Why don't diet colas help you lose weight? See OP before answering.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Should be in GD but polling is not allowed there.
I’ve posted some threads on here challenging the counting calories crowd and here is a new one. I put it as a poll too to see how the SD is broken down on this topic. Most people now believe that diet drinks do not help you lose weight despite replacing high caloric drinks like sports drinks, energy drinks, regular colas, fruit juice, etc. I’ve heard many theories how so I’d thought I’d start a GD on it.

Intentional Sabotage - Although most Americans claim to not be able to do math, they trust themselves to do calorie calculations in their head on the fly, at least enough to know that walking a flight of stairs + drinking a Diet Dr. Pepper saved them enough calories so they can eat a jelly donut.

Unintentional Sabotage - Some hold to a strict calories in vs. calories out but allow that there are factors that influence eating habits that we cannot control. For example, the book Wheat Belly posits that modern wheat is a strong appetite stimulant and will by itself trigger 400-500 extra calories a day in extra eating. With diet colas, the theory is your body tastes something sweet and floods the bloodstream with insulin. Since there is no sugar there and you body needs to balance out the insulin, you now crave carbs and more particularly sugars. So you eat more than you need and you gain weight.

Makes your body more efficient - AFAIK, part of the problem with weight loss is that the human body is so efficient at extracting calories so I don’t think this theory is anywhere near true but I’ve heard it so I’m including it. The idea is that drinking diet sodas sets up your body to process caloric food. Since there are no calories in diet soda, your body is ramp up and will extract more calories from food later on than it normally would.

It does help you lose weight - although with the chemicals in there most people think that you’ll end up stupid and full of the cancer. All I know is I like diet drinks because leaded drinks taste too syrupy.

I’m a doctor so I won’t explain it because you wouldn’t understand - if you want to troll, choose this option.

Other - Aspartame lowers your BMR? George W. Bush passed a secret law allowing HFCS in diet drinks to be considered “zero calories”? Modern living has our bodies so fucked up, it doesn’t know what to do? If you have your own pet theory, post it here.

2

If it’s secret law, then how do you know it exists?

3

Colas were originally developed as a sort of bitter tonic. Meant to ease indigestion and stimulate appetite. Plus drinking a lot of something, especially with fizz, can expand your stomach capacity and leave you feeling emptier after you’ve absorbed the liquid. Plus the insulin thing you mentioned.

That’s my theory. Years ago I did some semi-crash dieting using liberal amounts of diet cola, which worked well enough, but I always felt goofy half an hour after drinking a lot of diet cola.

I kinda liked Diet Coke Plus…I think it’s gone…

4

I’ve seen the current meme making the media circles touting “Diet sodas actually make you gain weight!!”
Dig into the small print and they base this on diet sodas possibly increasing your appetite. I guess they assume that just because you might feel hungry you’re not going to be able to help yourself and just stuff your face.
If you’re trying to regulate your weight by eating whenever you feel hungry good luck with that.

5

If you drink soda with sugar normally, then switch to diet, with no other changes in your eating habits, you will lose weight. Any diet may make you feel hungrier or change your metabolism in some way, but dropping the sugar from sodas will make a significant difference in your calorie intake. That assumes you are drinking a significant amount of soda to start with, if you only drink 8 ounces of sugared soda a week you won’t notice much difference switching to diet.

6

There’s no hard science (yet) that says artificial sweeteners make you gain weight. The very recent heart connection for women is a study that didn’t correct for confounding factors. Media hype makes me nuts. The biggest reason to drink diet soda is that you like the taste and don’t want to rot your remaining teeth. The biggest reason to NOT drink diet soda is that it’s crap. Chemicals, minerals, gas, and water. It IS usually sterile, though.

7

Animal studies had suggested not that artificial sweeteners caused an insulin spike but that they (depending on the study) either increased glucose absorption and/or other hormones that are sugar responsive that regulate metabolism (collectively called incretins); studies in humans have not, however, consistently seen the same results.

Given that I’ve moved more towards the neurobiologic explanation, which is really a fancy version of what you label “untentional sabotage” but still am mostly in the “It’s complicated” camp as more than one likely contribute in most people in the real world.

