When you're trying to lose weight, you may choose diet soda as a way to get the flavors of your favorite drinks without the empty calories. Unfortunately, the very beverage that you turn to in order to help you lose weight could actually derail your weight loss efforts. Before you begin drinking diet soda as part of your weight loss plan, consider the effects of diet soda on weight loss.
Weight Gain
Drinking diet soda for weight loss could cause the exact opposite to occur. A study performed by the University of Texas Health Science Center and the Medical University of South Carolina, with results published in a 2008 issue of "Obesity," found that subjects who drank diet soda had higher body mass indexes and weight than those who did not drink diet soda. CBS News hypothesizes that drinking diet soda makes you feel as though you're conserving calories, so it gives you license to eat more. That false sense of security could sabotage your weight loss efforts.
Dehydration
Many types of diet soda contain caffeine. Caffeine acts like a diuretic in the body, causing the kidneys to expel more urine, notes the American Heart Association. When you drink diet, caffeinated soda all day, you could become dehydrated; if you're drinking diet soda, you're likely not drinking water. Water is essential to your body's function and one of the most effective ways to hydrate your body while you exercise for weight loss. Dehydration could cause a lack of energy, irritability and even headaches that prevent you from getting fit.
Appetite Gain
Flavored with artificial sweeteners like saccharin and aspartame, diet soda can confuse the sensors in your body that let you know you're full. The Association for Psychological Science warns that your brain cannot process artificial sweeteners in the same way that it processes sugar. The APS hypothesizes that the sensors in your brain use sugar content to determine satiety. When those sensors cannot detect sugar, the artificial sweeteners fool the brain into thinking that you're still hungry, so you may eat more; diet soda may prevent you from knowing when you're full.
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