Diet Soda and Obesity: Is There a Link?

I guess I'm fortunate, then, that my instinctive paranoia about artificial sweeteners has always kept me away from diet drinks... ;)

I'm not sure myself of what the correlation could be, but perhaps it's simply enhancing one's desire for sugar, which makes it more likely in turn that a person used to diet sodas will turn to "very sweet" treats rather than anything else (which would then call for more sugar too). Of course, this is only a hypothesis...

I stopped drinking 2 diet Coke's a day about 2 months ago. After a week of intense headaches, I now feel much better and have more energy than ever before. Not sure about weight loss yet, but I'll let you know.

I have seen a person in my family with diabetes take up diet soda and sugar substitute. The calories represented by this switch should be a reduction of at least 500 per day. If this stuff really served any purpose 500 calories less per day for 4 years would have produced a steady weight loss. This person gained weight and still going at it. He has got to be going somewhere and eating something nobody sees, or these things really are not free. How do we measure calories anyway. What if its another big fat food processing mistake.

I heard that it's possible that since digestion begins in the mouth, when a super-sweet diet soda enters and all that sweetness is detected by the body, it thinks alot of sugar is on the way, thus creating a spike in insulin. Since in the end there was no sugar to be had but the insulin was released into the blood anyway, the body craves more food/carbohydrates to balance this sudden imbalance.
Personally, not only do I find diet sodas extremely delicious (especially the Splenda-sweetened ones; my oh my!) but I find them very addicting. This cannot be good for me ;-)
Adam

I have read articles that support what Adam said, and my own personal experience certainly confirms the body's craving for sugar when drinking diet soda. I am addicted to Diet Coke and I always crave chocolate when I drink it. I usually don't cave into the cravings, but if I did, that could add up. I try and limit myself to one Diet Coke a day though (ok, so it's the 20 oz size). I intend to give it up, but I have to admit, Coke Zero just made it a lot harder to kick my soda habit. That stuff is great!

Anyway, I consider calorie-free soda my one chronic food-related vice, so I figure I can live with it a while longer. I still get the feeling that all those artifical sweeteners can't be good for you though. And then there's the acidic content, caffeine, etc.

Hi there....a FNP I work with stated that recent studies are showing that when a diet soda is ingested that the body acts and thinks its still getting the same calories as if it were getting regular soda....something similar to the insulin spike and that if you're going to have soda which is all around not good for you, to have the regular anyway...less side effects than aspertame and with either diet or regular..your body thinks its the same calorically...does anyone know of any info about this? If so can you email me where I can find it mpasciuti@hotmail.com

Michelle

Now I am sooo confused I thought that diet pop was good for you? I am addicted to pop especially coke , and pepsi, I don't like any other pop , it has to be a cola , and I thought that if I stopped drinking the regular that I would be able to lose weight while on a low carb diet and no sweets like chocolate , and now I am reading in these posts that its not good for you? Wow , I have been drinking diet Dr. Pepper as a substitute to my regular dose of lots of coke and pepsi , and now I don't know what else to drink besides water , I don't like juice , and I smoke , so when I smoke I have to have a cup of pop , cuz I can't smoke without something to drink.I can't smoke a cig and drink water , or anything else it has to be cola , is this stuff true about diet pop???????

A good question indeed Emily. I feel like no one will touch that question because no one has actual proof. I hope more studies like the one above will be done. I am addicted to diet pepsi and diet dr pepper. I watch what i eat and try my own made up diets here and there based on a mixture of what i read. I dont feel that diet pop has anything to do with any weight loss i have had. If im exercising i lose weight and if im not i gain. Almost all Health Magazines stay away from mentioning diet cola, good or bad. All you read is Water Water Water. I am trying to tell myself to just go with what is known, and that is water is best. Friends tell me that after a month of giving up pop that they didnt even like the taste anymore and its been years since. I have yet to make it past a week. I will try again though.

Diet pop is better than regular pop. Water is even better yet. Finding a link between overweight people and diet soda is like finding a link between ice cream and drowning deaths. (Ice cream sales are higher in the summer, as are drowning deaths, but one does not cause the other to happen. In statistics, the phrase is "correlation does not indicate causation".)

I have many skinny, skinny friends who drink regular Coke and Pepsi. Why do they drink the regular stuff? Because they're skinny. All of my overweight friends drink diet. Why? Because they're over weight.

