Drink Diet Coke, Gain Weight?
If your idea of dieting is anything like mine, you’re constantly counting the calories in the foods you eat. At the end of the week if you consumed fewer calories than recommended you expect to lose weight. This is a simplified, but good strategy to weight loss however with all of the diet sodas on the market today it makes it more confusing.
Like so many others I set goals to eat less and exercise more, and part of that is counting calories every day. However, when I do my tally at the end of a meal I never write down the 32 ounces of Diet Coke I just drank with my meal. If this was a regular coke it would have been nearly 400 calories, however because the nutrition label says my Diet Coke is a 0 calorie drink I consider it ‘free’. More and more the studies have shown this is not entirely true.
When you drink a diet soda you’re essentially tricking your body. The sugar substitute in your drink doesn’t release any energy, so it doesn’t add any calories. However, studies have shown that it does still cause your pancreas to release insulin into your bloodsteam. This is a normal and necessary part of the digestive process, however when you consume excessive amounts of sugar or sugar substitute more insulin will be produced which has the side-effect of inhibiting HSL (hormons sensitive lipase); a hormone used by your body to burn the fat in foods so you can process the amino acids in them. By drinking diet drinks your tricking your body into thinking it has a lot of sugar to digest so it focuses on that instead of on breaking down the fats you just ate.
One of the most conclusive study on this topic was lead by Sharon Fowler at the University of Texas Health Center. This study looked at 1550 Americans aged 25 to 64. For people who drank 2 or more cans of Coke, or other regular soft-drinks the risk of becoming overweight was 47.2% higher than those who didn’t drink any soft drinks. For those people who drank 2 or more cans of Diet Coke or other diet soft drinks, the risk of becoming overweight was 57.1% higher than those people who didn’t drink soft drinks. This indicates that people who drank diet drinks were actually at a higher risk of being overweight than those who drank regular sodas!
It is important to note that this study does not show a causal link between Diet Drinks and obesity. Most people who drink diet sodas are more likely concerned about their weight than those who drink regular sodas. However, personally I’m going to cut back my diet drinks to one or two a week. While I wouldn’t consider myself addicted to caffeine I know that many other people are. Fortunately you can break the addiction in a couple of weeks, and when you do I’m sure your body will be better for it. Books like Addiction-Free–Naturally: Liberating Yourself from Tobacco, Caffeine, Sugar, Alcohol, Prescription Drugs, Cocaine, and Narcotics
Diet Coke doesn’t provide me with any nutritional gain, and while it does make me happy to have something sweet to drink, it doesn’t make me any happier than a cup of herbal tea. So for me, I’m going to cut out the diet soda. If you’ve tried cutting diet soda out of your diet, or are thinking about doing so please post a comment. Other reads would be very interested to hear what you have to contribute to this topic.
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I’ve given up drinking Diet Soda and it has helped me lose weight. I had my last Diet Coke 2 weeks about and I’ve already lose 8 pounds! It always felt like drinking diet soda was cheating, but it turns out I was only cheating myself. Thanks for the great article, I can certainly attest to the fact that drinking diet soda leads to weight gain in women.