Diet soda

I lost weight eating rib steaks, full fat yogurt 8%, peanut butter, oatmeal etc, which is actual food with calories, so I think a diet coke with 0 calories will not in miraculous fashion, make me gain weight.

I used to drink and love diet sodas, but don't drink more than a handful a year just in case! Diet sodas promote Metabolic Syndrome. You can google the topic and find more. Take it or leave it!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19918336/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/t/zero-calories-same-great-taste-heart-risks/#.Tq7h2rKwUYo
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/nutrition/05symp.html

I have been drinking diet soda for years and lost lots of weight. Is it healthy ? most likely not but, neither is being extremely obese. So I decided I would drink diet soda to help me. I am now trying to kick my soda addiction after years of drinking a 2 liter a day. There are some discussions on how artificial sweeteners effect the body's metabolic system. Please don't quote me but, it something like your body is receiving sweet signals from your tastes buds but yet there is not calories for the body to use. Over time the body can not rely on your taste buds to determine if a sugar as been consumed. Made sense to me but, I don't know if there is a study to stand by this claim. I just worry about the chemical my body now has to cleanse from my body.

0 calories, 0 weight gain. Though with all the acid, it will not hydrate you and it is not great for your teeth. I think they promote water retention as well.

Not true. Dont listen to this nonsense. Calories aren't the only thing that make you gain weight. Sugar is one the primary reasons, as with salt. Diet sodas are yes, i believe better for you than regular soda IF YOU MUST DRINK IT but you have to be aware that diet soda contains forms of fake sugar ,primarily in aspartame, i.e. Splenda, Equal, Sweet n Lo, etc. Which is why you typically crave something sweet after eating/drinking something with fake sugar. Try diluting 2oz of soda into 2oz of regular water and 1oz of soda water. It doesn't taste as good as a regular diet soda, but it weens you off the sodas for a better, healthier you!

0 calories, 0 weight gain. Though with all the acid, it will not hydrate you and it is not great for your teeth. I think they promote water retention as well.

Not true. Dont listen to this nonsense. Calories aren't the only thing that make you gain weight. Sugar is one the primary reasons, as with salt. Diet sodas are yes, i believe better for you than regular soda IF YOU MUST DRINK IT but you have to be aware that diet soda contains forms of fake sugar ,primarily in aspartame, i.e. Splenda, Equal, Sweet n Lo, etc. Which is why you typically crave something sweet after eating/drinking something with fake sugar. Try diluting 2oz of soda into 2oz of regular water and 1oz of soda water. It doesn't taste as good as a regular diet soda, but it weens you off the sodas for a better, healthier you!

Your confused......if diet soda makes someone eat more, then well duh. If they eat more calories than they expend, they will gain weight, but saying diet soda causes weight gain is not thinking too clearly or understands nutrition 101. I will admit, on the internet I've heard just about everything but just can't find the science to back it up......for example,I gained weight from last night to this morning,and I didn't eat anything.............therefore sleep must cause weight gain, or was it the dark room.

I agree, show me the science or study to back it up. I also have read so much that it's hard to figure out what to believe. I had hard feelings towards sugar and in fact lost most of my weight on South Beach Diet. Or so I thought. I later realized it wasn't just SBD that help me lose weight, it was the fact I was tracking food and everything has damn sugar in it. Therefore I ate less. When I read about the Twinkie Diet (http://tinyurl.com/2422p2g) the professor did EVERYTHING I knew was wrong. Yet, weigh loss was obtained.......healthy ?? I don't know but, it kinda help me see that consumption is a huge part of weight loss. For me anyway but, whatever works for the individual. I didn't even know how to create my own system so I had to rely on books and others experience. I also learned that cutting too much out of your life at once can be a recipe for failure.

I am not a big fan of water. I try to drink some daily even the flavored water and just can't seem to drink enough. Can someone still lose weight by drinking mainly diet soda?

Well it's certainly a better choice than regular soda, BUT lot's of Sodium in Soft Drinks...I was not a big fan of water but I love it now..

My doctor told me it counts as long as there was no caffeine and no sodium.

Your doctor needs to get up to date with his caffeine research then. It's been proven that the diuretic effect of the caffeine is far, far outweighed by the actual water in the drink. Better yet, if you are a regular caffeine consumer your body gets more adept at extracting the water, to the point where it becomes pretty much the same as regular water, which in itself is a diuretic don't forget.

All these people who say diet coke causes you to eat more....well, don't eat more! Have some control! Diet soda itself will not cause weight gain...next to 0 cals means 0 gain. If you then choose to eat more food, it's down to YOU, not the soda!

I'm not going to list off a study or any scientific research here, just tell you a personal experience.

I went from drinking a ridiculous amount of water (on average, i would say more than 15 cups) to drinking ridiculous amounts of diet pop. When I started school up this fall, I had somehow switched my water habit to diet drinks. Going from one extreme to the other, my body felt absolutely horrid (mind you, i also was not getting enough sleep, eating or exercising properly). I still drink way more diet pop than I should, but I have NOT gained weight because of it. I know I don't personally feel as strong or healthy as I used to ( which is why i now make a point of filling my water bottle before and after every class), but if weight loss is your primary focus, you should not have any issues. If over all health is your primary concern, I wouldn't recommend more than a few cans a day .. I'm still trying to kick the diet pop habit, but right now if it stops me from eating a bag of candy, or choosing the wrong things in the cafeteria I'll take it !

I drink Diet sodas as my choice now, when I drink soda.
I don't do straight water, it just doesn't work for me.
What I did was pick a low sugar/calorie cordial and start drinking that, worked up to somewhere around 1.5gallons/6L a day.
Once I settled into that routine, I started making the cordial weaker and weaker, to the point where a bottle of concentrate that should give me 10L of normal strength cordial is now giving me 40-50L of cordial. It's not far off the point now where it's almost worthless adding the cordial, but I'll keep working it down till I can stand actual water.
The one bonus of the cordial trick is that you don't tend to get affected by the different flavour of water at different places.

I drink flavored water every day & plenty of it! Strawberry & Key Lime are my favorites. And they seem just fine for me.

If you're drinking HFCS soda, and switch over to sweetener soda; yes, you can see a reduction in weight.

My husband made the switch a while before we started eating better and working out, and lost about 20lbs. We're sure it was the soda because that was the only change.

Here's what every trainer I've ever had has told me:

Soda, diet or regular, essentially eats away at your muscles. It also contains a lot of sodium, and actually makes you thirsty, rather than satiated.

I've stopped drinking it. If you really don't like water, try drinking another zero-calorie flavored drink that's not carbonated (e.g., Vitamin Water or Sobe Lifewater).

The problem with diet soda is that will dehydrate you!!!

Can we see some proof of this please?

Here we go again. Let's dispel a lot of the mis-information and outright lies included in earlier responses to your topic.
1. You CANNOT gain fat simply by drinking diet soda. As someone else said, 0 calories means zero fat gain. The only way you can gain weight directly from drinking soda is if your body is retaining the water, but that's more of a function of your OVERALL sodium intake.
2. Let's talk about the sodium. 40mg as in a can of Coke Zero is not a lot of sodium by any stretch. Diet Pepsi has only 35mg, not much sodium.
3. The Ph of soda (it is slightly acidic) has absolutely nothing to do with hydration. Soda is 99% water (as Coca-Cola Inc is kind enough to remind us) and it will indeed hydrate your body.

So as long as you log your soda (for the sodium's sake) and you're within your calorie goals otherwise, you will not gain weight or impede your weight loss by drinking diet soda.

^^This^^