Aspartame?
 

Aspartame isn't good for you, that's for sure, and you guys don't have any way to know if this is actually going to work because it's all theoretical but,


Supposing I am eating 800 calories a day, bedridden, will one glass of diet ginger ale with aspartame in it cause me to gain weight?

That's a pretty weird sentence to read, but do you think it will cancel out eating 800 calories? It's an increase by 500 calories of what I used to eat on a daily basis, and I can't exercise anymore, but what do you think?

Will I gain weight from the aspartame if I do this? I don't have to have it in my diet and could easily avoid it. I can use it to cut down a few more hundred calories maybe and skip a meal?

No. I think the way aspartame works is since it’s a chemical it reacts differently in the body - for some people it can make them hungrier, which could lead to weight gain. Same thing with certain medications (birth control, antidepressants etc.) - it doesn’t actually slow down the metabolism - just increases the appetite.

For me - it has never affected my appetite.

I have never had any adverse impacts from aspartame or any artificial sweetener.

I never had any problem with it when I was losing and it doesn't seem to increase my appetite either.

Hm.. okay! I'll keep an eye on it and see if it effects anything. I quit soda for several years years but I had a stomach ache a few weeks ago and caved in and bought some diet ginger ale, and I don't wanna give it up yet lol!

If it works for you I see no reason to stop drinking it. I personally cannot handle it. It makes me crave real sugar and I end up binging. Obviously it does affect everyone differently.

Personally I'd be going by whether it affects your general state of health, since the calories are minimal. I'm mostly bedbound with severe ME/CFS and don't get on well with soft drinks. The effect they have on me is pretty obvious, though I don't know what it'd be like if I drank them every day.

800 calories? I can't see your height as I'm on the mobile site, but isn't that a bit low? I'm 4'11 and the lowest I've gone for is 1050 while mostly bedbound. This time I'm going for 1200. I don't mind if the weight loss is a bit slower, I want to make sure I'm properly nourished while I do it. How fast are you losing?

Oop I forgot to log in for a few days! I'm 5'4 ish.

I've had a lot of eating disorder tendencies oops but it's been raised from 300 a day to 800 as of right now.

Honestly I don't really remember how long it was like that but it's kind of a blur, but keeping track of stuff is really hard. It's probably ... I honestly don't have a single clue. I'm at a plateau right now but I'd estimate in the past, maybe 20 pounds a year?

I really don't keep that close of a track on how much my weight changes, I get too scared to weigh! Plus time perception is completely gone for me blah

My thyroid is doing weird stuff right now though and it probably fluctuates severely at this point, I'll find out on the 12th when I go to the endocrinologist (or get closer to finding out anyways!), but it probably is messing with my metabolism.

This is all incredibly vague but truthfully I don't really know :stars:

I personally (and my mother) stay away from Aspartame… or amino sweet (some companies re-branded it because people started to avoid it), but I digress.

Years ago when I was living at home my mother and I were on a exercise and diet regime. We would keep to our diets during the week with no problem. However it was strange that on Friday night I had this craving for bread with jam, cake, pasta and so on. It was weird and I felt soo bad because all my hard work was for nothing during the week.

This would go on for a short time and I confessed to my mother what was happening to which she said she was experiencing the same thing but didn’t have the heart to tell me. So we did some research and discovered that on Friday nights for dinner as a reward we would have 1 diet lemonade or ginger ale each. Thinking nothing of it as it was a low carb option we thought it would not impact our diets.

We decided to cut out the diet soft drinks and the issue never happened again (please not that NORMAL soft drinks IE not diet… this issue did not occur). As others have said it is different for each person but in my families case while Aspartame did not make us gain weight… it certainly triggered something in our brains to want to eat more (as I said it was like I had a craving and HAD to eat high carb foods). Each person is different but I would NOT recommend this product for the other reasons as well which I can go into but this is just my personal experience.

Aspartame alone can't cause you to gain.

I'm not sure what it is about diet pop that made me crave sugars. Aspartame, sodium, caffeine? Unsure. I do know that if I drink those things, I want to eat more. It's not like I MUST, but I want to and do.

So, I cut it out. I feel so much better when I drink water, too.