There is however more evidence for it than one study not controlling for confounders. 100% settled howver? No.

From the latter link:

FWIW.

8

Anybody who is keeping their diet on lockdown is probably going to see weight loss if they switch to diet soda; unfortunately, most people (particularly the ones who are overweight) eat when they’re hungry, and base their serving size on how hungry they are. As a diabetic, I’ve been looking into the effects of artificial sweeteners and the idea that they cause your body to think you just ate a bunch of sugar is being presented by more and more reputable researchers. I’ve also seen a lot of rationalization out there… “if you eat a cookie with a diet soda, they cancel each other out.”

9

Diets generally don’t work to start with. There may be no effect from the diet soda at all. The link might be as simple as those who tend to gain weight are the ones who tend to drink diet soda and correlation doesn’t equal causation.

10

DSeid, thanks for the factual info and insights.

I suspect there’s a link between this issue and the study that showed that kids don’t get a “sugar rush”. That study compared parents’ evaluations of kids’ behavior after eating treats provided by the study. Parents didn’t know whether the treats contained sugar or a substitute. The study showed that there was no change in reported behavior based on whether the treats contained sugar or a substitute. So far, all good.

But the common interpretation of the study in the media was essentially “There is no such thing as a sugar rush.” IMHO, the study didn’t show that there isn’t a rush; it just showed that the rush isn’t due to sugar per se. There could be a rush, but caused by sweet taste (or whatever) rather than blood sugar levels.

Likewise, it’s hard to tease out the differences between sugar and sugar substitutes in diet. I’m not surprised that people who use diet sodas still gain weight: people who drink diet sodas are already selected for people who have weight gain issues (mostly). Or, they’re people who have a very high craving for sweet taste, but don’t think it’s healthy to consume that much sugar. (I doubt the substitutes are more healthy than sugar, but that’s beside the point.) No doubt many studies try to compensate for this, but it’s obviously not easy.

My suggestion to dieters is to try to do what I did: I switched from sweetened soda to carbonated water. I don’t have a diet issue, but I’ve always craved sweet sodas (mostly, 7up or Sprite). I switched to carbonated water (I use a Sodastream), and now I have the same craving for that carbonated water that I used to have for the soda. One or two 12-oz glasses a day is enough. I save a sweetened soda for a special treat, but frankly, it’s not that much more of a treat than the unsweetened carbonated water.

I do still love a good root beer, but I have one or two a week, with lunch.

This might not be terribly satisfying to those who crave colas. Every now and then I get a craving for a cola, and can empathize with people who like them. Fortunately, most of the time, for me a cola is just another fizzy drink that I don’t really prefer. It’s funny how strong and specific a craving can be, and I find it interesting that I only feel the cola craving rarely (less than 1/month). I wonder if it’s a response to some deficiency.

I bet you’re right (with the rest, too). It’s amusing how often we see someone get a double burger and super-sized fries with a diet coke. Sorry, but the difference between the diet coke and a coke isn’t going to compensate for the double burger and supersized fries. 300 calories versus 1200?

11

They certainly helped with my weight loss. Now if they can make diet beer, I’m set for life.

12

I’d heard the whole stimulating hunger thing, and to someone who isn’t particularly knowledgeable, it makes enough sense. Still, I’m not sure that that’s the major cause, rather I think it’s a red herring. Consider, even if we allow for that, if someone replaces all the soda he drinks with diet and makes no other changes, then it follows that he’ll lose weight. However, the amount of weight that person will lose is proportional to how much soda that person drinks. As such, someone like me who may have a soda maybe every week or two, if I were trying to lose weight and switched to diet, any results I’d see would be negligible. OTOH, if I were the type of person who drank a soda or two a day, the results very well may be noticeable. However, if I were the type of person who had a soda or two a day, that’s likely indicative of other issues with my diet.

That is, I’d intuitively suspect that there’s a strong correlation between someone drinking one or more sodas a day and having other major issues with his diet whereas someone who drinks less soda is probably less likely to have as many or as severe issues with his diet. So, is it possible that for some or many of those who drink many sodas and might theoretically see a meaningful drop in caloric intake might also have such a high caloric intake from other sources that it diminishes the impact of that drop.

