Post: #1

I hardly drink sodas, but I am an energy drink junkie and usually drink one to two a day. I'm thinking about switching to diet energy drinks to avoid the extra calories. I hear that the artificial sweeteners fool your body ability to count calories and actually make you eat more though so I want to hear what you guys think. Do any of y'all drink diet drinks?

Post: #2

I'd stay away from diet drinks because they contain aspartame, which may be a neurotoxin. If you must drink soda or energy drinks, stick with regular.

Even better, switch to club soda, which is just carbonated water. It feels like you're drinking soda, except there are no calories, sugar, or toxic additives like artificial sweeteners.

Post: #3

If you give up drinks with added sugar, eventually things start tasting naturally sweeter. Club soda and some lime juice, unsweetened ice tea with lemon, etc.

Post: #4

You should switch to water for 80-90% of your liquid intake. The rest of the time drink whatever.

Post: #5

Energy drinks are awful for you. The large monsters have over a quarter pound of sugar in them. That's far worse then a few extra calories.

Drink green tea if you need an energy boost.

Post: #6

Ick, why don't you stop drinking sodas and energy drinks and instead drink green tea with turbinado sugar (sugar in the raw)?

Post: #7

Monsters are my favorite.

I'm going to start drinking more green tea instead.

Post: #8

Don't drink any drinks like that.

I used to be like you, I'd casually drink sodas and energy drinks, both normal and diet varieties. Around a year ago I stopped drinking any type of fizzy drink (most energy drinks are fizzy, such as red bull, mountain dew, monster, etc).

Since then, I've found it much easier to keep a low BF% (as in I can keep the same BF% by doing less exercise), and my teeth and skin have improved a lot too.

I'd say that 95% of your drinks should be water, milk and tea/coffee, with those 3 drinks in the ratio 80:10:10.

Post: #9

(07-22-2015 12:00 PM)JoyStick Wrote:  I hardly drink sodas, but I am an energy drink junkie and usually drink one to two a day. I'm thinking about switching to diet energy drinks to avoid the extra calories. I hear that the artificial sweeteners fool your body ability to count calories and actually make you eat more though so I want to hear what you guys think. Do any of y'all drink diet drinks?

I do. That is, I drink a diet soda maybe once a week. There are several types of artificial sweeteners. On this website you can read about which ones are better than others:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articl...-risk.aspx

Post: #10

In my opinion drinking sodas, energy drinks, and pre-workout drinks is a literally playing a game of pick your poison. Aspartame, high fructose corn syrup, and the other fifty-eleven chemicals listed in the ingredients section of those drinks are poison to the human body.

I had a bad experience on a pre-workout drink once and read a lot about all this stuff afterward. I don't even like doing much caffeine either but I've found that 50mg to 100mg of caffeine from coffee or tea can be an amazing pre-workout IF your body isn't used to caffeine. I cut all that shit out for a while and did no caffeine for a couple months to lose any tolerances that I had built up. I drink a small cup of coffee now and I'm jacked.

Post: #11

(07-22-2015 01:07 PM)britchard Wrote:  Around a year ago I stopped drinking any type of fizzy drink (most energy drinks are fizzy, such as red bull, mountain dew, monster, etc).

Since then, I've found it much easier to keep a low BF% (as in I can keep the same BF% by doing less exercise), and my teeth and skin have improved a lot too.

Yeah get the sugar out of your diet to keep a low BF%. Get the caffeine out of your diet to keep from retaining a lot of water because you're chronically dehydrated.

Post: #12

Don't drink weird chemistry experiments.

Especially if you say you drink one or two a day. That just isn't food man.

Post: #13

(07-22-2015 12:00 PM)JoyStick Wrote:  I hardly drink sodas, but I am an energy drink junkie and usually drink one to two a day. I'm thinking about switching to diet energy drinks to avoid the extra calories. I hear that the artificial sweeteners fool your body ability to count calories and actually make you eat more though so I want to hear what you guys think. Do any of y'all drink diet drinks?

