Losing weight

I switched to diet soda, started playing more golf and just limiting what I ate and I’ve lost 40 lbs this year so far.

There was an interesting article showing that rats who ate artificial sugar (aspartame?) lost the ability to feel satiated. Will dig for it.

The writeup:
http://www.purdue.edu/UNS/html4ever/2004/040629.Swithers.research.html

The actual article:

If you are interested in reading while exercising, you should look at recumbent stationary bikes. I found them very workable for that. You’re sitting, only your legs are working.

We bought an elliptical instead because my wife finds it too easy to slack off on the “exercise” part on a recumbent, and set up a tv in front of it. I often bring a laptop down instead and watch a DVD or Netflix “watch it now” too. But when we used to have a gym membership, I got quite a lot of good reading in on the recumbent machines.

We bought our elliptical from Costco in January, it’s pretty decent for the price (I think about $700). The pulse readings seem flaky - slow to register and impossibly low when I know I’m nearly at my peak. And its mileage ratings are a GODDAMN LIE. I could drag the whole thing behind me at the almost 2mph it claims I’m running. But the calorie counter seems reasonably accurate and consistent, so I use that to watch my pace. And it’s been solid & comfortable and I like the variety of programs & resistance it offers.

Hah! My body has a built-in defense against artificial sweeteners – half a soda worth of aspartame and I develop a brutal headache. Easy to abstain when that happens.

I switched to diet soda, started playing more golf and just limiting what I ate and I’ve lost 40 lbs this year so far.

If you were drinking regular soda then diet soda would definitely be a benefit (good god man, regular soda?!). However, if you’re already drinking entirely diet soda and want to lose more weight, cutting them out is the next logical step. Water is the purest form of water.

Many reasons, as others have mentioned. Artificial sweeteners. False sense of accomplishing something. They don’t fill you up like plain water does. Caffeine actually dehydrates you, and more!

Eh? I can buy that cutting out diet soda has benefits for teeth and so forth, but a weight loss benefit? The trivial amount of calories in a can of diet soda seem to me to be on par with water in terms of weight loss.

That’s where the studies that wisefool mentioned come in in that diet soda might make you feel hungrier than normal. Of course it’s still a matter of willpower, and it doesn’t force you to stuff your face as a result, but it’s still an obstacle that might make things harder than they have to be for someone.

Time to get informed!

http://www.getfitslowly.com/2008/02/12/the-dangers-of-diet-soda/

[INDENT] Fowler’s team looked at seven to eight years of data on 1,550 Mexican-American and non-Hispanic white Americans aged 25 to 64. Of the 622 study participants who were of normal weight at the beginning of the study, about a third became overweight or obese.
For regular soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:[ul]
[li]26% for up to 1/2 can each day[/li]> [li]30.4% for 1/2 to one can each day[/li]> [li]32.8% for 1 to 2 cans each day[/li]> [li]47.2% for more than 2 cans each day.[/ul]For diet soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:[ul][/li]> [li]36.5% for up to 1/2 can each day[/li]> [li]37.5% for 1/2 to one can each day[/li]> [li]54.5% for 1 to 2 cans each day[/li]> [li]57.1% for more than 2 cans each day.[/ul]For each can of diet soft drink consumed each day, a person’s risk of obesity went up 41%. [/li]> [/INDENT]
Correlation isn’t causation, etc, but what the hey?

Metabolic Syndrome:

The one-third who ate the most fried food increased their risk by 25 percent compared with the one-third who ate the least, and surprisingly, the risk of developing metabolic syndrome was 34 percent higher among those who drank one can of diet soda a day compared with those who drank none.

The shit is bad.

Correlation isn’t causation though, as you noted, so I’m not convinced that cutting out diet soda is any benefit to someone who already has a weight problem.

Do what you want. In America, you have the freedom to ignore all evidence.

Ok…

Slow down.

Every study that exists on Diet Soda and weight gain is moot. (There are 2 main studies)
Do you ever think that there are tons of people that overeat and are fat that are like… lets drink diet soda… that are skewing their studies? There is no link between diet soda and weight gain. Just a correlation that could be caused by any number of factors outside the chemical contents of the soda.

The metabolic “syndrome” is a medical term for fatass head for diabetes. Now, when you are fat, and you have the choice between a giant burger and a coke, and a giant burger and a diet coke… you will take the diet coke to cut calories right? These studies do not include a regimented diet, so who knows what the study participants could be eating.

