugar, releasing insulin won't prevent weight loss if you are in a deficit. That's already a mistake by your friend. Also, while some artificial sweeteners may cause insulin release, aspartame does not (it does not spike blood glucose). Calories are ultimately what matter for weight loss.

SOME people (not me) report that diet soda can make them crave sweets and therefore make it harder for them to stay within their calories. If this is you, you'd not lose because of not staying within your calories, not the soda. (I'm assuming you are staying within your calories, so it's not you.)

The only possible association I have seen is that, in some studies, people drinking diet sodas have shown a tendency to eat more--either from a psychological feeling that "hey I'm drinking 0 calories so I can have another brownie" or some other behavioral association. However, there was nothing physical and nothing causal. If you are on a weight loss plan, you are monitoring those behaviors anyway so there is no reason for diet soda to have a negative effect.

The question I always ask in these type of threads where someone says, "I read it may cause cravings" or "Someone said it negatively impacts weight loss" is... "Well is that happening to you?". It's your body. Do you feel those cravings? Are you losing weight at a rate that you are satisfied with? If so, then why would your friend even make the comment about diet coke. If not, were you talking about your struggles to lose, and this was one possible theory?

As others have said, there is nothing in diet soda that would directly cause weight gain, as it has zero calories. If you aren't losing, or are gaining weight, then it is because you are eating too many calories, and there are a number of potential causes of that. If you are one of those people who feels that diet soda triggers cravings in you which would cause you to overeat, then that still comes down to eating too many calories. It's still your choice to give into the craving or not, but it isn't the diet soda that would be directly impeding your progress.

TL/DR - your friend is full of kitten.

I wouldn't be so quick to say that your friend is wrong. There's a lot of complexity here that people above are ignoring:

1. There are several high-quality, long-term studies that show an association between artificial sweeteners and weight gain and diabetes, even after controlling for the fact that heavier people use are more likely to use artificial sweeteners. (For example: "Diet soda intake and risk of incident metabolic syndrome and Type 2 diabetes in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis," Diabetes Care (2009); "Dietary intake and the development of the metabolic syndrome: the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study," Circulation (2008).)
2. Artificial sweeteners are not inert chemicals. They seems to affect the brain, including the appetite and reward pathways. (See "The effect of non-caloric sweeteners on cognition, choice and post-consumption satisfaction," Appetite (2014); "Sucralose, a synthetic organochorine sweetener: overview of biological issues," J Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health (2013); "Altered processing of sweet taste in the brain of diet soda drinkers," Physiology & Behavior (2012); "Sucralose affects glycemic and hormonal responses to an oral glucose load," Diabetes Care (2013).
3. Artificial sweeteners also seem to affect the beneficial bacteria in your gut. ("Splenda alters gut microflora and increases intestinal p-glycoprotein and cytochrom p-450 in male rats," Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health (2008).) They don't really understand fully yet how these bacteria are important for healthy body mass, but it's becoming more and more clear every day that they are important.

There's also good indications that the effects mentioned above are highly individualized, based on peoples' genetics and other factors that aren't wholly understood. So someone saying, "I live on diet soda and have lost a ton of weight" isn't really proving anything one way or the other.

Given the evidence, I certainly avoid artificial sweeteners, and would advise my friends to do the same. Because what's the point? We know for sure that sparkling water is safe, and won't negatively affect your weight loss, so just be on the safe side and drink that. You trained yourself to drink diet soda (it really is nasty if you're not used to it), so you can train yourself to drink water instead.

This comes up A LOT on MFP. You put your post under Health and Fitness Debate and I am unclear if you want a debate or if you just want a comment from us if we think or know if it could be hindering weight loss?

The answer is NO it will not. 0 calorie is 0 calorie -- absolutely NO (nada) nutritinal value in the food or drink that is labeled 0 calorie...[.edited to add, except sodium, potassium, or other - minerals or vitamin, etc.. when added]

Here are some random posts in MFP and even one in this debate forum...

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10361754/artificial-sweeteners#latest

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10365267/diet-soda

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10349375/diet-soda

I avoid artificial sweeteners such as aspartame which is the star of diet soda and chewing gums. But nope, no weight gain to be found there.

Diet soda is the ONLY way that I've found to control my sugar craving. One can or bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper and I'm fine the rest of the day.

some people might find that diet soda could trigger more sweet cravings but in and of itself, it is zero calorie and feel free to enjoy

klmcneil1 wrote: »

stevencloser wrote: »

To your first point in particular, which may also hold true for the others, all those studies can show is "People who ended up with diabetes (or whatever else) were consuming diet sodas frequently."
The way the study was carried out was a questionnaire asking for the amounts of it used, then checking a year later how many developed diabetes.
The problem with this is, diabetes is usually not something that sneaks up on you and bludgeons you over the head unexpectedly, many people know in advance if they're at risk, and may take measures to help, including switching sugary drinks for artificial sweetened. And if they were drinking lots of sweetened before (which is correlated with incidence), chances are they'll drink lots of artificially sweetened as well. And voilà, there you have it, people who drink lots of diet soda have higher incidence of diabetes.

If I'm understanding the study correctly, they controlled for that factor. But you're right in taking observational studies with a grain of salt.

But the other studies are all controlled experiments, where the same objections wouldn't apply.

From the full text:

Model 1 adjusted for baseline age, sex, race/ethnicity, examination site, and energy intake. Model 2 added additional possible socioeconomic or lifestyle confounders: attained education (less than, equal to, or more than high school), time spent in inactive and active pursuits during leisure (MET-minutes per week), smoking status (current, former, or never smoker), pack-years, and regular dietary supplement use (weekly use or more versus nonweekly use). We also explored the impact of adjustment for various dietary factors (specifically, those associated with both diet soda consumption and type 2 diabetes and/or metabolic syndrome in ours or previous studies), such as food intakes (servings per day of whole grain bread/rice/cereal/pasta, nuts/seeds, fruit, vegetables, white potatoes, refined grain bread/rice/cereal/pasta, salty snacks, desserts, red meat, processed meat, high-fat dairy products, low-fat dairy products, sugar-sweetened soda, and coffee) or nutrient intakes (fiber, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, and sodium). Finally, to assess the contribution of adiposity, we adjusted for 1) baseline waist circumference (continuous, in centimeters), baseline BMI (continuous), or both (single model); 2) change in waist circumference or body weight (most recent measurement − baseline measurement); and 3) stratification by BMI (<25 and ≥25 kg/m2).


They controlled for BMI. They did not control for subjects' knowledge of personal risk for developing T2D.