Diet soda gives you stomach fats ??

I read online more than once on two different sites that diet soda makes your stomach fat..

and I have not been drinking diet soda ever since..thinking that I'd rather gain weight all over than in one certain spot..especially my stomach..

and then I had a friend telling me that is not true..

what do you think ?

It's not true....  You store fat around your stomach and elsewhere by eating too many calories.   However, the artificial sweetners in sodas and other foods are believed to contribute to fluid retention - as do things like sugar, salt, preservatives, caffeine and alcohol.   Fluid retention can appear on the body around the stomach and thighs making things look 'wobbly'.  Cellulite looks worse, for example.

Nonsense. Diet soda is calorie-free.

Besides, it doesn't work that way. Anyone who tells you that this kind of food will make you store fat here, and that sort of food will make you store fat there is totally wrong. Your body doesn't work that way.

I don't know about where the fat is going to collect, but there is a correlation between diet soda and weight gain. Lots of weight in some cases. Here is a short blurb from a research paper out of Texas. There is similar data from Tufts:

"In fact, when the researchers took a closer look at their data, they found that nearly all the obesity risk from soft drinks came from diet sodas.

"There was a 41% increase in risk of being overweight for every can or bottle of diet soft drink a person consumes each day,"

That is frightening stuff. My doctor turned me on to this because when I switched from beer to diet soda I was still gaining weight. At first it was demoralizing but I adjusted. I drink plenty of water on the rocks with a wedge of lemon. It is always something, isn't it?

Original Post by silverback1952:

I don't know about where the fat is going to collect, but there is a correlation between diet soda and weight gain. Lots of weight in some cases. Here is a short blurb from a research paper out of Texas. There is similar data from Tufts:

"In fact, when the researchers took a closer look at their data, they found that nearly all the obesity risk from soft drinks came from diet sodas.

"There was a 41% increase in risk of being overweight for every can or bottle of diet soft drink a person consumes each day,"

That is frightening stuff. My doctor turned me on to this because when I switched from beer to diet soda I was still gaining weight. At first it was demoralizing but I adjusted. I drink plenty of water on the rocks with a wedge of lemon. It is always something, isn't it?

I think the problem is that when people drink diet soda they think it gives them room to eat extra calories.  I think people actually tend to eat MORE when they drink diet soda because they always rationalize another bite of something with "well, I drank a diet soda today, so I can afford to eat this".  I'm not saying diet soda is good for you, but if you count calories, it will not make you gain weight.  I have lost almost 25 pounds and I drink a couple of Coke Zeros every week. 

Original Post by kbella24:

I think the problem is that when people drink diet soda they think it gives them room to eat extra calories.  I think people actually tend to eat MORE when they drink diet soda because they always rationalize another bite of something with "well, I drank a diet soda today, so I can afford to eat this".  I'm not saying diet soda is good for you, but if you count calories, it will not make you gain weight.  I have lost almost 25 pounds and I drink a couple of Coke Zeros every week. 

^That.

As comic Gabriel Iglesias says, "I drink diet soda so I can have regular cake."

Diet soda may not be the best for you, but there are worse things. :)

Original Post by kbella24:

Original Post by silverback1952:

I don't know about where the fat is going to collect, but there is a correlation between diet soda and weight gain. Lots of weight in some cases. Here is a short blurb from a research paper out of Texas. There is similar data from Tufts:

"In fact, when the researchers took a closer look at their data, they found that nearly all the obesity risk from soft drinks came from diet sodas.

"There was a 41% increase in risk of being overweight for every can or bottle of diet soft drink a person consumes each day,"

That is frightening stuff. My doctor turned me on to this because when I switched from beer to diet soda I was still gaining weight. At first it was demoralizing but I adjusted. I drink plenty of water on the rocks with a wedge of lemon. It is always something, isn't it?