Caffeine + 0 calories = weight loss.
Caffeine elevates your metabolism (in normal subjects) period
Increased metabolism = weight loss (or at least some help in any case)

Being a sciency person myself, I really hate seeing misleading studies that get picked up by some evening news outlet and blown out of proportion for shock value.
One study is on rats, who have a completely different system of metabolics, and making a connection of those results to humans is not logical.
The second study done was not very subjective, and only shows a correlation between diet soda and increased weight.

EDIT

From nytimes

Researchers have found a correlation between drinking diet soda and metabolic syndrome.

“This is interesting,” said Lyn M. Steffen, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota and a co-author of the paper, which was posted online in the journal Circulation on Jan. 22. “Why is it happening? Is it some kind of chemical in the diet soda, or something about the behavior of diet soda drinkers?

There is your 34% increased risk study.

Caffeine dehydrates you = not good.

Whatever man, the bookshelves are full of crap diets and self help garbage. I posted what worked for my wife and I. We took off weight, added muscle and kept the weight off. We’re happy. As always, passing on good info is useless on the internets.

And apparently the freedom to believe everything you read without subjecting it to much critical thought. How are those wooden stereo knobs treating you?

A diet soda is all fluid though. Caffeine has a diuretic effect but it’s not enough to offset the fluid intake one gets by actually drinking the soda.

I’ve never seen anything on diet soda, but I recall reading that even with drinking coffee, which typically has a higher caffeine content than diet soda, the diuretic effect is only enough to make one lose 1/3 of the fluids that they took in my drinking the coffee in the first place.

It was not my intention to come here and argue. (For once.) I’m just gonna enjoy looking good, feeling good, and my hot wife too.

That’s the best revenge! Muwahahahahahah!

Leave my coffee alone. Dude, unless someone comes up with evidence that caffeine gives you AIDS I’m never giving up my coffee.

I mean, you don’t need to drink diet soda to lose weight. I am just merely trying to debunk the widely held (and unsupported by evidence) myth that diet soda causes weight gain. The studies only prove that if you drink diet soda, you are more likely to be fat.

Now, there might be some promise in some of the behavioral studies that deal with the fact that the aspartame or other artificial sweeteners in the sodas trick your brain into thinking they are sugar, leading your body with a deficit, making you less satiated, and more hungry.

And in rats, (who have no self control) that were fed equal amounts of diet soda, regular soda, and water, the rats with the diet soda ate more food. There is a good result, but, the problem is… rats are not humans and, they have no self control. (If we are hungry, we can choose to wait, if they are hungry and food is around… they will eat it)

Anyhoo, cutting out diet soda isn’t a bad idea, just… I don’t see a need to cut out something you might enjoy for no real benefit.

Though, definitely drink a lot of water, super-hydrating is a great way to keep that metabolism up with little effort.

Also, a shot of caffiene (coffee or otherwise) and a huge glass of water when you wake up = awesome for jumping your body into gear.

Interestingly, the author of Your Body’s Many Cries For Water does make a similar claim. He says that AIDS is actually caused by chemical imbalances that result from insufficient hydration and lists abnormally high soda and coffee consumption as likely culprits.

Oh, and also the absorbtion of semen in the rectum.

But yeah. There you go.

Midnight Son has a great solution. If you want to keep it simple and not think about it too much, this works:

[ul]
[li]Drink nothing but water and lots of it. No less than 3 glasses a day.[/li][li]Eat more often in smaller quantities[/li][li]Limit intake of high sugar foods (90% of the crap sold in markets) and replace junk foods with fruit (this is your good sugar). Don’t eat anything with High Fructose Corn Syrup[/li][li]Exercise 4-5 times a week for 15-20 minutes at a time, alternating between weigh lifting and cardio.[/li][/ul]

I guarantee you’ll lose weight and be more fit. It’s really that simple. Americans take in more useless sugar than any other culture, and in ridiculously huge quantities. Take a look at your “fruit” juice in the frig. Sugar water. Soda? Massive amounts of sugar. Your cereal and your milk? Loaded with sugar. Candy, cookies, cakes, brownies? Bad sugar, sugar, sugar.

People eat WAAAAAAAAAY too much sugar. Also, I hate to criticize your parenting, but snack/junk foods for kids is how most of us learned all of our bad eating habits. Most problems in kids (cranky, fatigues, uninterested, lethargic, over weight) is due to their horrible eating behaviors. I’m not saying your kids are like this, just making a general statement.