I decided number if years ago that I needed to drop a reasonable amount if weight. I switched to diet soda and dropped a lot of weight in a short period of time. I did eat differently, mainly stopped buying fast-food for lunch and ate salads instead. I also started going to the gym.
I went from 215 to ~150. I attribute the loss to switching to diet and the gym.
Due to life getting busy I put about 10 pounds back on. This is due to the fact that I don’t make it to the gym and don’t watch what I eat very closely.
However I think the issue isn’t so much about diet soda or not, but why the person is overweight in the first place. I put on the weight due to drinking booze and not exercising. I ate like shit because I was a practicing alkie. A year after I got sober I decided to lose some weight. Since my issue was due to drinking and not exercising and not food issues, switching to diet helped a lot.
I can believe that folks with diet issues due to craving food may react differently.
If not for diet sodas (diet Mt Dew in particular) I don’t know if I would be able to stay on track during my pre-competition training regiment and stick to the extremely restrictive cutting diet. I begin this diet three months out and diet soda is my only source of sweetness; my only relief. It is while using diet soda that I am able to bring my body fat levels down to the 4-5% range. Now, to be clear, it’s the adherence to the meal plans that brings about the results, not the diet sodas. The soda simply makes it a little easier to put myself through that months-long agony (but the soda makes it easier, not harder).
My first husband lost about 100 pounds (before I knew him) by dropping his 2-liter of Pepsi a day habit and drinking Caffeine Free Diet Rite. He stuck with diet and kept it off, too.
Anecdotes aren’t data, but I have a tough time thinking diet drinks have intrinsic weight-gain properties.
Because all other CTs, I’m smarter than everyone else and I know things. And when I went to a large HFCS distributor they had locked “offices” they wouldn’t let me in. WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?!
I’m somewhere in the middle of several of these options.
For myself, I know that drinking a diet soda with a meal will result in me eating more food before I feel full, comparable to drinking plain water. If I drink a full-calorie soda, I do get full on less food. I’m not exactly sure where the balance of calories is, but I’d say the diet soda is saving me only 50 or so calories. Sure I’ve avoided the 180 calories in the sugary soda, but I’ve consumed 130 more calories of food before feeling full. (Again, from my subjective view, water is the same effect.)
I’m not sure whether to call this intentional or not - I am aware of it, but the effect is mostly a result of the satiety signals my body is sending me.
But then I’d also take the calories in/calories out stance. All things being equal, I don’t believe diet sodas hurt my efforts to lose weight. If I’m not really committed to controlling the types and amounts of foods I consume, it’s a little silly of me to think that any superficial change is going to make a difference. That’s the real fallacy, if you ask me. Everyone wants some miracle pill, drink, food, etc. when the real problem is that you have to make real changes to your behavior.
I keep coming back to this thread trying to figure out if I can answer the question and I still don’t think I can.
“Do diet colas help you lose weight?”
What? No. Exercise helps you lose weight. Cutting calories helps you lose weight. Speed, I think, helps you lose weight. If I started a diet cola habit right now I don’t believe that I would lose any weight due to my consuming of diet cola.
“Does switching from a full-sugar cola habit to a diet cola habit help you lose weight?”
I 100% believe this to be true. I hear stories like this all the time - especially from dudes.
“Is diet cola a deterrent to weight loss?”
I don’t think so. I am familiar with the “it causes an insulin response” theories but for me, having a can of diet pop per day while dieting (where my mode of dieting requires a severe reduction in sugar and sweets) is much healthier than driving to the store in the middle of the night for a gallon of ice cream because OMG I HAVEN’T HAD SUGAR IN THREE WEEKS! Also for me, it’s my only source of caffeine.
Anyway, I’ve never thought that diet soda causes or helps weight loss. I think it helps dieting. I think quitting full-sugar sodas and drinks helps weight loss. I still think the question is weird.
I haven’t been fat for years now, but I still do this when I’m traveling or something and have to eat fast food (note: I do actually like fast food despite recognizing it is garbage, I just only eat it while traveling because I try to limit my intake of it.) It’s because yes, the average large fry and burger combo at my favorite fast food joints are around 1200 calories the large drink that comes with it is around 450 calories if it’s HFCS sweetened soda and 0 calories if it’s not. What I’m really wanting is the large fry (the burger size is always the same), and if you get the burger + large fry it makes sense to do the combo which makes the drink large as well. Plus I want a drink, but what I don’t want is 450 calories of drink. If they served jumbo bottles of water I’d probably go for it but most fast food places the bottle of water option is always just the standard bottle so you end up cheating yourself out of a few quarters of value by combing it in the large fry value meal. (These are the issues that occupy my mind on 6 hour road trips.)
I may be eating unhealthily but there’s no logical reason to just throw on 450 calories I don’t actually want (since I prefer diet cola anyway.) As for “compensation” there isn’t necessarily anything to compensate for, this fast food meal is one meal for the entire day and if you’re a large male like me who has decent musculature and is decently active for his age you can probably eat all the way up to 3000 calories and not gain weight for the day.
My experience is that with all other factors not changing, if you’ve been drinking a lot of sugar/HFCS-based sodas and then switch to diet, then yes, of course you’ll lose weight. I did that myself, changing nothing about my diet (which wasn’t particularly healthy) except the type of soda I drank. A year later I’d lost 12 pounds. At the time I was significantly overweight and 12 lbs without much effort except for the soda gave me a huge kickstart to make additional small changes, one by one. It felt less restrictive than going from crazy unhealthy stuff to an ascetic, monk-like diet. Little by little, the weight came off. Slow but steady, and I think most of us know that’s the best way to go.
I’m not really convinced about the “oh hey I’m having a diet soda so I can eat the double-fatburger with lard” notion. Maybe that’s what the skinny types think when they see a large person ordering a cheeseburger, fries and diet coke: “Oh, look at the pathetic fatty-fat-fat, thinks s/he’s actually accomplishing something by opting for 0 calories while gorging on the rest of the meal.”
But y’know, if you’re going to have the cheeseburger & fries anyway, why not substitute the most easily-dropped calorie-laden part of the meal? That’s what I did for that first year, and it really did make a difference, and that led to more changes. So screw all the thin folks who probably mocked me while I chose that course. Everything helps.
My personal theory about diet drinks combines B and C in the poll. I chose C (makes my body angry) as it comes the closest, but it’s a bit more complicated than that.
First off, of course if you simply replace the calories in sugar-soda with 0-calorie-diet-soda, it’s definitely an improvement. But you’d probably be even better off with neither.
When you drink a diet soda, you’re sending your body a signal (yum, SWEET) that it’s time to process some high-octane sugar calories. When those calories aren’t there, you crave high carb foods and sweets. So that’s option B in the poll.
But if I can simply get used to ignoring that craving and continue to eat healthy, that won’t affect me, right? Oh ho, not so fast. Now your body has learned that SWEET does not necessarily mean high octane sugar to be processed, you have trained it that SWEET means it’s time to go into low insulin, fat-storing mode. (slow metabolism) Which is fine until you eat an actual sweet and your body slows its metabolism and stores more fat and you would have dealt with the occasional unhealthy diet lapse better if you weren’t a diet soda drinker.
Bottom line, you can’t win. If you must have sweet drinks, probably better to have artificial sweeteners than actual sugar, but don’t expect it to be consequence-free.
If you’re looking for a healthier alternative to diet sodas, try a carbonated water like La Croix. You can get it plain or with natural flavoring. It’s surprisingly satisfying and can help you kick the soda habit altogether.