Carbonated sugars
The poll is only a starting point for the discussion. Personally, I've heard mixed responces, and have had a personal experience that doesn't quite make sense. I'd like to know what others think about this specific dietary issue.
The thing for me was this:
Around the new year, I decided to stop drinking regular soda in favor of diet soda. My buddy (Zanthian on teh intarwebs) had recently traded all of his soda for diet and seen a marked improvement, however his change was apccompanied by a general change in lifestyle to one that included more fitness-based activities. So, while not a scientific correlation, it made sense to me: Even though I didn't feel like changing the rest of my lifestyle at the time, I was okay with switching to diet soda. I even foud a few that I actually liked the taste of, when I tried Diet Root Beet, and Diet Code Red.
Inadvertly, I changed to diet soda as a controled experiment. I didn't change anything else about my lifestyle or dietary habits. All I did was replace regular soda with diet soda, exchanging roughtly 300-500 calories per day for what nutritionally resembled carbonated water. It seems to me that just that change, even when not combined with any other changes, should do
something.
However, after waiting six months, nothing changed about my physique at all, I still weighd and looked the same as I did for the entire year previous to the change. I know that 'diet isn't everything' when it comes to weight-loss, but shouldn't it be
something. Taking in fewer calories should decrease my mass over time, at least a little, right?
The thing is:
It get's even more strange, in my opinion.
This summer, I started working out more, and eating better in general, doing the more total lifestyle change that is associated with actual fitness, and it started to work, almost right away, I started to look and feel better. Around the same time, I started to get really tired of the diet sodas finally, and started drinking more regular soda again. Almost as much as I used to (1-2 cans/day), although I still drink diet some of the time (especially at home.
This hasn't effected anything, my switch back to regular soda hasn't stopped me from feeling nd lookin better on a day-to-day basis, as my fitness regimine continues.
From a scientist's point of view (although I know the study pool is too small for a real scientific study, thus the poll at the top of the htread), this seems to indicate that whether I drink regular or diet soda has no impact whatsoever on my general fitness.
How is that possible?
We already have discussions going on in other threads about the general importance of changing more than just your diet when establishing a new fitness-lifestyle, so
what I'd like to discuss in this thread is specifically the difference between regular and diet soda, and what impact it has on our bodies
Edit: Well, I tried to add a poll, but apparently if you take more than five minutes to compose the poll responces, you don't get to have a poll :P Here's what it would have been:
Q: What's your experience?
- I don't know anyone who has switched from regular to diet soda without being part of a major lifestyle change.
- I know people who have switched from regular to diet soda without being part of a major lifestyle change, and I think they became healthier as a result.
- I know people who have switched from regular to diet soda without being part of a major lifestyle change, and I don't think their health got better as a result.
- I know people who have switched from regular to diet soda without being part of a major lifestyle change, but have not noticed a pattern either way.
