Effects of diet soda on your diet

This might be kind of a dumb question, but I really need to know. What is the effect of diet pop soda on your diet? Even though I’m on a weight/mass gaining diet, I’m still careful as to the types of carbs that I take in, so I drink diet pop; specifically Diet Mountain Dew. Now even though it has no carbs it still has artificial sweetners, so does it still have a negative impact on your insulin levels? Does it still cause you to store fat? I feel like I’m storing a lot of fat lately and I’ve kept my fat intake to an average of 15% per day. What to you think fellow T-people?

First of all, a diet with 15% calories from fat is a bad idea unless you like having low testosterone and rampant muscle loss (disregard this statement if you’re taking a prohormone). Second, diet soda has no calories, you won’t gain fat from it. I don’t think any minor insulin response associated with the diet soda (if there is any) would be enough to halt progress on a diet. Just keep it simple, calories in vs calories out, plenty of protein, and you’ll lose fat. By the way, don’t call it ‘pop’.

Well, diet soda is better than the regular stuff by leaps and bounds, but it could be a problem. More likely, the problem is diet, lifestyle or training related, but if those areas are in check and your body fat level is already fairly low, cutting the diet soda may make a difference. The caffiene could impair insulin sensitivity and usually your total fluid intake is less if relying on partially on diet soda rather than solely on water.

Personally I think you should stick with the non diet sodas, and also cut sodas out altogether. Who knows what the hell is in those “diet” sodas. I mean, how do they get zero calories without adding anything weird into that stuff?

I think your fat intake is too low. Fat doesn’t make you fat; overeating and poorly timed consumption of certain macros (e.g. carbs) can make you fat. I’m willing to bet that with a fat intake of 15%, you’re eating way too many carbs for your BF%. Plus, the caffeine (and sweeteners, for that matter) in the soda you are drinking is magnifying the glycemic effect of the carbs you eat.


My suggestion would be to replace some of the carbs in your diet with healthy fats and cut back on the soda.

From a thermodynamics standpoint, diet pop shouldn’t cause you to store fat. I used to drink a few cans of diet pop a day, and I decided to try cutting it out completely to see what happened. I noticed that avoiding diet pop contributed to less water retention throughout the day. In terms of water retention, I now look and feel pretty much the same in the afternoon and at night as I do in the morning. There’s nothing good in diet pop anyway, so if you can get away from it, you’re probably doing a good thing. I think the previous responses regarding your fat intake are probably worth considering as well. And I see no reason why you shouldn’t call it pop. I thought if I popped into the forum for a second to pop off this message, it might annoy the guy who has a real problem with the word pop.

Diet sodas have two issues: artificial sweeteners and caffeine. Read T-mag’s “Caffeine Roundtable” for more info there.

Your fat intake isn’t nearly high enough. You also have to be realistic about gaining a little fat while you’re trying to get bigger. It’s going to happen! The guys that are afraid of putting on a little bodyfat when trying to put on size are usually the guys that don’t grow. Don’t sweat an occasional diet soda if you’re bulking or cutting. If you’re doing everything else right it won’t matter.

Thanks for all your responses. I am actually taking 4 AD while I’m on this program. I’m also following, the best I can, the massive eating program and according the formulas I should be taking in 130 grams of fat, 492 grams of carbs and 387 grams of protein. I’m just trying to not have to buy bigger pants before I start my cutting cycle in Feb.

I noticed that no one addressed the issue of sodium. Diet colas contain huge amounts of sodium that can lead to water retention. Also speaking of water retention, I would suggest that you drink at least 1oz per lb of body weight. If you are going to drink diet soda along with water, you should probably drink even more than that.

Oh I forgot to mention, those of you who are hooked on soda pop, go to you local Wal-mart and look for their brand of carbonated water called “Clear American”. I was once hooked on pop and this water has completely replaced pop for me. Strawberry is my favorite. Give it try , its water and its tasty, 2-birds with one stone.
Just my $0.02

Besides the artificial sweeteners, there is the issue of the “caramel coloring” which is not good for you, if you drink a lot of colas. I’ve found that sparkling water (seltzer) totally quenches my cravings for sodas… it seems that 90% of the appeal is in the BUBBLES and the sugar and other crap I can do without. (It’s also sodium free). Try an ice-cold seltzer instead!

There are several companies who make carbonated spring water, some of it with light flavorings but no sweeteners, not even aspartame. (The Clearly American water has aspartame in it.) When I lived in Texas I bought Ozarka carbonated spring water. Now I get Poland Springs water from Whole Foods.

“My suggestion would be to replace some of the carbs in your diet with healthy fats…”

Hey Eric, I see this advise all the time (from different people). How exactly do you do that? Most people only use 1-2 teaspoons of flax oil and 10-20 caps of fish oil.

Eat peanuts.

Die Harkonen!

Come on, you could at least have spelt Atriedes correctly…oh man :0)

which diet sodas contain huge amounts of sodium? Any diet soda I ever consumed contained less than 35mg or less than 1% of the already low RDA.

Joel Marion

Newbie, you obviously dont have much of an understand of sodium and water retention. More to the point, diet pop wont affect your fat loss. Unless you are competing, and even then I’d only cut it out at the 2 week mark, dont worry about it. All my guys go nuts on diet pop all the way through their diets up to the 2 week point and they still come in hard.

I just have a personal story to share here. When my son Charlie was born on March 16th, I started upping the diet Coke intake to get through the days teaching 11 activity classes at Texas A&M on 3-4 hours of sleep each night. 6 months later, I was at 6 20-oz. bottles per day. I quit cold turkey in September at the beginning of the semester so I could be an example to my students.



Since I quit, I sleep better, have NO mood swings (admittedly, I’m an extremely positive person to begin with), I’m literally NEVER tired during the day, and I look better. I’ll ASSUME that the looks part is because I’m retaining less water, but I could be wrong. There was, however, a literal difference within 10 days.