I have this male friend, a total workout guru, he is beautiful there is no other way of saying that. He works out everyday, has won several "strong man" competitions. He was once a personal trainer.
So I shot him an email and I told him that I need my 22 year old body back (that is what I looked like when we met 9 years ago, I was ripped from working out all of the time.) Anywaz.......I told him that I need the step it up start working out, asked about reps and how long to wait in between work outs if I am sore.
He gave some really great advice and no candy coating which I like.


And he dropped the bomb! :( Don't drink anything but water!!! I had to reread it and replied...diet pop is fine right? He said, "Hun diet pop is worse!!!!"

It was like he squeezed the life out of me. Worse? I was like whoa? I mean don't get me wrong I still drink about or around a gallon of water a day. But, I like a diet coke with a little lime wedge sometimes and I like a diet grapedfruit pop with dinner.
I had another male friend (a Marine) that would never drink pop, he'd only drink water. And when I seem him before the beginning of the year he had put on weight and said it was because he started drinking diet pop. I thought that he was kidding around and now I am wondering.....

I remember getting the emails that I am sure that everyone has seen with the 24 uses for Pepsi. clean the roads of road kill, clean a toilet...all of those great things....but diet pop !!??????

what are your thoughts about this???

This is going to be a tough for me. Bread...pasta...potatoes...even little debbie ( for you Goddess ) I could say I am done with you.....but my diet pop is going to be a tough sacrifice.

Weeping & in shock

Protein Queen (PQ)

__________________
"Summer of PQ"
19 pounds down....
Atkins

I have to agree with your friend. Diet soda makes it hard to loose weight. I can't explane why but it has slowed down my results. I still have not been able to break the habbit but i'm going to try.

One -

Drink More Water!

Two -

I try and limit myself to one diet (splenda) soda a day (if that).

It's hard to drink NOTHING but water. It does get boring once in a while. When the monotony sets in, that's when I drink a diet ginger ale, diet root beer or diet black cherry.

Three

Drink More Water!

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Sven
305/218/200
Start Date: 1/1/06

Welcome to low-carb eating.
The food's not bad here.

This is interesting. My aunt who lost about 40lbs and is still maintaining it is on Weight Watchers told me something that would add to this debate. According to their "Points System" a non-cola, non-caffeinated soda counts as a serving of water (they do want you to continue to drink regular water too!!)

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Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans--John Lennon

I belong to something called flylady.net (it's a yahoo group for those of us who are cleaning impared!) I just got this via email ...thought I'd share:

Dear Friends,

A lot of you know that I am pretty much a stickler when it comes to
deciding what to drink. The answer is always water and plenty of it. I
get asked a lot about drinks?particularly, diet drinks, sodas, juices,
etc. Everyone wants to drink something else besides water, especially
when it's hot outside!

Well, I understand that. I drink coffee in the morning, so it's not
like I don't understand what it is to have a particular fondness for a
special beverage. But when it comes to drinking something with a meal,
you gotta go for water. And water in-between meals, too. Water itself
is a nutrient in that it helps your body run optimally and helps you
to absorb the nutrients you've taken via your food. Important stuff,
H20.

A new study just came out implicating sodas in weight
gain?both
regular AND diet sodas! Now listen, I know sodas go on sale in
supermarket all the time and I know you like them. But bear with me
for minute. You have to read these statistics!

The University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio ran an
eight year study to study the effects of soft drink use. Sharon P.
Fowler, MPH, who ran the study, had this shocking statement to say,
"What didn't surprise us was that total soft drink use was linked to
overweight and obesity. What was surprising was when we looked at
people only drinking diet soft drinks, their risk of obesity was even
higher."

Of the 622 participants?all of normal weight at the beginning of the
study, about a third became overweight or obese.

For the regular soft drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight
or obese was:

*26% for up to ? can each day
*30.4% for ? to one can each day
*32.8% for 1 to 2 cans each day
*47.2% for more than 2
cans each day.

But look at the increase for diet soft-drink drinkers!

*36% for up to ? can per day
*37.5% for ? to one can per day
*54.5% for 1 to 2 cans per day
*57.1% for more than 2 cans each day.

For each can of diet soda consumed, a person's risk of obesity went up
41%!!!

One of the theories of why the difference may have something to do
with trying to fool our bodies. We give them the sweet taste of a diet
drink, but no calories. Another recent study showed that baby rats
when fed artificial sweeteners craved more calories than baby rats fed
real sugar.

Fowler says, "If you offer your body something that tastes like a lot
of calories, but it isn't there, your body is alerted to the
possibility that there is something there and it will search for the
calories promised but not delivered."

She goes on to say, "People think they can just fool the body. But
maybe the body isn't fooled. If you are not
giving your body those
calories you promised it, maybe your body will retaliate by wanting
more calories. Some soft drink studies also suggest that diet drinks
stimulate appetite." To that I say, "EEEEK!!!"

I don't normally do Food for Thought's with research and all that
stuffed into them. But this got my attention, big time and I felt you
would want this info yourself. Don't forget too, that drinking sodas
blocks calcium absorption and not being able to absorb calcium in your
bones is a major contributor to osteoporosis later in life!

I hope this information will help you make the wise decision to grab a
water next time you're thirsty!

Love,
Leanne

And that's THAT info for you! Hope you find it useful!
Dee

__________________
Started: 261
Currently: 182

I certainly agree that it's better to drink water; but having coffee and soda made the LC lifestyle closer to my personal preferences. Thus, I found it easier to stick with this way of eating.

