Diet Soda

I find that having a diet soda once or twice a day fills in those gaps when I'm feeling peckish and in need to something tasty. Should I be staying away from them, or is one or two diet sodas a day okay?

That depends.  Read the ingredients on your diet soda.  It's a bunch of chemicals that include things like Phosphoric Acid.  Take a piece of raw meat and toss in it a cup full of diet soda.  Leave it in the fridge over night and look at, if there's still anything left in the morning.  Then decided if you still want to drink them every day.

My sister is a nurse practioner and she has seen studies saying that aspartame makes you hungrier. I've been paying more attention to myn reaction to diet soda and I think it is true. I have switched to water flavored with lipton's white tea to go packets (diluted to just a mild flavor) which do not have apartame.

I went from drinking the equivelant of a 12 pack of diet soda a day and granted I wasnt as hungry but... the salt has to be crazy. So what I have done is like mkculs is go to the Lipton tea to go.. I like the green tea because there is a couple flavors that have caffeine in it... try it maybe it will work for you.... Good Luck!

there's only about 35 mg of sodium in a can of diet coke. The only difference is that it can make you dehydrated so you should drink more water, but besides that I drink 1-2 cans of diet soda a day and I haven't had any problems yet.

I have also read studies that suggest that diet soda can actually make you eat more and give you sugar cravings.  I stopped drinking it.  My mother-in-law used to drink 5 cans a day.  She lost weight when she cut it out of her diet.  It could have been a coincidence, but it was enough proof for me to stay away from it.  I drink water with a squirt of lemon juice (which is supposed to have health benefits).  It's actually pretty refreshing!

yup. diet sodas tends to induce subsequent cravings and hunger pangs.

your tend to crave foods (especially sugary substances) when your blood glucose is low (insulin production causes glucose in your blood to be converted to fat for storage, and this lowers your blood glucose levels.) the thing is that when you try to 'trick' your body by drinking diet soda, what happens is this.

the taste of sugar causes insulin to be secreted in your body nonetheless. But there's actually no sugar going into your body, but the insulin still takes effect. this reduces your blood sugar by quite a bit, which in turn makes you feel sluggish/lethargic, AND crave something sugary to increase your energy and blood sugar levels. you end up likely to be eating more than you would have if you hadn't had the diet soda in the first place... but the same principles still apply i suppose. if you are able to control your appetite subsequently nonetheless, a calorie is still a calorie, and you probably won't end up gaining... depends.

Just because something doesn't have calories doesn't mean it's good for you. Soda has pretty much nothing but chemicals in it, and I prefer to stay away from it, plus it bloats you.

I'm going to offer the opposite view point and say that diet coke is totally fine -

first of all it has no sodium (at least diet coke in the UK have none), and whilst in theory it may possibly make you hungrier, it doesn't make you eat more.  If you are keeping within a calorie limit then it doesnt matter - you won't gain weight

Plus, for me, it kills cravings.  If I'm a bit hungry, diet coke does it for me everytime.  Plus it definitely doesn't make me crave sugar - I don't even like most sugary foods. 

I lost about 40 lbs and drank diet coke (I kept it off for year and a half too)  so it can't be all bad!