Hey guys, 3FC's resident teen here.

I've been on a 1400 calorie diet for almost a month now and I'm too scared to weigh myself, but I'm starting to notice small physical changes (sometimes I think it's my imagination but I'm sticking with this anyway)
I've been drinking lots of water all day, but the thing is that before I started this, I had a huge diet soda problem. I drank it like it was water and I'm sure it contributed to my weight gain.
I never enjoyed it for the "diet" part, but rather I prefer the flavor. (I'm a freak, I know!) It doesn't have the gross sugary film that gets stuck to your teeth and somehow tastes lighter.
Could I still occasionally drink it? Will it screw me up? I have a pretty good idea of what happens in your metabolism when you drink it, how your body expects sugar and gets no sugary kick and all that. But how bad are artificial sweeteners, really? If I have a 24 oz bottle one time over the weekend and maybe one or two 16oz glasses during the week, will it ruin my efforts?

Just looking for some opinions, thanks.

I say drink it and be observant of any changes. If it boosts your cravings, then you'll know to avoid it. Some people have trouble with it, others don't. I personally have zero probs with it.

Remain cold turkey for a few months. If you do diet drinks will taste like an undrinkable chemical soup. I couldn't believe I had ever drank and enjoyed it.

And yes diet sodas are bad news.

Most artificial sweetners have been found to possibly lead to cancer, mess up not only appetite, but possibly metabolism as well. People who drink diet sodas have larger waists.

This used to be thought that it was people with larger waists choose diet sodas. But now researchers think it might be the sodas contributing themselves. At minimum much better off not drinking them at all.

i think everyone reacts differently to diet soda...ive lost all my weight while still drinking it...it doesnt trigger cravings or overeating for me....just the opposite, it tastes like a treat and the bubbles fill me up so i don't overeat...i don't drink a ton of it but i definitely have them and it hasn't caused problems at all...however i DO think that others react differently and do what's best for your own body

I totally agree with this and have noticed this as well.
Thank you for the input guys, I have no doubt been reducing my intake but I will see how my body reacts and will see if I feel that I should quit altogether.

It is bad for you...besides being linked to cancer and alzhiemers, I won't even get into the dental aspect of it which I have seen first hand working chair side for 15 years. Some people had so much decay they needed partial dentures by 30.

Can you lose weight while still drinking it? Sure. Can you have one once in a while? Sure. Drink it excessively? My personal opinion is no.

Also, some people get a false sense of security by drinking diet soda because it's zero cals and wind up compensating with food. It can be very counterproductive.

Everything in moderation. Just my 2 cents.

How bad is diet soda? Not very. Especially if we're talking statistically significantly demonstrable harm.

Your mileage may vary. But a can every day or two has hurt neither my health nor my weight loss. And it is certainly a wiser choice than full sugar soda.

Diet soda is bad for me because it gives me terrible heartburn and headaches, that could be linked to my intolerance of sweeteners. Splenda and Sugar Twin used to give me the same problems. Oh, it also makes my face break out...zits at age 45 is just not acceptable to me! Well, I'm not fond of even regular soda because of the sugar content. That's not to say I wouldn't drink it if I could though, but sparingly. It's nice to have a soda now and then.

I've never had an adverse affect from diet soda (that I have known of...), but I recently decided to try to give it up. If you want an alternative to substitute for flavor, you might try herbal tea blends (both iced and hot). If you want the bubbles, add in some club soda for carbonation. Just a thought....

I loved soda, both regular and diet. Loved it. 3 weeks ago I quit both, along with white sugar, white bread, etc..... I'm not sure if it's a mixture of giving up all of these, but I could not feel better!!
Probably for me, if I have soda once in awhile, I'd get back into drinking it all the time. If you can handle having it once in awhile, then go ahead! Moderation's the key!!

Please stay away from diet soda!! :-(

Aspartame (artificial sweetener) is KNOWN to be a neurotoxin, which means it's literally toxic to your brain - like poison. And the carbonation that produces the bubbles in soda makes the drink acidic - not enough to burn you, but enough to put your body into a slightly acidic state if you drink enough of it. PLEASE check the research on this. It's a known fact that cancer cells can't grow in a body that's in an alkaline state, so everyone should think very hard about drinking anything that's acidic.

For your own health, avoid diet soda like the plague! :-)

Please do provide reliable support for these assertions, that a measured, label-indicated use of aspartame has any of the causal, deleterious effects you have mentioned. Do, also, substantiate the assertion than acidic food and drinks cannot be tolerated in a healthy body, or that drinking enough of it will change your blood chemistry.

I'd be very interested to see some respected sources for this information, because I've seen plenty of research to the contrary. Dietary mythology is hard to combat without data.

I've heard about everything Justbegin has posted above.

Really all you have to do is Google Aspartame symptoms to get a laundry list of issues the sweetener will do to various people.

Personally I don't drink it because i get migraines. I mean massive, beating your head with a rock, wanting to cause yourself physical harm just to distract you from the obvious crack that is forming along your skull kind of head aches...and they last up to two days for me. ....so yeah, Not rocket science that my body will not tolerate diet soda.

Most symptoms are never that bad, they can be as small as a slight dizziness.

Personally I don't drink anything that's not water or tea (unsweetened) However, I will have a full sugar soda ever so often....and by ever so often I mean once every 6-8 weeks.

I do drink homemade lemon and limeade. I add my own sugar to it because I like it more on the sour side.

I don't think I've ever heard anything good about soda in general, let alone about diet soda. I know some people like the taste of diet, but I do think it comes down to personal responsibility and balance. If you decide to stop drinking soda altogether but replace it with hyped up sugary drinks you're still not doing yourself any favors and are just swapping one thing that's probably not good for you for something else that's not as good for you. Personally, I canNOT stand anything with Splenda in it. I realize it's supposed to be a sugar derivative and therefor the "best" tasting and "best" option out there but I just can't stand it. It tastes nothing like sugar to me and I get massive headaches within 5 mins of eating/drinking Splenda items. That knocks out a fair amount of diet drinks in general for me even if I wanted to have them.

The most negative stuff I've read and heard about with diet sodas usually revolves around blood sugar problems, caffeine and acidity. You're essentially feeding yourself empty calories and for at least a portion of the population, their body has a negative reaction to it. I've never been a diet soda drinker, but on the occasion it was on sale at my grocer I would get maybe Diet Dr. Pepper because it tasted better to me than some of the options and didn't have Splenda. Recently though I've cut out ALL soda, and I feel better for it. The biggest hurdle was the caffeine because I was drinking too much of it, so I switched to a caffeine free soda like 7UP for a week, so I would "fool" myself with the carbonation. I did have headaches for a few days but they went away. Now I make different teas or lemonade, maybe have a nice glass of orange juice or just water. I noticed a big difference not just in how my energy levels were different but the way my body functioned all around.

Ultimately it comes down to what you want and what you feel comfortable with. There can be all kinds of anecdotal evidence or otherwise but you still have to make the decision that you feel best about. I'd say in all though.. moderation!

Sakai - Googling is hardly authoritative, especially when a layperson is the one doing the interpreting, and often without a sufficient frame of reference for what they're even looking at, if it is source data. If not, then you're wading through the biases of secondary or even tertiary voices.

If you personally don't drink diet sodas that's your choice - but representing anecdote as data when the data is to the contrary is where I have a beef. Anecdote has value, especially relating to diet and health, but wild-eyed broad brushing of things as deleterious when evidence doesn't bear that out in any substantive way is a big issue on boards like this and does nothing but confuse the issues and keep myths persisting.