Diet pop is not the answer to weight loss. It is merely one facilitator in a whole plethora of issues. To lose really lose weight for the long term, you will require a lifestyle change. Not a pop change, not a potato chips change, and not a meal change. Think about everything you put into your body; think about every chemical. Learn what the purposes of those ingredients on the label are. Then, make an educated decision about what you want in your body.

i dont know i guess if u eat right,workout i guess it should all balance out one day ppl say drink fittness water than the other saying to much sugar i guess all in moderation just thinking about this stuff is giving me a headace

I don't know what the deal is with diet soda but, I do know that I have been drinking diet soda for about 16 years now. I am not a big eater although I do not eat exactly healthly food all the time. I have gained about 150lbs in these last 16 years and now that I have gave up diet soda all together my weight is starting to come off and I have not changed a thing with my eating habits. I did go through the headaches and feeling like crap for the first 3 days after cutting out the soda but, now I feel fine. I have more energy and my skin is really looking good. I have noticed that I don't crave for carbs or sweets anymore either.

Sally, sorry but if you are 150lbs overweight your skin is not looking good...

This is a hypothesis here but there seems to be a correlation with weight gain and diet soda. I was a skeptic at first because I am a heavy diet soda drinker since childhood (primarily diet coke and diet mountain dew) and didn't want to believe that I was directly ingesting something to contribute to my weight related issues, outside of portion control and sugar (carbs). But the more I am reading on this topic, the more I think about the mat-hatter theory (your body is thinking its going to get something sweet and gets a non-calorie version instead) and wonder if there is more to that theory than a cute childhood story. Our bodies are uniquely designed for food/nutrition consumption, if we don’t eat, it goes into starvation mode. After not eating, our body stores food ingested for future “starvation times” versus using it as energy. Could it be possible that our body is in “starvation mode” after it receives the non-calorie “sweet” drink and will program to store more sugars/carbs because it has not received the quantity in which it originally planned for when the diet soda was introduced into our systems? As well as your body will crave more carbs/sugars due to the absence of it in a diet soda, increasing consumption.

Sally - great job on loosing the weight, and I am sure that you are noticing your skin looking better with healthier options and lifestyle and will continue to see the progress of your success!

There is something to this that is more than spiking appetite. After Oprah lost her initial weight on Optifast I did the program. It is a liquid diet, calories restricted to 430 per day and for many weeks. I have forgotten now but I think the program was 3 months. Insane idea but I managed to finish it and reach my goal. We were warned not to drink diet soda. Some did and the results were astonishing. They did not lose weight the week they did. That was proof enough for me that it does something metabolically.

I doubt we will find anything definitive on this subject. I have tried to find the reason; no one running the Optifast program knew why this happens either. It is a metobolic skew of some kind.

diet soda has always given me a feel good effect because i thought it was totally calorie free and helped you diet,i actually drink a litre a day and i was alarmed at the comments coming in because i thought it was totally safe,can someone tell what dangers i could be posing to myself.many diets recommend diet sodas instead of regular ones but i do find my weight does not come of as quickly even though i am eating healthy...is it the diet soda?can someone explain to me ...........please

I don't think diet soda makes you fat. I drink it (I also drink water) and I lost and maintained my weight. Maybe the people who drink diet soda are more likely to have a sweet tooth, and eat more sweet stuff (diet and non-diet) than the ones who don't drink it, and that is why they are overweight?

I know 2 people who are overeweight, and they drink diet soda all the time. Then they say "the more diet I drink the more I can have later." I told both of them that they shouldn't eat more because even though it is diet it still has a lot of sugar in it!

There's a selection bias here. Most people who drink diet soda are watching their weight, and since dieting overall is tough and they likely have a tendency towards weight gain, of course a lot of them will have an associated weight problem.

Diet sodas don't have any sugar in them. It's possible that they might activate some kind of reflex to crave more sugar since the body thinks it's getting sugar but doesn't get the associated food energy rush, I guess, but that's not an issue I've experienced, and I drink at least a six-pack most days.

I do try to get my water for the day early, though.

Well I've been drinking diet pop (mountain dew) for over a year now and have experienced weight lose of atleast 20lbs and that's not being on any real diet. I eat taco bell, frosted hunnybuns, I still drink a 20oz of regular mountain dew in the morning etc. I weigh 175-180lbs at 6 foot 6 inches tall. I'm in my low range for healthy weight. Almost underweight. I agree with the fact that most people who drink diet pop are already overweight or trying to componsate for heavy eating. I really don't think diet pop makes you fat. It could cause you sugar cravings by tricking your body into thinking it's sugar. My advice for people who want to lose weight is a low carb diet, moderate exercise, and if diet pop makes you have sugar cravings, don't drink it =)

Correlation does not imply causation. Good point.

