Diet Coke....friend or foe?
 

Hi again everyone :) I've got a question about Diet Coke. It has 0 carbs according to the info on the can, and I have lost a fair bit of weight while drinking a fair bit of it and water. But I wanted some other "losers" opinions on it and what they might have experienced.

Hello, my name is Sandi and I am a Diet coke addict. But since going on program I have replaced it with the flavored waters WalMart carries. I have a four (large ones )a day habbit. When I'm not drinking those I down a 2 QT pitcher or more of Crystal Light, which has 5 calories per 8oz. You can break free beleive me you can. It's the caffine that will get you in trouble.

Foe. :lol: Not because it stalls the weight, though. It's just not as good for you as plain old water. I used to drink diet caffeine free Pepsi all the time. Since I've started drinking water I don't miss it a bit. And I think about all the money I wasted on it! One of the things I've learned with this WOE is that it's not just about eating low carb - it's about eating healthier by eliminating the processed foods. :agree:

It contains Aspartame, which Dr. Atkins is against. I basically drink water as my beverage of choice and only very occasionally drink caffeine free diet coke as a mixer if I'm having an alc. beverage.

According to a nutritionist I heard before ever starting LC, the body cannot distinguish nutrasweet from actual sugar and falsely perceives that your blood sugar has been raised and releases insulin to combat that. This lowers your blood sugar to lower than normal, which triggers feelings of hunger. I quit drinking Diet coke several years before starting LC b/c the last thing I needed was a drink to make me feel hungrier.

As a side benefit, I stopped getting headaches as frequently as I had been (another possible side effect from aspartame/nutrasweet).

foe. it has caffeine, aspartame and carbs. I had a 2 case a day habit when I started but gave it up.
You seem to be one of the folks not effected by the caffeine stimulating your insulin production which is a fat storing hormone in humans as well as carbohydrate processing. You also don't seem to be effected by the aspartamen and not everyone is. But since you don't have an identical twin doing the plan not consuming the diet coke you will never know how much you would have lost if you had followerd the rules for induction and given it up.

As to the carbs look on fitday. I think it is .46 per 8 ounces and if you are drinking a significant amount as I was it could stall you out.

The caffeine withdrawal headache is terrible but the great feeling you get when you are off it and on Atkins is well worth it.

Atkins4myW: Where can I see this "fitday" you refer to? Not familiar with that section (if it is one). Thanks for all the input so far everyone. :)

FITDAY.com its free and an EXCELLENT tool! you'll love it!

I to am and was a diet coke drinker. I can do the caffiene free but the taste ain't the same. I will do diet sprite, root beer, squirt, etc. I have also found that our Save a Lot store has diet cola, lemonlime, rootbeer and dr pepper type sodas with sucralose in them.

I still do caffiene but only limited, I never had headaches or anything from it.

dave

An excellent alternative is diet rite soda. It's made with splenda, has no caffine, no sodium, no sugar, no carbs. It comes in 7 flavors (although, I have only been able to find cola and tangerine). the cloa tastes more like REAL coke than diet coke ever did. It's distibuted by dr.pepper/7up. hope this helps.

Totally

I used to drink 2 litres a day. Everyday. sometimes more.

it was an addiction. I couldnt even relax if I had none in the house.

I felt sluggish all day.

Then I decided to try and come off it. It was hard.

but I did and now I avoid it and i feel that i have actually more energy and i feel less...eh...tired and moody.

Was it the diet coke? I am not sure.

But i am glad i am off it.

xxx

I drank diet Coke for about the first nine months I was low carbing. It did not interfere with my weight loss. However, I gave it up because I knew it was not healthy and I am doing this to try to improve my health. I feel a lot better since I stopped drinking those chemicals and all that aspartame.

Hi June!

I'm curious about this, do you know where I can find more information? From what I understand, all sweet tastes (and scents) will spike a tiny insulin response, but when the saliva doesn't register carbs to break down, that metabolic process is shut off.

And if our body can't distinguish between nutra-sweet and sugar, how's it going to react to Splenda that's made from sugar? I'm so confused.

I believe that aspartame is way down there on the list of 'good things', but there's an awful lot of dis-information out there. If you've got an idea of where I could find more about this effect, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks!

Sorry, I don't. It was a radio program I heard about 5 yrs. ago. I've been off the diet coke (other than an occasional alcoholic beverage mixed with it) ever since then. I was on WW at the time and figured anything I could do to help eliminate cravings was worth a try.

I do also remember Richard Simmons being on the Tonight show around the same time and he had lost some weight and he said that the only change he had made was eliminating diet soda.

I allow myself one or two on the weekends while I'm working on my house. It gives me a bit of a jolt (since I am otherwise caffein-free) and does not cause me to eat.

But I've never had a problem with staying away from it, even before LCing. I'd trust in the advice given here from those who have struggled with it.

Donald

AntiM the stuff she refers to is called the cephalic response and it is really in our heads. For some reason Obese folks process sweet food stimuli different from skinny folks and not all heavy folks have the same degree of response. Several studies were done where folks were wired up and blood was drawn and just looking at pictures of desserts caused measurable rises in the insulin levels of folks. Sweet taste can triiger it too.
Your body works by interlocking the molecules with sites in the body. Change the shape of the molecule slightly and it no longer fits the targeted site. sort of like a jigsaw puzzle you can force some wrong pieces in places they don't belong as you start putting it together, but only the right piece will fit all the other pieces in its proper place. Slenda has been changed in shape from sugar so we don't process it in the metabolic pathways but our taste buds still recognize it as sweet. While my body won't process the splenda molecule in the carb energy pathways the sweet taste sets off cravings for me and I have to avoid it.
The Richard Simons weight loss he attributed to fluid he was retaining from the diet sodas. I saw his interview on one of the morning talk shows. it amounted to 10-15 pounds so it was significant for him.
The aspartamine soda info comes from folks who were patients of the atkins center reporting stalls. One low carb site posted a report from the Atkins center that said 25% of their patients reported stalls from its use. The soda test was repeated at the U of Maryland and concluded that no conclusion could be made because the test parameters did nothing to exclude the citric acid in the sodas as the cause of the stalling. So that is were the aspartame in sodas info is at this time. BUT there is no conflicting information on the fact that caffeine does stimulate insulin production in the human body. This inturn causes blood sugar changes and will trigger you to feel the need to eat. Insulin is also a fat storing hormone. You don't want to be storing any of those fats you just ate on your Atkins plan do you?
The body builders will argue that a small amount of caffeine will help you lose weight and build muscle mass and that maybe behind the AtkinsCenters desision to now allow 1 cup of caffeine containing beverage daily during induction.
And lastly if you are addicted to your caffeine containing drink that should tell you all you need to know about why you should give it up.