Is That Diet Soda You’re Drink­ing Actu­ally Mak­ing You Gain Weight

Diet soda is prob­a­bly mak­ing you gain weight, although it takes a study for peo­ple to wake up and real­ize that arti­fi­cial sugar replace­ments and slap­ping the word “diet” on a soda and other prod­ucts doesn’t make it a healthy choice or alternative.

About 59 per­cent of my read­ers are pay­ing close atten­tion right now. That is the per­cent­age of Amer­i­cans who con­sume diet soft drinks.

This morn­ing I was hav­ing break­fast and a cup of cof­fee and had Good Morn­ing Amer­ica on, where I saw an inter­est­ing seg­ment on Can Diet Soda Make You Fat? They teased it for about an hour, so I made sure to watch it. The seg­ment high­lighted emerg­ing stud­ies that show peo­ple who drink diet soda, which use arti­fi­cial sweet­ener, didn’t lose weight and actu­ally gained weight.

Wait. Diet soda has no calo­ries, why is this pos­si­ble? There are sev­eral the­o­ries behind it, but stud­ies show diet sodas sab­o­tage a weight loss plan. This seg­ment and research I have gath­ered over time reveal the the­ory behind diet soft drinks caus­ing weight gain.

The first the­ory is the drink has no calo­ries, unlike reg­u­lar soda, peo­ple con­sciously eat more because they think they are “sav­ing” calo­ries. To put it another way, I’ll have a Big Mac, fries, an apple pie, and a diet soda.

The next the­ory is a bit more com­plex, deal­ing with your body mech­a­nisms and how arti­fi­cial sweet­ener found in sodas, other soft drinks, and foods inter­act with those mech­a­nisms. Lately I’ve heard sev­eral ideas that your body “learns” and con­nects the taste of a food or drink with the calo­ries asso­ci­ated — this sounds likely, just how your sense of smell can affect appetite and crav­ings. So when we taste and eat food or taste and drink a bev­er­age, the body pre­pares for the calo­ries. Diet soda and arti­fi­cial sweet­ener con­fuses the body since the expected calo­ries are absent. This tease now causes you to become hun­gry and crave food since the body still wants and expects those calo­ries, which then makes you eat more. The stud­ies on Good Morn­ing Amer­ica say that it only takes one 12oz can of diet soda a day to affect your metab­o­lism. ONE diet drink a day could increase your chances of gain­ing weight. I don’t know any soda drinkers that only con­sume one can of their favorite soda a day, do you?

Worse, diet soft drinks are “the sec­ond most pop­u­lar low-calorie, sugar-free prod­ucts in the nation” — Calo­rie Con­trol Coun­cil. Yes, there is one.

I am inclined to agree with the sec­ond the­ory that the body learns and relates the the fla­vor of bev­er­ages and foods with the asso­ci­ated calo­ries, based on per­sonal expe­ri­ence alone. A friend told me sev­eral years ago that he linked feel­ing lethar­gic and mediocre work­outs to drink­ing soda. Another “quit” soda and most other man­u­fac­tured bev­er­ages all together and not only felt more bal­anced through­out the day, he also lost sev­eral pounds within the first month — and he is not overweight.

The calo­rie man­age­ment debate seems end­less and this blog is no stranger to this fact. No more than a week or so ago I responded to emails about two pre­vi­ous posts Meal Plan not Diet and Diet ver­sus Meal Plan with a blan­ket Diet ver­sus Meal Plan Response to restate my case.

I see a theme devel­op­ing from all the health and diet stud­ies over the last sev­eral years: It’s not just the quan­tity of the calo­ries you take in, but the qual­ity of calo­ries. Sure diet soda has no calo­ries, but if drink­ing diet soft drinks makes you crave food and ulti­mately snack on the wrong kinds of foods, then is it really help­ing you?

Related Posts:

• If You Want To Lose Weight, You Just Might Want To Add Muscle
• Diet Soda, Arti­fi­cial Sweet­en­ers, Exer­cise, & Workouts
• The Essen­tials on Rheuma­toid Arthri­tis and Weight Loss
• Tips For When You Hit A Plateau
• Diet vs. Meal Plan response.
• Diet vs. Meal Plan, continued…
• Diet vs. Meal Plan