For years, researchers have confirmed it: Drinking diet soda makes you fat. But how does it affect people who are already dieting?
Believe it or not, new research from the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Health and Wellness Center reveals that it actually helps people lose more weight.
The results, according to lead researcher Dr. Jim Hill, aren’t all that surprising.
“The results, to us, were not at all surprising,” says Hill, whose study was recently published in the health journal Obesity. “Many people who have successfully lost significant weight are heavy users of noncaloric sweeteners.”
The Research
Recruiting 300 adults who wanted to lose weight, Hill had one objective: Find out if diet sodas helped or worsened a person’s ability to lose weight while on a diet. In previous research, scientists found that those who sipped diet soda regularly generally weighed more–but admittedly, these people were never on a diet. Hill’s research looked at how it functioned in a dietary setting–and it turns out he was onto a good hunch.
First, he split the participants into two groups: A group ordered to drink diet soda and a group ordered to only drink water. Then, over the next 12 weeks, Hill watched as they continued to diet with or without diet soda.
As he soon found out, those who drank diet soda lost an average of 13 pounds Those who drank plain water, however, only lost 9 pounds.
That’s a weight loss increase of over 30 percent.
“It makes sense that it would have been harder for the water group to adhere to the overall diet than the (artificially-sweetened beverage) group,” says Hill. “The most likely explanation was that having access to drinks with sweet taste helps the (artificially-sweetened beverage) group to adhere better to the behavioral change program.”
However, not all scientists are convinced that drinking diet soda for weight loss is a good thing–including Purdue University professor Susan Swithers.
“Doing these short-term studies that look at weight can’t really tell us anything about whether or not these products are contributing to these increased risks,” says Swithers. “What the prospective studies actually suggest is that if you go out 7 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, the cohorts of individuals who are consuming diet sodas have much worse health outcomes.”
And those health outcomes happen to be diseases that are currently on the rise in the U.S.–such as heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.
On the contrary, dieting down to a healthier weight can also reduce the risk of these diseases.
Kristi Norton, one of the participants in the study, however believes that diet soda made her feel worse when she drank it–and therefore affected her motivation.
“I feel like I could 1000% tell the benefit of drinking water only,” says Norton. “I felt better, I had more energy, I felt healthier, I just generally felt way better. And I can feel the difference now when I drink a diet drink, I can feel this ‘heaviness’.”
So what’s best for you? As Hill indicates, if you already have a diet soda habit, quitting now could actually make it harder to diet. But if you don’t already drink diet soda, it’s best not to make it a habit.
Readers: What do you think–should you drink diet soda on a diet or not?
Source:
Diet Soda For Weight Loss? New Study Says It Works – CNN.com
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Correlation doesn’t equal causation. Artificial sweeteners are terrible for your health and cause cravings of sugar and sweets. Club soda is the way to go.