Diet Soda, Arti­fi­cial Sweet­en­ers, Exer­cise, & Workouts

It was about a year and a half ago that I wrote a post about how stud­ies over the past sev­eral years are show­ing that foods using arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers, like diet sodas, may not be so good if you are try­ing to get fit and lose weight. It seems that the exact details are still being ironed out, but sev­eral the­o­ries con­tinue to emerge.

As I’ve dis­cussed pre­vi­ously, even though arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers have no calo­ries research has shown they can cause you to gain weight. It seems that sci­ence has found that the brain makes an asso­ci­a­tion between taste and the caloric con­tent of food and drink. When you taste it, the brain trig­gers mech­a­nisms in the body that pre­pare for the calo­ries to burn. When those calo­ries don’t arrive, the body trig­gers crav­ings in order to get the calo­ries it was expect­ing. And, think about when you have crav­ings. Do you eat a sen­si­ble amount? I didn’t think so.

Now, if you are in seri­ously work­ing out with a fit­ness rou­tine with the goal to lose weight, gain mus­cle, get ripped, or all of the above, you need to max­i­mize the nutri­tional value of every­thing you eat. This means lim­it­ing crav­ings is imperative.

Foods with lit­tle or no nutri­tional value, so called “empty calo­ries”, can sab­o­tage you. While there are lit­tle to no calo­ries, it seems that the body doesn’t quite metab­o­lize the ingre­di­ents right:

Fruc­tose, a pri­mary ingre­di­ent in many sodas, can­not be bro­ken down into use­ful energy. For this rea­son it is stored directly as fat.

Stud­ies have also shown there may be a link between arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers and the amount of energy used by the body:

In a study designed to mea­sure energy expen­di­ture, the saccharin-conditioned rats had slightly lower energy expen­di­tures after eat­ing a high-calorie meal con­tain­ing sugar.

Does this mean you should cut soda out of your diet com­pletely? That’s up to you, and depend­ing on your fit­ness goals, it just may be nec­es­sary. For me doing P90X, I try to severely limit my intake of soda. I try to drink mostly water, but every now and then I do want some­thing to drink with taste so I’ll have a glass, but that’s about it. And by every now and then, I mean once a week, if that. Based on what I’ve what dis­cussed with friends and read, I don’t drink soda reg­u­larly and it’s some­thing I sug­gest to others.

When look­ing into the nutri­tional value of food and drink, don’t just look at the calo­ries, carbs, fat, and pro­tein. Look at the other ingre­di­ents as well. Look at what kinds of arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers are used. The bal­ance between the quan­tity and qual­ity of foods is key, and it appears from recent research that arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers can throw off that bal­ance. Sodas are ok occa­sion­ally and in mod­er­a­tion, but I don’t think it would be a good idea to down a can after your workout.

Related Posts:

• Is That Diet Soda You’re Drink­ing Actu­ally Mak­ing You Gain Weight
• P90X One On One, Chest, Back, and Balls
• Wow, just wow.
• P90X, Day 92 – X Stretch
• P90X, Day 91 – Chest and Back
• P90X, Day 90 – Yoga X
• P90X, Day 89 – Core Synergistics
• P90X, Day 88 – X Stretch