However, the reverse is also true: correlation is significant. If confounding factors are removed, and the correlation persists, then the correlation is significant.

This means that the fact that higher diet drink consumption correlates with obesity does not, by itself, imply causation... it doesn't imply that diet drinks CAUSE obesity. However, if the confounding factors -- the fact that obese people, trying to control their weight, are more likely to drink diet drinks -- are controlled for and the correlation persists, then something is going on.

If you read the article, you'll see that they did in fact try to control for a few possible causal factors. The thing that they documented is that the diet soda drinkers *were of normal weight at the beginning of the study*. This is a limited control for the "obesity causes diet drink consumption" possibility. Again, this isn't a slam dunk for the "diet drinks cause obesity" argument, but it sure takes a lot of wind out of the sails of those who claim that "sure, obese people drink diet drinks -- because they're obeses!"

I drink a LOT of diet soft drinks (Diet Coke, primarily) and frankly I didn't want to believe this. But the research actually looks pretty good.

Additionally, as with all good scientific theories, there's a proposed mechanism (possibly the sweet taste activates the insulin reaction to sugar). Now all we need is some focused study (feed some subjects Nutrasweet or Splenda and see if their blood insulin goes up significantly) to confirm this and we've got something to run with.

Since I know that Diet Coke is bad for me in other ways (lots of sodium, magnesium to leech the calcium from my bones, acidic and bad for teeth, overcaffeination, etc.), I'm going to try my own personal experiment in eliminating Diet Coke from my... er... diet for a month, and see what happens.

In light of insufficient evidence, the true skeptic says neither "yes" nor "no" but simply "I don't know." That's what I'm trying to do with this controversy.

Additionally, people would be good to stop treating obesity as purely a problem of willpower and realize that it has a medical component.

It's true that the amount of fat or muscle you pack on is limited by your caloric intake and amount of exercise. So eating less and exercising more reduces the maximum amount of fat you can pack on.

However, if weight loss was this simple, we'd all be skinny. Many skinny people don't realize how *hard* heavy people try to lose weight; many of us are eating less and exercising more than you "fit" people, but our bodies stubbornly resist the weight loss.

Doctors are, more and more, realizing that obesity is a *medical* issue. Not just because it can kill you, but because simple lifestyle changes are not always enough. Like with everything else, a bit of knowledge can make a huge difference.

Remember that if every calorie you consumed turned into fat or muscle or some other tissue type, you'd gain about 10 pounds a day. But the fact is that you excrete most of what you consume. Only a fraction goes into producing fat or muscle (or brains, or heart, or whatever). The crucial component for weight (fat) loss is -- how much of that fraction will go into fat production?

That's where paying attention to things like insulin load, genetic factors, and other things becomes very important.

So no, people. It isn't as simple as "eat less and exercise more." That's important for all of us (even skinny people can die from heart attacks if they're sedentary). But weight loss is a very complicated thing -- your body is designed to RESIST rapid fat loss, as it implies starvation! -- and oversimplifying it by implying that obese people are lazy is unfair and untrue.

I am searching for information about Diet Pepsi because I am addicted. I have found the information here very useful. I am compiling a Word doc on Diet Pepsi's effects on my body. I have had WLS so I am losing weight. I do have terrible headaches.

I can't drink just one. I become obsessed and don't get the water I need to keep me hydrated. I am definitely going to try to convince myself to get off this stuff.

I am doing a Sciencew Project on this very topic(carbaonated beverages make bones weeker). I still cant seem to find any information on this topic..if you have information please email me at gatorweany224@excite.com............thanx!

i think that soda pop tastes really good but i shouldnt drink it i drink it all the time i really should cut back but sometimes i have an urge like when im thirsty to get up and have a nice sugary pop. i shouldnt but its a habit and i want to cut back . Any suggestions?

All of my fat friends drink Diet Coke. I see fat co-workers guzzle Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi.

My healthy normal weight friends and co-workers drink neither diet or regular sodas.

I don't drink diet colas and rarely if ever, regular ones. Perhaps two or three in a hot summer.