Maybe it would have been faster without diet soda, but I lost 40 lbs while drinking one diet drink each day* (either Hansen ginger ale, or caffine-free diet pepsi, in my case). I drank plenty of water, too.

*YMMV

__________________
~~~Teelbee
Back to GOAL!!!
start weight: 176/goal range: 137-134/now: 138
Reached goal in Aug. 2003 - 4rd year of maintenance.

PQ-stop weeping and join us in the GreenTea club!

http://www.lowcarbeating.com/bb/show...488#post235488

It's good stuff, loaded with antioxidants, and comes in a large variety of flavors.

__________________

I wonder if it makes a difference whether your diet soda is sweetened with aspartame or sucralose? The study that Dee cited doesn't say what kind of sweetener was used, or if they lumped all diet sodas into one category.

If I drink a diet soda, which is rare now, it has to be sweetened with Splenda or I don't touch it. Thank goodness Diet Rite got the right idea and now makes theirs all with Splenda.

Water is still, by far, the best drink, and then second is tea.

__________________
Nita

I really think that diet coke is slowing me down this time. I keep asking myself-if I am trying to eat healthy, why do I keep putting this stuff into my system? Even diet coke with splenda, this is the ingredients: carbonated water, caramel color, natural flavors, phosphoric acid, potassium benzoate, sucralose, acesulfame potassium, caffeine, citric acid. Most of these things I don't even know what are (let alone pronounce!) So today, i am giving up soda. Well I guess tomorrow, because I have already drank one today. This will be very hard for me, I crave one at breakfast every day! But I do like iced tea, so I will just have to brew my tea first thing in the morning and replace the soda with tea. The first few days will be the hardest. So PQ if you are giving up soda, we can keep accountable to each other while staying off soda. Maybe a quick thread on "Going off soda for a month" to see if it makes a difference.

__________________

Like a lot of things, I think that this could be a YMMV type of thing. I do not subscribe to the general premise or what could be "junk science" of the reported study. I base this on my own experience. 1. I have consumed, and continue to consume copious amounts of diet soft drinks. 2. While on my weight roller coaster in the past, I have both gained and lost a lot of weight while continuing to drink a lot of diet soda. 3. Since starting this WOE, I have lost over 120 pounds while drinking, in addition to a minimum of 64 ounces of water a day, at least 128 ounces of splenda sweetened diet cola plus 36 ounces of splenda sweetened diet fruit flavored soft drinks a day. Since I both gained and lost weight while drinking aspartame sweetened soft drinks (Diet Coke), I do not think there is any correletation for me in the premise that diet soft drinks lead to obesity. My weight issues are with what I eat, not with the diet soft drinks that I drink.

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Henry

I am going to stop drinking all diet soda (I haven't touched a real/full sugared one in years!) I need to do this for my body. I should post a pic of him to show you why I would take his direction so strictly. He could be on the cover of Muscle & Fitness.
Did I write soda above? I am from Buffalo,NY it is pop......lol

MACIAS46 look for my post on the challenge club (soon)

This is going to be tougher than give up Little Debbie.

__________________
"Summer of PQ"
19 pounds down....
Atkins

Y'know, I try these days not to get habituated to anything. Even good things. Somehow, an ounce of nuts one day becomes an ounce of nuts EVERY day, and before long, the Carb Creep is stepping on my heels.

The pain won't last long. Just stop with the pop, and in a few weeks, you won't think about it any more than Little Debbies. Pop will be one more thing you just don't do.

There's no guarantee you'll start losing weight by oodles and gobs. But really...pop is just another form of junk food. You don't need it. Really. Put the buck-a-day in an empty can, and buy yourself something nice to wear with all the cash you save in your pop-free life.

__________________
Barb L.
Atkins since Jan 2003
Maintenance as of 4/05


My Fitday Journal

I quit drinking diet soda altogether after my DH pointed out that it is junk food when I told him that I was tired of using our very tight food budget dollars to buy chips and other junk that he wanted. It wasn't that hard to do as I would rarely even finish a can and end up pouring 1/3 of it down the sink on a regular basis. That being said, drinking a can of diet pop never made me feel hungry or want to eat more since going LC. In fact, I can eat a small portion of a LC dessert made with artifical sweeteners and nut flours and feel very satisfied and not want to eat more. The same can not be said of any regular non-LC dessert. I can never stop at one serving and if one serving is all there is, I'll be thinking about it constantly for hours afterwards and trying to find something else that's sweet to eat.

I suspect the the results of the study may be based on the fact that the people involved are most likely eating a carb rich diet. I can see how drinking a diet pop would make your body seek out the sugar that it thought it was getting from the soda from other sources if it's primed to use sugar for its fuel. If your body is primed to use fat as fuel rather than sugar/grains, perhaps the result is different. What would be interesting to me is if they did a study with people who eat the SAD and people who eat LC and compared the impact that drinking diet soda had on each group.

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>^..^<
Esther

Henry is right about this being a YMMV thing. Some sodas contain ingredients that stall SOME people, like Equal (aspartame) and citric acid.

I love Fresca, and when the new flavors (Peach and Black Cherry) came out, I wanted to try the Peach. So, I bought some and liked it. Until I read the ingredients: one of them is Glycerol ester of wood rosin. YUCK!! Does that not sound FLAMMABLE??!!

NOW, I think I understand how spontaneous combusition happens.

__________________

BTW, my dentist told me that the citric acid in soft drinks, including the flavored waters, is really bad for your teeth. Worse than sugar. So if you drink a lot of pop, swish and brush with pure water...often.

__________________
Barb L.
Atkins since Jan 2003
Maintenance as of 4/05


My Fitday Journal