Further, for someone who otherwise has a poor diet and suddenly has a few hundred calorie deficit in his diet, short of calorie counting, knowing that our ability to estimate the calories in food is often notoriously poor, maybe he won’t even realize those dozen extra chips or slightly larger slice of pie due to feeling slightly hungrier from the deficit, and so with such an already poor diet, it’s quite easy to replace a few hundred calories with only a few extra bites of something else.

In short, I think there’s just too many variables to reliably control to really get a good idea of how much impact diet soda may have. And, really, what’s the incentive to do such a study? Certainly the diet soda industry doesn’t want to fund a study that may undermine their marketing, and the health industry should really be recommending not to drink any soda and a healthier diet in whole rather than switching from regular to diet soda, the interest is more in the long-term health impact of the chemicals in the soda than on weight loss.

13

One thing I’ve wondered about diet sodas is if it creates a feedback loop for sweetness. Since it’s diet, the person does not feel the same restraint, so they get into a cycles of:

thirsty->drink soda->pleasure from sweetness
bored->drink soda->pleasure from sweetness
tired->drink soda->pleasure from sweetness (and caffeine)
etc

Rather than treating diet soda as an occasional treat, it is used many times a day for different purposes. The person is training themselves to drink soda because of the reward. They are not learning restraint or how to manage their urges.

Successful weight loss comes from many small choices. It’s not just swapping out the soda. It’s doing without a lot of things that you might be craving. So I wonder if the seemingly ‘consequence free’ diet soda prevents people from developing the self control necessary to maintain a healthy weight.

14

Only if he was maintaining steadily before (or gaining less than the caloric difference due to the change to diet).

My guess is that most folks who are gaining weight and then switch to diet are still gaining weight, for the reason you mentioned: the diet cola alone isn’t enough, by far.

But I wouldn’t be surprised to find there are second-order effects, such as sweetness without sugar exacerbating hunger.

15

It happens to me. About six hours after drinking one, my appetite increases quite a bit. It’s only the ones with aspartame, not Splenda, although I’m not convinced Splenda’s all that great, either.

I stay away from all that diet soda shit, and soda in general.

16

It’s really simple actually. Studies have shown that when people consume “diet” products, they feel entitled to treat themselves to additional calories afterwards.

http://www.mindlesseating.org/pdf/LowFat-JMR_2006.pdf

17

I don’t think diet soda helps a population lose weight on average (although I think specific people can lose weight by switching). But I wasn’t sure whether to pick intentional or unintentional sabotage as the reason on the poll.

I think the assumption that diet soda “replaces” regular soda or that people “cant’ tell the difference” is wrong. Even if the soda tasted the same (which it doesn’t), I believe the brain knows how many calories it consumed based on a variety of other signals besides taste. Blood sugar, for example. So, I don’t think artificial sweeteners need to trigger an “insulin surge” or other bizarre biological effect in order to cause compensatory eating. The simple fact that they don’t really contain any calories causes people to not feel satisfied after drinking them. Thus, they naturally eat more later, whether they consciously realized the soda was diet or not.

I think this survey of the literature from a few years ago best matches my position: Artificial sweetener use among children: epidemiology, recommendations, metabolic outcomes, and future directions - PMC

18

As a lifetime yo-yo dieter, I know a thing or two about losing weight. Not so much about keeping it off, of course, but I’ve been on a bazillion diets over the past 40+ years.

One of the things ‘they’ tell you when you’re on a diet and feel hungry is that it might not be hunger at all but thirst. But there’s a limit to how much water a person can drink in an often vain attempt to stave off hunger. Diet Coke, however (at least in my experience), does assuage hunger, gives me the energy to go on and wakes me up somewhat when I’m feeling sluggish.

I’ve read reports on the 'net stating that diet soft drinks trick the pancreas into thinking the drinker has drunk a sugary drink and therefore insulin is released. I don’t know whether I believe that or not but I still rely on Diet Coke to ward off those pangs as I try, for the last time I hope, to keep the weight off.

19

The results of your poll (and my experience) seem to indicate that “most people” don’t actually think that. I suspect that the appearance that they do is just confirmation bias.

20

The same thing happens to me six hours after I eat or drink anything.