Is Your Diet Drink Making You Fat?

I was thinking about some of the old habits I used to have years ago prior to me qualifying as a fitness professional.

At the time I was slightly fatter and definitely unheathier, and I remember one of those habits was downing several cans of fizzy drinks each day.

Of course this is a terrible habit for someone trying to stay lean and healthy, and I eventually cut it out of my diet completely. But you know what, I quickly switched to another dietary evil, diet coke.

I thought since I cut out all of the sugar and extra calories in regular fizzy drinks,by drinking diet coke, I could have a couple of cans each day and be much better off.

Well, I did start to lose fat after making the switch, due to the drop in calories and sugar each day. But I the downside was that I unwarily became addicted to the artificial sweeteners in the diet pop.

After a few months, I was drinking 2 or 3 cans of diet pop every day, and guess what?
I started gaining fat again.

I then began investigating the artificial sweeteners and some of the longer term studies that had been done. Well, some of the results I read about regarding what happens to these things after they enter your body are pretty scary, so much so that I have slashed my consumption down to zero.

On top of that a recent 8 year study showed that those who drink even 2 cans each day of this stuff are 57% more likely to become overweight.


Why the weight gain from something with 0 calories?

The exact reasons aren't conclusive at this point, though one of the primary concerns is the false sense of security that the habit of diet pop drinking can give.

In other words, you'll tend to get release the shackles with your diet because you feel you can consume extra calories because you're making up for it with the diet pop.

Another problem is that when anything other than water hits your stomach, you get an uptick in the hunger response...so if you grab a diet pop instead of water, there's a good chance you're going to want to eat something with it.

Bottom line, diet fizzy drinks are another one of these 'diet products' that are loaded with bad chemicals your body doesn't want or need. In most cases, these just foster a yo yo method of dieting...trying to lose fat through short term solutions that usually just magnify the problem.

Better alternatives are plain water, green tea and herbal teas.