There's a connection obviously, but who knows what? It may be that overweight people want a "short cut" with a nice no calorie drink. So being fat and taking the easy way out is the reason.

Further, diet drinks are VERY addictive.

Herbal teas and water are best.

Gail, while you are right, I think that the correlation in this statistic is a big phallacy. Of course fat people drink diet soda - but is that which makes them fat? It doesn't prove causation.

I stopped drinking all forms of carbonated beverages in April 2005. My dentist told me I was ruining the enamel on my teeth directly related to soda. I have since lost a significant amount of weight without any change to my daily food intake other than absolutely no soda of any kind. I am impressed. I checked out this website just to find out why that would work. I think if a person has a problem with their weight, they should Stop Drinking Soda! It is January 2006, I am 60 pounds lighter. Have a nice day.

I have been addicted to diet soda (diet pepsi) for 2 1/2 yrs now. I use to drink regular soda before my son was born but switched over because my mom told me it was less calories so it was better for me. I lost weight but then after a period of time the Diet pepsi made me crave more to drink. I noticed that my weight eventually began to increase again and I'm constantly feeling bloated. Yesterday was day one of trying to give soda up. I'm experiencing headaches but I know they will eventually stop and I'll begin to feel better about myself. I encourage you to try to limit the amount of sodas you consume and see if you feel better because of it. Thank you.

I think that this website is very useful!
Now I know that this really doesn't have to do with soda and diet and stuff but, I am doing a project on diet pop and normal pop and I was wondering if u could e-mail me so i can ask a few questions.

Thanks for your time. Please get back to me!

What disturbs me the most in this thread are the authors creating a separation between "fat", "normal" and "skinny" people, seemingly creating a prejudice or discrimination of what the author is not. This thread is not to ridicule those who are a few to many pounds overweight who need to loose weight nor those who are underweight and need to put on a few pounds. The study states the participants were of "normal" weight. It was not talking about those who were already over-weight, obese or morbidly obese. Yes, there are some theories people drink 0 calorie drinks to overcompensate for eating higher caloric foods. Yes, there are issues past the simple concept of greater output versus the input reduces fat.

The basis of this thread is to discuss diet soda and its impact on the consumer. Yes, there are 0 calories in a diet soda but what else are we not observing in the contents of a 0 calorie diet soda. Do we really know what aspartame does to the human body? When consuming diet soda, there are preservatives and sodium, have there been any studies to what they really do to our bodies? Sodium is known to retain water and there are properties which suggest that diet soda is a diuretic to the point of dehydration. I would hate to see that the participants of this study gained weight due to water retention making this study only valid for a low sodium diet. If you take the BMI, which is seems to be the standard for today’s measurements, a “normal” person who stands 5’4” and is 145 lbs their BMI is 24.9, which is on the high end of the normal scale. If that same person gains 1 lb they are 25.1, which is then considered overweight on the BMI scale. There is not enough information to the public in the study to indicate the validity to this research, which leads only to speculation. When the study stated “normal” weight, the definition is vague. People gain and loose weight and with a 1 lb variance between normal and overweight on the BMI scale and it has been said the “average” American gains about 10 lbs per year, can we really only blame diet soda for gaining weight? Are we really gaining weight from diet soda or is it collaboration between what and how much we eat, lack of exercise – becoming more sedentary, genetic predisposition and weight loss resistance which adds more inches to the belt line than drinking a diet soda?

I am hooked on diet soda coke or pepsi. I have been drinking 2-4 a day for years I am going to try and stop starting tomorrow because i have already had 2 today. I have been trying to lose weight (i have lose 7lbs in 4 weeks) and been going to the gym and I still feel very bloated. I think that there is definitly something that the diet soda is affecting in my body.

This is an interesting thread. I searched Google for "addicted to diet pepsi" and found this thread. I drink SO MUCH Diet Pepsi it's ridiculous. I easily drink the equivalent of 4-5 two-liter bottles a day. In fact, I drink directly from the two-liter bottle since it's a lot cheaper than buy individual cans or bottles. So I drink at least two during the day and at least two in the evening. I'm not convinced it's doing me any harm - heck, Hugh Hefner drinks 20 Diet Cokes a day and has for years - but I also think it can't do me much good. And even though buying in bulk isn't terribly expensive, it's still $200 or so a month.

Diet Soda actually has about 1/5 the caffeine of coffee so I don't think the caffeine is terribly harmful. But I know it's a diuretic and a stimulus; I think it could cause some type of dehydration and appetite stimulus.

