If You Already Drink Diet Sodas, You Probably Don't Need To Quit To Lose Weight

We aren't ready to say that Nutrasweet and Sucralose sweetened diet beverages are healthy. There are other issues with artificial sweeteners. The dangers of these sweeteners have been exaggerated in the media for decades, but that doesn't mean they are good for you.

Dr. John Peters of the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center, University of Colorado, in Aurora, and his colleagues conducted a 12-week experiment in which 308 dieters in Colorado and Pennsylvania were enrolled in a diet education program and asked either to drink at least 24 oz (720 ml) of water per day and no artificially sweetened beverages, or to drink at least 24 oz of artificially sweetened soft drinks. The average age of the volunteers was 48, unlike the study in San Antonio, this clinical trial included a significant number (28%) of African-Americans, everyone in the program was diagnosed as obese (average BMI of 34) at the beginning of the program. Participants chosen for the study were not getting any exercise at the beginning of the diet.

None of the dieters reported problems drinking enough water or enough diet soda. The dieters also increased their physical activity to 90 minutes a week.

At the end of the 12 weeks, the dieters who had been asked to be sure to drink diet soda lost, on average, 5.95 kg (a little over 13 pounds).  Dieters who had been asked to drink water everyday lost on average 4.09 kg (a little under 9 pounds). The dieters who had been drinking diet sodas reported fewer problems sticking to their diet plans than the dieters who drank water. Drinking artificially sweetened beverages reduced hunger--not a lot, but enough to make a difference.

The researchers in this study don't know exactly why drinking diet beverages increased rather than decreased weight loss in these carefully selected dieters. They don't know whether people who drank Nutrasweet-sweetened carbonated beverages ate less or burned more fat, although the indications from participant reports is that drinking diet soft drinks helped them to eat less. And the fact that the study was funded by the American Beverage Association may also have some bearing on its results.

See Also: Drinking Diet Soda Is Not A Solution For Weight Loss

That is, they don't make the situation worse. Researchers counsel against starting diet soft drinks to lose weight if you don't drink them already, but it also appears it isn't helpful to give them up (you'll just be looking for something sweet to eat in their place) and it isn't helpful to drink more water. There may be many other reasons not to consume Nutrasweet, but successful weight loss dieting is not among them. Eat less, and at least don't drink more diet soda than you do now.