Have you kicked your daily sugary soft drink habits and filled your fridge with diet colas and lemonades? You may be surprised to hear that this switch will likely provide little to no benefits to your health. Diet soft drinks, whilst they rate zero on the calorie scale, are not your healthy friends. After all, there has to be something in that glass that makes it taste sweet, right?

Diet soft drinks have the sugar of their regular counterparts replaced by artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, saccharin, and sucralose. These chemical sweeteners are hundreds of times sweeter than regular sugar and, over time, dull our senses to naturally sweet foods such as fruit and honey. When this happens, we need our foods to be sweeter and sweeter than normal to gain that regular feeling of reward or pleasure from our minds.

When you drink regular soft drink, the body reacts by producing insulin and going into fat storage mode. Just as when you overeat, over-drinking sugar calories makes your body think you need to store energy in the form of fat. Consuming artificial sweeteners confuses your brain to go through the same process. And what does this equal? Weight gain.

It does not eliminate the risks that you would be at if drinking regular sugar-filled soft drink. An observational study performed in 2008 showed that people who regularly consumed diet soft drinks were at a 67% higher risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes than people who rarely or never drank it! The study also uncovered links between consumption and much higher waist circumferences.

It is not hydrating you or making you feel full! To be blunt and 100% honest (which is how we like to be at WHC), diet soft drink is nothing but a chemical cocktail. There are no benefits to consuming it. You are not hydrating your body. By drinking diet soda instead of water, you are depriving your body of what it genuinely needs to operate.

In conclusion? If you’re thirsty, DRINK WATER. If you’re lacking in energy, get up and move around to get the blood flowing or have a cup of black coffee. Do not drink diet soft drink. The only thing real about it is the first three letters.

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