I wonder about the link of obesity. It could be that overweight people drink diet soda but don't change the rest of their lifestyle enough; you still have to exercise and watch what you eat. Personally my weight has not fluctuated more than 10 pound up or down in the last 10 years and I've consumed vast quantities of diet soda. It would be interesting to see some research or causality behind diet soda and weight gain.

I have been drinking diet coke for years. I know that I crave it. Lately I have been wondering if my diet coke consumption made my weight gain worse. I have gained about 135lbs over the last 18years like Sally. I started drinking diet coke when I weighed about 135lbs and went to weight watchers. I was never fat before and only used to have the occasional regular coke. As soon as I started dieting and drinking diet coke my weight has only escalated and I have never had much success in losing weight. I am going to replace the diet coke I drink with water. And for the record, I don't drink more diet coke so that I can eat more caloric foods. I really don't eat any more than my friends that are not obese. I don't get as much exercise ...that's true, but I don't pig out on McDonalds and take out food everyday. I usually eat very sensibly. However I do crave carbs and sweets more than I used to when I was not overweight. Hmmmmm, food for thought!

I drink alot of diet coke and I hear so many people talking about how bad it is for you. I am overweight, (250 lbs at 6'4'') but I can shed weight off easily. When I drank regular coke my weight went up but when I drank diet I maintained the same weight without exercise. Imagine what I could do with exercise. I plan on exercising and continuing to drink diet because regular coke contains sugar which would only boost my weight. Diet has no calories or sugar or carbs therefore it must be better for me, maybe it's not good but its a step at cutting down on sugar and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Like Joe I drink alot of diet and I do have a big appetite. I'm wanting to lose weight soon and I am slowly working on cutting certain things out of my diet.

Hmm...
Well just my 2 cents here. I am a huge diet Pepsi drinker, used to be diet Coke but I switched. I've been drinking diet drinks for about 7 years now. I will admit that I am hooked and really don't like drinking water...also find the regular sodas too sweet.
I really don't think the diet soda causes me to crave sweets etc. I mean, I crave them around my time of the month but I drink several diet Pepsi's a day and don't experience this much. So, I don't know what to make of this research. I just think there are still way too many factors that haven't been accounted for. i.e. the ice cream consumption/drowning. If you think about it there are so many reasons why this might be happening. It doesn't seem isolated enough.
I do hope they do a study on the insulin though. I had not heard that before and that concerns me.

Where and what are people eating with these diet sodas?

After all, I noticed that I will drink more diet sodas during weeks that I'm eating out more or stopping by fast food joints. Maybe it could be a sign that the more diet sodas a person drinks, the more they are eating out or eating away from home where bigger portion sizes and excess calories are the norm?

There has never been a single study that has showed Diet soda (art. sweet.) help people to lose weight. It is a sound theory... cut down on caloric intake and you should lose weight. This however has never been proven when dealing with aspartame.

Even if there were studies to correlate the effectiveness of aspartame in weight loss, is it worth the side effects?

It has been proven that aspartame is converted to formaldehyde and then formic acid (DHHS 1993, Liesivuori 1991). Chronic formaldehyde exposure at *very* low doses has been shown to cause immune system and neurological damage and changes as well as headaches, general poor health, permanent genetic damage, and a number of other serious health problems (Fujimaki 1992, John 1994, Liu 1993, Main 1983,Molhave 1986, National Research Council 1981, Shaham 1996, Srivastava
1992, Vojdani 1992, Wantke 1996)http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/methanol.faq

Furthermore Aspartame helps to preserve fat cells (not shrink them) and fat cells hold in toxins. So while drinking diet soda, it is possible that you are actually doing the reverse of what you want to do (since most people make the switch to diet soda in hopes of a "healthy" alternative to sugared sodas).

If this is true though, how did diet soda (aspartame) ever get approved for food use? Aspartame was not approved until 1981, in dry foods. For over eight years the FDA refused to approve it because of the seizures and brain tumors this drug produced in lab animals. The FDA continued to refuse to approve it until President Reagan took office (a friend of Searle) and fired the FDA Commissioner who wouldn't approve it. Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes was appointed as commissioner. Even then there was so much opposition to approval that a Board of Inquiry was set up. The Board said: "Do not approve aspartame". Dr. Hayes OVERRULED his own Board of Inquiry. http://www.dorway.com/badnews.html

Now imagine for a minute that you are the federal government (this is only a theory) and you have approved something that was shown to be toxic for the consumption of the American public. How quick would you be years later to admit you made a mistake, lied, covered it up and ignored direct evidence that showed this product should not have been approved? Not only would there be law suits, but people would lose faith in the FDA (at a time when people are still shaken by the approval of certain drugs known to increase heart attacks), which the government cannot afford.

