New information shows diet drinks and artificial sweeteners DO fatten you....

Today's Post: Monday, 9-26-2011

We’ve already posted that two of the reasons for this are that:

Drinking diet soft drinks makes you hungrier for sweet foods within a short time after that.

People who drink diet soft drinks often eat them with the same fattening foods such as potato chips and French fries and the like that they were eating with regular soft drinks before.

But since then, I’ve found out it gets MUCH worse than that!

1. Recently, I read that the reason that you get hungry for sweet foods later in the day after drinking diet soft drinks is that your body releases the insulin needed to lower the blood sugar spike it expects because of the sweet taste.

Then your blood sugar drops and you immediately are hungry for something sweet to bring your blood sugar back up to normal.

That alone can cause fat gain. You tend to get strong cravings for sugary, fattening foods and eat some.

But, here’s why it’s so much worse. These insulin surges also are a biochemical messenger that tell your body to add more fat from the food available and hold onto this added fat even if it’s needed for the energy you are using.

That tends to fatten you and make it harder to remove the fat! Oops!

2. I just read an article, “Artificial Sweeteners Could Be Sabotaging Your Diet” by Mark Hyman, MD.

He quotes research showing that drinking diet soft drinks also likely slows your metabolism.

Without even realizing it, when you drink diet soft drinks, you also burn fewer calories each week!

That also tends to fatten you and make it harder to remove the fat! Oops!

This is a huge issue. About two thirds of adult Americans drink diet soft drinks or eat sweet treats often made with refined grains and sweetened with artificial sweeteners.

Most of them are fat or still fat too!

A) To lose fat and keep it off, you need to do several things.

To NOT get fat in the first place, you need to do the same several things.

1. Eat foods that turn off your hunger but do so without feeding you too many calories. Eat foods that boost your insulin levels very little.

Then you stay trim and free of excess fat WITHOUT getting extra hungry.

2. Get either a lot of exercise or get exercise that burns calories after you stop doing it or both.

3. Doing both things together, eating right AND exercise, gets the job done.

B) How to fail at fat loss and weight loss:

1. Trigger your famine response. Trying to lose fat and its weight by eating less than we are hungry for usually triggers your famine response. When you keep doing eating less than you are hungry for long enough it almost always does so.

That makes you very hungry and particularly hungry for fattening foods.

And, it slows your metabolism so you also burn fewer calories.

That stops fat loss even if you force yourself not to eat the fattening things. But after days and days of this, few people can resist eating more fattening things.

It’s a failsafe most of us have since we are descended from people who survived famines. The people without it died and we are not descended from them!

2. Do something else that makes you particularly hungry for fattening foods and slows your metabolism.

NOW we know, drinking diet soft drinks DOES fatten because it does exactly that!

Permanent fat loss without excessive hunger IS possible.

But two sure ways to trigger the opposite are:

to temporarily eat way less than we are hungry for every day for weeks --

and/or to drink diet soft drinks or eat sweet treats sweetened by artificial sweeteners.

What is the solution?

a) Drink things that have NO sweetener – with NO sugar or high fructose corn syrup OR artificial sweeteners.

Such as?

Water! (Chilled or iced water is even better since you need extra calories to combat the chill.)

Tea or green tea with no milk or sweetener added. (Milk prevents some of the health benefits of tea and unsweetened cocoa or chocolate.)

Hot drinks with only unsweetened cocoa or chocolate added and NO sweetener added.

Black coffee or coffee with 2% lowfat milk but no sweetener added.

Water that is only carbonated -- or chilled or iced water that is only carbonated but with NO sweetener added.

b) Eat some treats with real sugar (and NOT high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners); but eat those treats once or twice a month or less instead of two or three times a day or more.

Or eat treats that have no sweetener added. Eat raw nuts if you aren’t allergic or eat some low glycemic whole fresh fruit for treats instead of sugary treats. Or eat savory treats like guacamole or hummus.