What! Diet Soda Can Make You Fat!

As if it's not hard enough to lose weight and not become bored with limited choices, diet soda's now a culprit in packing on the pounds. I wasn't too surprised but I thought it was because of the sodium in it. I was pretty surprised by the statistics though!

If you drink a can of regular soda a day, you have a 26% chance of becoming overweight. If you drink just two cans of regular soda a day, that chance goes up to almost 50%!

Now wait...if you drink a can of diet soda -- which supposedly has no sugar or calories -- your chance of becoming overweight goes up by 36.5%. And if you drink two cans of diet soda a day, you have a 57% chance of getting fat!

How can that be? I would have assumed there was the same amount of sodium in both but ... there is a theory that the reason you gain more weight with diet soda is because your body thinks you're giving it lots of calories, finds out its been had and then retaliates by craving more food and more sweets.

Do what?

The example used comes from Alice in Wonderland. Remember the scene where Alice goes to the tea party with the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse? The Mad Hatter offers her tea but then never gives her any. Then he offers her more and Alice gets annoyed. She gets so annoyed she not only helps herself to the tea but also to the bread and butter.

I'm not sure I buy it.

I think it's got more to do with the old "I have a diet soda so the calories in this McDonald's hamburger doesn't count" school of thought. I think a lot of us drink diet soda but don't carefully watch our portion sizes or the types of food we eat. But ... what do I know? I struggle with this issue so it's not like I have the answers.

Maybe I should just drink ice water.

The whole article about diet soda is here.