Diet coke - does it make you put on weight

Stop drinking it! Giving up sodas was this best thing I did a couple years ago. The artificial sweeteners in diet drinks make you hungry so you tend to eat more if you consume a lot of diet sodas.

What if you don`t drink it so often, more like twice a week or something?

Or how about the artificial sweeteners in Crystal Light?

Same thing?

I agree with this... I am a total caffeine addict but I've had to wean myself down from coffee and diet coke just to get back to a regular sleep schedule.... I was having problems falling to sleep when I was finally able to.

so much information really hard to tell what is true or not.... mine goes both ways, sometimes it makes me put on weight but then others it makes no difference. it definetly makes me bloat though!

I know it won't help with the artificial sweetener issue, but I now drink diet lemonade instead of diet coke, so at least I get the sweet fizzy hit, but without the caffeine.

I don't believe it makes you put on weight.

YOU make you put on weight. If you find yourself getting hungry straight after you have a diet coke, prepare for it and simply don't eat. It's just fake hunger (unless you truly have got an empty stomach) owing to the chemicals.

It's not very good for ya but it won't 'make' you put on weight.. it has no calories..

There seems to be alot of scaremongering about aspartame. It is myth and general bad science.
Real studies show no link between increased appetite and aspartame. In fact many studies show a DECREASED appetite with aspartame.

For the geeky types who read this stuff; citation.... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7938234

Heres another and snip ... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1881987

" Consumption of two soft drinks (560 ml, 320 mg aspartame) significantly reduced subjective hunger from 11:05 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. compared to one soft drink (280 ml, 160 mg aspartame) or 280 ml of mineral water. Thus ingestion of soft drinks containing aspartame did not increase short-term subjective hunger or food intake."

Also no studies show aspartame causes water retention. Anyway, Water retention caused by diet (glycygen in muscles etc) is not in itself a health issue. You need water for your muscles to function and repair themselves. Most people spend their life so dehydrated.

To All those conspiracy sites saying aspartame is poison and killing everyone I say where are all the dead people?

If you do a little research you find the source of the aspertame myth started in 1998 with an email scarelore...

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blasp.htm

and here

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blasp2.htm


Bottom line is diet drinks do not make you fat or hungry or ill and can be a good way to help keep calories down.
Ive lost over 75lbs over the last year drinking monster blues (no-cal) (infrequently) , diet coke (everyday), and using splendor as an occasional sugar replacement.

If you are still concerned about your diet coke, just water it down a bit with some good scotch

Did no one from the uk watch the secret eaters program?

1 guy used to drink alot of diet coke a day, probably about 2ltr as he was trying to lose weight, and what it does is, you think it supresses the urge for fizzy drink, but without the sugar intake. But it will make you want to eat more sugary foods as your taste buds are not getting that sweet taste and kick, so you will actually eat more! There is still alot of hidden sugars in diet coke as well.

I have found the same problem. My dentist told me to stop drinking so much diet coke as it was not helping my teeth as well.

I would say ween yourself off diet coke and drink water instead if you think it is making you hungry. If you think something is making you hungry or gain weight, it is usually best to avoid it. Except for chocolate. Chocolate is an exception to everything

I quit cold turkey because of my teeth (didn't want to start having problems as I got older per dentist) and then soon realized that I didn't crave sweets anymore. I have always had Diet Pepsi every day - lots of it- and always craved cookies, candies, anything sweet. There is no concrete evidence on whether it causes cravings or not. I don't care. FOR ME, I just drink water now and I have lost 43 pounds in the process. You could always try it and see if it worked for you.

Diet soda won't make you gain weight. However, it could be a trigger food for you.

I suggest that you simply stop drinking the stuff and see what happens.

Stop drinking it! Giving up sodas was this best thing I did a couple years ago. The artificial sweeteners in diet drinks make you hungry so you tend to eat more if you consume a lot of diet sodas.

SO TRUE!

Yup!

Stop drinking it! Giving up sodas was this best thing I did a couple years ago. The artificial sweeteners in diet drinks make you hungry so you tend to eat more if you consume a lot of diet sodas.

No they don't, they don't increase insulin nor blood glucose. Indeed studies show this:

Overall - http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7921865

Aspartame - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1946186

Saccharin - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7652029

Sucralose - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21245879


Don't let facts get in the way of your interesting story tho

I live for Diet Coke. At work I drink at least 3 x 500ml bottles and at home, a few glasses a night.

I am trying to cut out a couple and replace with water, purely because it's costing me a fortune, but I can't cut it out all in one hit - I am making a lot of changes at the moment with one thing and another and adding this to the mix might disrupt everything.

Thanks

Stop drinking it! Giving up sodas was this best thing I did a couple years ago. The artificial sweeteners in diet drinks make you hungry so you tend to eat more if you consume a lot of diet sodas.

No they don't, they don't increase insulin nor blood glucose. Indeed studies show this:

Overall - http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7921865

Aspartame - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1946186

Saccharin - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7652029

Sucralose - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21245879


Don't let facts get in the way of your interesting story tho

Haven't seen any HARD FACTS in this thread. If it works for you, great. If it doesn't, keep drinking. For ME, it cured years of craving sweets all the time. It was the only thing I did differently during that time. Just woke up one day and realized I hadn't been munching out on sweets during every day. This was the month before I found MFP and started tracking calories. We all know that there is not scientific links to some of our "observations", but that doesn't mean there won't be one in the future, now does it???

Stop drinking it! Giving up sodas was this best thing I did a couple years ago. The artificial sweeteners in diet drinks make you hungry so you tend to eat more if you consume a lot of diet sodas.

No they don't, they don't increase insulin nor blood glucose. Indeed studies show this:

Overall - http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7921865

Aspartame - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1946186

Saccharin - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7652029

Sucralose - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21245879


Don't let facts get in the way of your interesting story tho

or don't let personal bias get in the way of good research?

"In the constant battle to lose inches or at least stay the same, we reach for the diet soda. Two studies presented June 25 at the American Diabetes Association’s Scientific Sessions suggest this might be self-defeating behavior.

Epidemiologists from the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio reported data showing that diet soft drink consumption is associated with increased waist circumference in humans. They also discussed a second study that found aspartame raised fasting glucose (blood sugar) in diabetes-prone mice."

“Data from this and other prospective studies suggest that the promotion of diet sodas and artificial sweeteners as healthy alternatives may be ill-advised,” said Helen P. Hazuda, Ph.D., professor and chief of the Division of Clinical Epidemiology in the School of Medicine. “They may be free of calories but not of consequences.”

http://www.uthscsa.edu/hscnews/singleformat.asp?newID=3872

AND

"We have recently investigated the effect of different macronutrient compositions on plasma glucose and insulin levels during an acute bout of exercise in 14 men with type 2 diabetes. We compared the same subjects in random order in five different conditions: 1) high–glycemic index sucrose meal, 2) low–glycemic index fructose meal (both of which are matched for total calories [455 kcal], macronutrient composition, and taste), 3) aspartame meal (358 kcal), 4) high-fat/low-carbohydrate meal (also containing 455 kcal), and 5) fasting. We hypothesized that using fructose or aspartame instead of sucrose would have a lower impact on insulin release and glucose response than a sucrose-sweetened meal.

Contrary to all expectation, the aspartame breakfast induced a similar rise in glucose and insulin levels at baseline than the sucrose meal, even if the aspartame meal had the same taste, and was 22% lower in calories and 10% lower in carbohydrates, with an inferior glycemic index."

http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/30/7/e59.full