I have been earing no more than 1,000 calories per day and I'm exercising and haven't lost any weight yet. I have not cheated, but I do drink about 2 liters of diet Coke per day. I'm wondering if this could be the cause of my lack of weight loss. I am doing this to try to get my HbA1c down from 7.1 to a lower level.
Q: Diet soda affect weight loss or lack of while on a diet
Answers (5)
11/ 7/09 8:50am
Hi..
Okay, directly, Diet Coke will not affect weightloss because it doesn't contain calories...but there is absurd amounts of caffeine in 2 liters of Diet Coke, TONS of chemicals your body doesn't need, and it is by no means considered HYDRATING.
To lose weight, you do need to be well hydrated. LOTS AND LOTS OF WATER! Some of it can be flavored water, like crystial light, but for the most part, old-fashioned ice water is what your body is missing. If you've been struggling to lose weight with other changes in your lifestyle (exercise and food), then nixing all that diet coke is an excellent idea.
Weight loss or not, that is really not doing good things for your body!
Do you think you can cut it? Your body is going to miss the caffeine, so you may need to ween yourself off with green tea and other healthier forms of caffeine. Even 2 cups of coffee in the morning is going to be a whole lot better than 2 liters of diet coke every day.
-Ginger
11/10/09 9:18pm
Judy,
You might want to consider consider upping the number of calories you're eating. 1,000 is really low, and it's unlikely that you're getting enough nutrients. But more significantly, when you cut calories way down, your body's metabolism slows as well to try to conserve energy. It's your body's primordial way of saying, "If you don't feed me, I'll try to hang on to all the energy I get." I've had experience with this in the past, and although it seems counterintuitive, eating a comfortable and sustainable number of calories maximizes my metabolism and gives me energy for more beneficial workouts.
I hope this helps!
Maggie
11/10/09 9:53pm
Hey Judy,
Ginger and Maggie both have excellent advice here. I think you might want to take a look at some posts I wrote in the past about the effects of diet soda.. what I wrote is only loosely related to your question, but you should definitely check it out!
http://www.healthcentral.com/diabeteens/c/22669/33644/drink-drink
Good luck getting that HbA1c down!
-Svati
11/12/09 3:57pm
p.s. Too much fake sugars in the body will cause definite water retention will which lead to bloating and a heavier number on the scale!
11/16/09 12:58pm
The major problem with drinking that much diet soda is that the phosphoric acid leaches important vitamins and minerals such as vitamin a, calcium and magnesium from the body. This can lead to weaker bones, and muscle and nerve problems. I first read an article about this in a powerlifting magazine a few months ago and being someone that drank a 20oz diet mountain dew every day, I decided to see if there really were major side effects to drinking too much of the stuff. Knowing from previous research that the experiment I was going to conduct on myself wouldn't cause fatal damage, I started drinking 2 liters or so a day. Now, I was still drinking my usual 3-4 liters of water a day so the diet soda was not my only fluids. After about 2 months of this "diet soda addiction" I definitly experienced side effects. I felt like my toes on both feet were numb all the time as well as my left shoulder. I also wasn't "feeling" the muscular contractions when I was training with weights at the gym. After feeling this way for most of a week, I stopped drinking all diet soda completely and within 3 days all the "wierd" side effects I was feeling went away. I would speculate that the diet soda was causing some type of nerve damage or interference leading to my feeings of numbness.
All in all, I tend to lean to the everything in moderation side of things. Am I going to stop drinking diet sday forever? No, but I am definitly going to cut back to maybe a few a week after a couple of months of being off of it completely.
I would treat diet soda as a treat for when you really want something sweet, but not as a way of getting your fluids.
Also, I agree that 1000 calories is pretty low. Are you trying to diet for a physique competition of some kind. As someone that has helped more than a few girls get into shape for shows, I never had someone so low in calories.
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