Diet drinks are ok. They are a way to have it all.
Fizzy, tasty drinks that quench the thirst and are way more exciting than plain old boring water or squash yet don’t make us put on weight because there are no calories.
I’ve been running 28 day low sugar challenges recently and because they work in making people more aware of the amount of sugar they are eating and help them lose weight, it looks as though I will be running them for the foreseeable future.
One of the first things people ask though is about diet drinks.
“They are ok, aren’t they? I mean – there’s no sugar in them.”
They are not ok. Try putting a penny in a glass of diet coke. If it does that to the penny; think of what it is doing to your teeth. The phosphoric acid in the drink attacks the tooth enamel.
The sweeteners in the drink trick your body into thinking that you are consuming sugar. The pancreas releases insulin to remove glucose from your blood stream and switches on your fat storage mechanisms. These sweeteners slow down your metabolism slightly so that makes you even more likely to put on weight.
This makes it even more likely that you will develop insulin resistance and with it comes an increased risk of all the associated metabolic disorders like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and autoimmune disorders.
And that’s not all the bad news!
A lot of these drinks contain caffeine and the combination of caffeine and artificial sweeteners can be highly addictive.
Because your body has been tricked into believing that you have eaten sugar and has rushed out the insulin to restore your blood sugar levels to normal, your blood sugar levels can then fall too low. This triggers your brain to feel hungry and demand more – you guessed it – sugar! Your brain will rationalise that away to you as being “it’s ok, you had a diet drink just now. No harm done.”
HARM HAS BEEN DONE. AVOID DIET DRINKS!
