Are Diet Sodas Making You Gain Weight?

After delivering our 8th child, I was having trouble losing the baby weight. So I joined the Weight Watchers program.

On this sytrem, they give each food a point value and you have an allotted amount of points per day on that system.

The benefit was that I could figure out the point value for my normal meals  and continue eating what my family ate.

Unfortunately, a food's points are based on the fat, fiber and calorie content of the food.  And, as you can probably guess, the higher the fat content, the higher the point value! No delineation was made between good fats and bad fats! This was of course, before I knew about GAPS, real food and traditional methods of food preparation. Unfortunately, I had bought into the low fat/no fat propaganda hook line and sinker! But, at that point, all I cared about was losing the extra pounds and not looking like the mother of 8 or 9 or 10!

With my success in losing the extra weight, I continued to use their method of weight loss after each additional child. I consistently lost 1 - 2 lbs per week.

But, after one particularly difficult plateau period when I lost nothing, my instructor recommended I leave off diet sodas for 1 week to see if any further weight loss would occur.

I stuck religiously to the program and after making this one change - no diet sodas for a week - my weight again began dropping. Amazingly, the first week I stopped drinking diet soda, I dropped 7 pounds! Encouraged by my results, she began recommending that others also leave off diet sodas. The results were phenomenal - 7, 10 and even 15 pounds lost after 1 week of simply leaving off the diet drinks!

Aspartame

Many diet soda drinks contain aspartame, also known as NutraSweet or Equal. Aspartame was introduced in early 1980. It's 180 times as sweet as sugar without the accompanying calories.

Aspartame may cause weight gain in 3 ways:

1. Urge to Eat

When a sweet taste stimulates the tongue, the brain programs the liver to prepare for acceptance of new energy (or sugar) from the incoming food and calories. As a result, the liver stops making sugar from proteins and starch reserves in the body and begins to store the metabolic fuels that circulate the body. The liver is waiting for the nutrients available in the incoming food as signaled by the sweet taste on the tongue. The more a sweet taste without accompanying calories stimulates the taste buds, the more there is an urge to eat. Relevant to us, this can equal weight gain!

2. Water Retention

Diet sodas may also cause water retention. A can of diet soda can contain as much as 40 mg of sodium. Now, this may not seem like much. But if you drink several a day, the amount of sodium in your diet can quickly get out of control - especially when accompanied by the normal American diet of processed foods which also contain high amounts of sodium. Too much sodium can cause water retention and equal weight gain!

3. Unknown

According to the Mayo Clinic:

 If you're trying to lose weight or prevent weight gain, products sweetened with artificial sweeteners rather than with higher calorie table sugar may be an attractive option. On the other hand, some research [suggests] that consuming artificial sweeteners may be associated with increased weight, but the cause is not yet known.

As a result of all this, it's important to consider just how much you're willing to give up diet sodas in your quest to lose weight. They can be delicious, but it really doesn't seem worth it to risk retaining a bunch of water just for a sweet drink.

Also, this is far from the end of the story with aspartame. There's so much more at risk when you indulge in a glass of fizzy diet soda!

Aspartame Can Cause Other Health Problems

Besides weight gain, aspartame is associated with other potential health hazards.

These include:

1. Psychological symptoms - depression, aggression, anxiety, irritability, phobias, severe depression, personality changes, memory loss and mood disturbances.

2. Neurological symptoms - dizziness, numbness in the limbs, severe tremors, facial pain, seizures, headaches or migraines, confusion, fatigue, slurred speech and hyperactivity.

3. Physical symptoms - nausea, vertigo, skin lesions, ringing in the ears, loss of taste, muscular and joint pain, irregular menstrual cycle, heart attack symptoms and menstrual cramps, diarrhea, abdominal pain, painful swallowing, asthma-like symptoms, thinning hair, hair loss, burning during urination, excessive thirst, fluid retention, high blood pressure, allergic reactions in the mouth, weight gain or loss, leg swelling and bloating.

4. Carcinogenic - The ester bond in aspartame breaks down to the toxic formaldehyde and methanol. That's why this popular artificial sweetener is associated with cancer.

5. Stroke - Two new studies by University of Miami Miller School of Medicine researchers link diet soda and salt to increased risk of vascular events, including stroke.

I don't know about you, but none of these are things I would risk just for a nice fizzy drink. It's amazing what can sneak into your food once you stop worrying about natural ingredients.

Aspartame Breaks Down Into Formaldehyde in Your Body!

In the intestinal tract, aspartame breaks down into two neurotransmitter amino acids as well as methyl alcohol/formaldehyde. This the perfect environment for methyl alcohol to metabolize into formaldehyde! Formaldehyde according to Wikipedia:

Commercial solutions of formaldehyde in water, commonly called formalin, were formerly used as disinfectants and for preservation of biological specimens. In view of its widespread use, toxicity and volatility, exposure to formaldehyde is a significant consideration for human health.

Formaldehyde has been classified as a known human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and as a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Supposedly, the liver makes the methyl alcohol harmless.

After all this, I don't know about you, but I am not willing to put into my body a "food"  product with a known toxic byproduct!

Save yourself and say "No" to aspartame!

Sources: Huffington Post, LiveStrong 1 and 2, National Cancer Institute, University of Miami, Wikipedia, Your Body's Many Cries for Water by F. Batmanghelidj, M.D.

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