The last few decades have seen an increasing reliance on artificially sweetened foods and beverages to assist in weight loss, or to prevent further weight gain.
Using an artificially sweetened food or drink can help to dramatically reduce your kilojoule intake. For example, one can of diet cola has 15 kilojoules, while the regular cola sweetened with sugar has 650 kilojoules.
It would take around 30 minutes of walking at a moderate pace to burn off 650 kilojoules, so the diet drink would seem like a better choice. But while artificially sweetened diet drinks might be virtually kilojoule free, they are not free of consequences.
There are question marks about the ability of artificial sweeteners to actually help you lose weight. Diet drinks may have an impact on your hunger levels and abdominal girth measurements.
You may wish to use artificial sweeteners as a stepping stone to help yourself cut out sugary drinks in the short-term. Over the long-term, it’s likely your health will benefit from drinking plain water, as this helps to reduce your kilojoule intake while also keeping your beverage intake as close to what nature intended as possible.
It’s also important to not eat more diet-type foods because you know they are lower in kilojoules.
For example, the total kilojoules in lite chocolate would be less than regular chocolate because the sugar kilojoules are substituted with an artificial sweetener. But the high amount of fat in the chocolate remains unchanged. If people then eat larger portions of lite chocolate thinking it’s healthier, they could end up eating more fat than normal and still lots of kilojoules.
There is conflicting scientific research on the role artificial sweeteners play in weight control. So I’d like your opinion - do you drink artificially sweetened drinks? Have they helped you lose weight or do they make you feel hungry?