I am not a doctor, I am just repeating some of what I learned. I also know that since I gave up diet soda I get less headaches, sleep better, feel better and have healthier skin (on top of other benefits). I am not saying this is due only to cutting out aspartame, but I feel it certainly helped.

Funny how we all are trying to convince/justify ourselfs thats its ok to drink all this damn diet soda. I myself admit I AM AN ADDICT. I drink at least 4-6 cans of diet anything soda a day. I mostly drink diet Dr Pepper but I love the new dier Coke black cherry. I would love to quit (280 lbs) but simply cant. I have been drinking for years and find myself yearning for it. I HATE water, tea, coffee, milk,...you get the idea. I love soda. I would love to quit so I couild lose some weight. Any ideas

Hello all…

I’ve been drinking diet colas since 1970! Remember Tab? (Now if you ever drank that awful stuff on purpose, and routinely, I guess you can really understand how insidious an “addiction” to just about anything can be.)

I am reading very interesting books by Byron Richards, BCCN, titled “Mastering Leptin,” and also - Diana Schwarzbein, MD, titled “The Schwarzbein Principle.” Both authors are basically saying the same thing: the key to maintaining a healthy weight, as well as the key to being optimally healthy (because being skinny or even normal weight doesn’t necessarily mean your are disease free/problem free) – the key is eating in such a way to keep our major hormones (insulin, cortisol, adrenaline, and now leptin) BALANCED. Dr. Barry Sears of Zone fame is talking along these lines also.

So anyway, Byron says (among other things) that the timing of your eating is as important as what you eat. When you eat something…anything… your body releases insulin in response to it – more or less – depending on what you’ve eaten. When your blood insulin level is high or elevated, you cannot burn fat for fuel – not the fat you just ate, nor the fat from your fat stores. It’s 2 ½ to 3 hours after you’ve eaten, when your body has processed the insulin – having removed it out of your blood and into the cells – that your body actually allows you to start burning fat for fuel. So according to Byron (and Dr Schwarzbein’s info is very similar), to have a healthy metabolism and maintain an ideal weight – and be disease free - you need to NOT EAT at all for at least 5 hours between each meal in order to give your organs (pancreas, liver, etc.) a chance to do their thing and then recover (rest) for a couple of hours before having to do it all again. If you don’t, you risk becoming resistant to the effects of your own wonderful, miraculous metabolic hormones and you get fat and/or sick.

Last night I decided to test Byron’s premise for a while and see if I can loose some weight. This will mean I have to quit snacking, which I think I can manage pretty well – especially if I can in fact eat pretty much what I like at meal time (within reason of course!). Then on my way to work this a.m., as I was ordering my MickyD breakfast with LARGE diet coke, I remembered reading somewhere that diet pop can cause an insulin rise. When I got to work I Googled the question and found this blog. So now I’m faced with a possible, awful truth. I drink diet soda from morning until night – carrying it with me in the car, into meetings, etc. If it does in fact create a release of insulin, then even if I stop “eating” snacks between meals, but don’t stop drinking pop, I will still be releasing insulin constantly all day – NEVER giving my body a chance to burn fat!!!!!. This could definitely be part of the reason fat people who drink diet coke don’t loose weight.

This might be a little harder than I thought! Oh dear. For the first time in a long time, after I finished by breakfast sandwich, I poured the rest of my diet coke down the drain. I’ve been drinking water all morning (yuck… like my husband says about non-alcohol beer, “it’s like kissing your sister”). Well lunch isn’t far off now – another hour to the 5 hour mark. I’m doing OK, but this is just the first morning of the first day. Byron says our body will try very, very hard to make us do what we’ve made it accustomed to. So…. the experiment begins.

BTW, I recommend these books for really good explanations of the intricate workings of metabolism, but you have to really like understanding the details, or your eye’s will cross on the first chapter. Hope this gives some worthwhile insight. ~_^

Kathy, I think your concern about diet coke is correct. The only thing that you can safely consume between meals without affecting the levels of hormones such as insulin, gastrin, glucagon, leptin, etc. is water.