Is it safe to drink non-sugary drinks (like coke zero) while on a diet? Or do the artificial sweeteners just make you fat in some sneaky way?
In: Chemistry
They do indeed make you fat in a sneaky way! You know how you cease to be thirsty the moment you drink something, even though it takes a while for the water to actually get around and hydrate your body? Sugar works in a similar way. The body knows you ate something sweet, so it starts to process the sugar that is currently in your bloodstream, expecting it to be replaced soon (which doesn’t happen, because you fooled your body with fake sugar, but the “damage” is done)
Assuming you don’t slyly adjust your consumption (“I had a Coke Zero, I deserve a donut!”) they do not contain any calories your body can use. Without that, they do not contribute to weight gain.
They may have some minimal effect on your blood glucose, but I haven’t found that to be the case. I’ve done a 1 week and a 2 week fast, both with zero food. Water + electrolytes only. I measured my weight, blood glucose, and ketone levels 2-3 times per day. I drink Coke Zero during fasts sometimes just cause I like it, and it has no appreciable effect on my blood glucose or weight. When I’m not fasting I never drink soda.
So the simple answer is no, not directly. Indirectly? Time will tell. But they will be minor effects. Things like variations in metabolic rates and making your body “hold on to fat” and the like tend to be VASTLY overblown in the diet/fitness world. A diet coke won’t make you put on 2 donuts worth of weight when you only ate one. Your body is already very efficient at getting nutrients out of food. If it wasn’t you’d know because you’d either be sick and malnourished, or having diarrhea 24/7.
Whatever you drink will be filtered by your liver and kidneys.
The only neutral drink is water.
So if you need zero calories, to drink water is the better option. Also, what happens if you end your diet? You are used to heavily flavored drinks… so You may get back drinking 2 liters of Pepsi per day and you regain weight. Add in that you also become caffeine/taurine/sugar addicted.
To add, any food that is 5 calories or less is legally allowed to be labeled “zero calorie”, all the way down to the nutrition label. Tic-Tacs are “zero calorie” even though they’re just compressed sugar tablets. Even their shell is made of sugar. So zero calorie typically never is.
If you want some low calorie alternatives, consider water, tea, and coffee.
No one drinks water anymore. When did that get boring? When did that no longer quench thirst? Why does everything have to be exciting? It gets to the point where you don’t even taste that flavorful beverage anymore – it has replaced water, and thus become water.
Black coffee is 2 calories per serving. DON’T drink that shit they sell at the grocery store, and the stuff you can grind yourself there is EVEN WORSE. I won’t get into it, but what I do recommend is mail order coffee services. Typically you can buy a standard 12oz bag, at a competitive price – even if they charge you shipping, and have it arrive on a schedule. What’s most important is the roasting date, which you never see in the store. Coffee is only fresh for about a week before it’s dead and flavorless brown bean water. Getting your coffee fresh is going to change your life. Coffees from dry climates are more acidic, so perhaps you’ll want to steer away from Ethiopia. Aim for more tropical climates. You’ll taste cherries, dates, stone fruits, citrus, caramel, and cocoa (think dark chocolate that’s slightly bitter, but in a good way). If you’ve been drinking Denny’s your whole life, if you’ve never had coffee without cream or sugar (salt is better), there is a whole world out there for you. Buy whole bean, and grind it yourself.
Tea is also 2 calories per serving. Again, skip the Colonel Lipton – A) That guy spent too much time in the Sri Lanken heat, and B) grocery store tea is some of the lowest quality on the market. Go to a specialty dealer or shop online. Earl Grey or English Breakfast are both fine, just buy whole leaf, skip the tea basket, and pour through a strainer. My favorite is Lapsang Souchong, a smoked tea leaf that otherwise tastes like scotch whiskey. The Chinese are big on green teas and they steep their leaves for seconds rather than minutes – that’s how they get multiple cups out of a single serving of leaves. It also makes the tea far more subtle, because an American style steep of 2-4 minutes lands you with grass-tasting water.
Of course, you can add whole milk, a tablespoon is 15 calories. Whole milk is only 3.75% fat. The fat content, though, isn’t the big deal, it’s the sugar content. Reduced fat milks reduce the water content of the milk as a consequence, and concentrate the sugars. So skim milk is basically sugar water. Heavy cream is 36% fat, by comparison.
Sugar substitutes work on the premise that they’re SO MUCH sweeter than sugar that an incredibly small amount is needed to make the drink as sweet. Because of this the calories of the sweetener are essentially immeasurable for the purpose of our nutrition standards. The artificial sweetners themselves literally do not have the amount calories to make you fat.
In theory it should be fine drinking diet soda because it does not contain much calories. However artificial sweeteners do trigger a neurological response which may include things such as insulin production, digestion and your hunger. Everyone experiences different responses and they might even change over time. But we do often see people on a diet craving sweets and ending up with diet soda only to crave even more sweets and literally getting adicted to diet soda. When this still does not satisfy them they tend to crack and break their diet not only eating up to their previous food intake but even putting on weight. So the best recomendation is to avoid soda if you can and if you can not, for example in social settings, drink diet soda.
Just my personal experience. When I was losing weight I found Coke Zero to be a life saver. I was able to satisfy my craving for sweetness and not ingest any sugar. It work very well for me. I drink it any time I want Coke now. There’s probably some other awful side effect of aspartame, who knows, but my concern at the moment is weight loss and for that, it is effective (for me).
They have less calories, which is good, but they still trigger the same digestive processes as actually consuming sugar.
There is evidence to suggest that artificially sweetened sodas contribute towards diabetes in the same way that sugary sodas do.
The only way they are beneficial for weight loss is due to the fact that they have less calories. Which means, all other factors unchanged, you just pour less fuel into your body.
It won’t make you lose weight if you replace those calories by eating cake. It’s passive and a diet soda won’t cancel out a Twinkie as some people assume.
That being said there are pills you can take that prevent fats from being digested.
Ok so what makes you fat is energy. Energy can be stored in many forms but that doesn’t have to concern you since the total energy is on the product. Usually energy/100g or ml. Coke Zero contains about 1-2 kcal/100ml. So not 0 but not much.
Energy is given usually in two units kJ and kcal (kcal is 1000×cal = 1 Cal so Cal and kcal are the same. Idiotic system dont get confused by it.) To put things in comparison a usual adult needs 2000 kcal per day. So a glass of Coke Zero with its 3-4 kcal is not much.
How much you should eat when dieting depends on how much you move, whether you wanna build muscles or get thinner. If you move as much as a soldier or some pro athlete you can easily take 6000 kcal per day.
The reason why you should avoid even zero drinks is because they contains many other substances that aren’t healthy like phosphoric acid and caffeine. But without doubt the biggest issue with drinks is their sugar content so if you like zero drinks they wont make you fat.
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