I think the problem is that when people drink diet soda they think it gives them room to eat extra calories.  I think people actually tend to eat MORE when they drink diet soda because they always rationalize another bite of something with "well, I drank a diet soda today, so I can afford to eat this".  I'm not saying diet soda is good for you, but if you count calories, it will not make you gain weight.  I have lost almost 25 pounds and I drink a couple of Coke Zeros every week. 

Thank you! it's all about the calories as far as weight gain is concerned (forget about nutrition for now). I drink at least 2 Coke Zero a day sometimes 3 if I have it with dinner and so far I have lost 65 pounds since Jan and I been drinking these things since they came out.

Original Post by jaefuma:

Original Post by kbella24:

I think the problem is that when people drink diet soda they think it gives them room to eat extra calories.  I think people actually tend to eat MORE when they drink diet soda because they always rationalize another bite of something with "well, I drank a diet soda today, so I can afford to eat this".  I'm not saying diet soda is good for you, but if you count calories, it will not make you gain weight.  I have lost almost 25 pounds and I drink a couple of Coke Zeros every week. 

^That.

As comic Gabriel Iglesias says, "I drink diet soda so I can have regular cake."

Diet soda may not be the best for you, but there are worse things. :)

 Exactly.  I can't believe all the silly things that get put out there on the 'net as fact.  Yeesh. 

Original Post by silverback1952:

I don't know about where the fat is going to collect, but there is a correlation between diet soda and weight gain. Lots of weight in some cases. Here is a short blurb from a research paper out of Texas. There is similar data from Tufts:

"In fact, when the researchers took a closer look at their data, they found that nearly all the obesity risk from soft drinks came from diet sodas.

"There was a 41% increase in risk of being overweight for every can or bottle of diet soft drink a person consumes each day,"

That is frightening stuff. My doctor turned me on to this because when I switched from beer to diet soda I was still gaining weight. At first it was demoralizing but I adjusted. I drink plenty of water on the rocks with a wedge of lemon. It is always something, isn't it?

Yeah, they can have studies all they want and have the results skewed this way and that. So everyone gets all up in arms over diet soda and how evil it is.

Did they ever stop to think that the diet soda people might be more overweight because those already overweight try switching out their regular soda for diet in order to cut calories? I mean, I could make the same correlation stating that people are more likely to be overweight when they buy Slimfast or something like that. Not because Slimfast is going to make you overweight, but because those overweight are the ones who buy them more. Does that make sense?

Diet soda = zero calories = NOT going to make you fat. There are studies that say that they might make you crave more sweets which in turn makes you gain weight, but that's not the case for every person.

That being said, diet soda will help you retain water better than drinking plain old water, but it's not going to make your stomach fat, by any means.

I'm not saying Diet Coke is good for you, but I drink at least 2 cans a day and have lost close to 60lbs.

In the past, I gained weight while drinking Diet Coke too. Difference is I ate too much. It's all about the calories.

I drink diet root beer and diet cream soda when I can afford it.  Had no effect on my weight loss in any way. Though I will say I get a major sweet tooth the following day. May or may not be related though.

Like others said, there are two reasons why diet soda drinkers are fatter:

- They assume they can eat more food in exchange for the calories they saved by drinking diet soda.

- People who are trying to lose weight (and thus who are usually over-weight by definition) tend to consume diet products more often than people who are very thin and not watching calories. This makes those studies fairly disingenuous to me because they neglect to account for this fact when they boldly proclaim there's a correlation between a diet product and overweight consumers (remember kids, correlation does NOT imply causation!)

There is actually some very good science to back up the idea that because we don't get the anticipated rush that our body expects we actually crave  more in order to compensate.The mechanism is not clearly understood but there is a  definite physical correlation.

Why would a sugar substitute backfire? Sweet foods provide a "salient orosensory stimulus" that strongly predicts someone is about to take in a lot of calories. Ingestive and digestive reflexes gear up for that intake but when false sweetness isn't followed by lots of calories, the system gets confused. Thus, people may eat more or expend less energy than they otherwise would.