How much of a diet is diet soda? You may be one of those people that doesn’t want to pick up those extra calories from regular soda, but unfortunately you cannot resist the sting effect that the carbonated drinks have to offer. There are many things to consider when mixing diet sodas into your strength-training, weight-loss, and fitness lifestyle. Here’s a few facts worth considering the next time you think it’s okay to drink a diet soda.
Diet soda is carbonated. A byproduct of oxidative energy production is CO2 carbon dioxide. CO2 is eliminated through normal cardiovascular processes, however during intense exercise CO2 buildup may occur and you do NOT want to add additional CO2 gas from carbonated drinks. In addition, carbonation may interfere with hormone production as well as cause dehydration. Diet sodas contain artificial sweeteners. Artificial sweeteners cause the brain to react to sweet taste (cephalic phase response) by preparing the liver to receive a new supply of sugar. Additionally, if no sugar appears, the liver signals an urge to eat, or possibly over-eat. Irrespective of the possible adverse effects of diet sodas on weight control, no one disputes the lack of nutrition in these diet drinks. Typically, diet sodas sole contribution to dietary and nutritional requirements is a little sodium.
If you’ve been struggling to control your appetite and your favorite drink is carbonated and artificially sweetened, you may need to eliminate it from your ‘diet’.
LIFT HARD! TRAIN HARD!
May 10, 2007 at 5:52 pm
I maintain that folks should (if possible) drop soda entirely. But for others it is a hard habit to break. In that case it seems best to at least (and at first) replace soda with diet soda. From there on, day by day, replace diet soda with water.
Of course if you are fully committed to losing weight you should drop soda and diet soda almost entirely. But many are simply trying to start living a healthy lifestyle and won’t get all in until they see some results. And an easy way to see quick results is dropping regular soda for diet soda. There is time enough to drop diet soda later.
May 10, 2007 at 7:31 pm
I agree 100% with your thinking here. Changes aren’t made overnight. On the other hand, for those who may have hit a wall with weight loss, and an occasional episode of overeating, may want to drop the diet or at least cut back. Thank you for pointing this out.
May 11, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Those are good points, but there are a few other reasons why you should not drink diet ANYTHING and it has everything to do with the artificial sweetener.
My soda of choice is Coke, which I rarely drink anymore only because I’ve found that since staying away from it, it has suddenly become excessively sweet to me. Not nearly as good as I thought it once was!!
(Sorry to be away so long – I’m back now though!)
May 11, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Hello miss e,
Happy to hear from you. Hope everything is going well for you. Yes, you’re right. There are numerous reasons why artificial sweetners in anything is not a good option. Thank you for pointing that out. I’m the same way with coke products. Years ago I could drink up to a 2 liter or more per day. To me that was a lot of soda. You’re right, I had coke about a month ago and it was horrible.