I drink a lot of zero cal energy drinks to wake up in the morning and supress appetite but they are addictive, I can't think clearly or be in a good mood without having one. If I were you I'd taper off energy drinks using caffeine pills then avoid energy drinks of all kinds. If milk, tea coffee is too boring for your palate start juicing with MikeCFs guide.

Post: #14

Yes. Diet Coke is a godsend for when I'm trying to lose weight. As for the negative effects of aspartame, from what I understand those have been proven untrue.

Post: #15

While there is no doubt natural is usually better than chemicals, the whole aspartame claims are nonsense. Claims have been around for decades, and there is zero scientific evidence to support the claims that aspartame is harmful to humans. Billions of people have consumed it for decades.

The only verified risk consuming aspartame is with people that have phenylketonuria

Post: #16

double

Post: #17

The science is still out whether aspartame is actually bad for you. Since its only a combination of two commonly found amino acids I doubt there's much risk in drinking it. I would keep consumption under two 12 ounce cans per day. Even then diet coke is a great thing to have on a keto diet.

Post: #18

(07-22-2015 12:00 PM)JoyStick Wrote:  I hardly drink sodas, but I am an energy drink junkie and usually drink one to two a day. I'm thinking about switching to diet energy drinks to avoid the extra calories. I hear that the artificial sweeteners fool your body ability to count calories and actually make you eat more though so I want to hear what you guys think. Do any of y'all drink diet drinks?

Post: #19

(07-22-2015 03:04 PM)GlobalMan Wrote:  Claims have been around for decades, and there is zero scientific evidence to support the claims that aspartame is harmful to humans.

From the neurosurgeon who wrote an entire book on the subject (Excitotoxins, the Taste that Kills) - http://dorway.com/doctors-speak-out/dr-b...othalamus/

Quote:Newer findings indicate that the hypothalamus is involved in several
endocrine syndromes, neurological diseases and even psychiatric disorders.
As early as 1976, it was shown that aspartame feeding in mice could produce
lesions in the hypothalamus of newborns. It should be realized that these
are lesions (injuries) that can be seen through an ordinary light
microscope.
...
In animals made obese by damaging hypothalamic nuclei, one frequently sees
accompanying violent outburst. We also know that directly injecting
micromolar quantities of MSG into certain hypothalamic nuclei can
precipitate an explosion of violence in experimental animals. The
hypothalamus is one of the areas of the brain not protected by the blood-
brain barrier.
...
Recently, Trocho and co-workers discovered that the methanol in aspartame
appears to attach to the DNA of cells after it is metabolized to
formaldehyde, and is not only very difficult to remove, but results in
numerous DNA deletion injuries. This could increase cancer risk as well as
risk of other degenerative diseases, such as lupus, diabetes and Alzheimer’s
disease.

From Pub med - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6152304

Quote:Evidence is reviewed supporting the view that excitotoxic food additives pose a significant hazard to the developing nervous system of young children. The following points are stressed: (1) although blood-brain barriers protect most central neurons from excitotoxins, certain brain regions lack such protection (a characteristic common to all vertebrate species); (2) regardless of species, it requires only a transient increase in blood excitotoxin levels for neurons in unprotected brain regions to be "silently" destroyed; (3) humans may be at particularly high risk for this kind of brain damage, since ingestion of a given amount of excitotoxin causes much higher blood excitotoxin levels in humans than in other species; (4) in addition to the heightened risk on a species basis, risk may be further increased for certain consumer sub-populations due to youth, disease or genetic factors; (5) despite these reasons for maintaining a wide margin of safety in the use of excitotoxins in foods, no safety margin is currently being observed, i.e., a comparative evaluation of animal (extensive) and human (limited) data supports the conclusion that excitotoxins, as used in foods today, may produce blood elevations high enough to cause damage to the nervous system of young children, damage which is not detectable at the time of occurrence but which may give rise to subtle disturbances in neuroendocrine function in adolescence and/or adulthood.

Like many things the worst effects are on children, but that doesn't mean it's healthy for the rest of us. I try to limit MSG and avoid aspartame entirely, not least of all because it tastes like shit.

Post: #20

just drink water, or sugarfree energy drinks.

Post: #21

(07-22-2015 04:22 PM)Hades Wrote:  The science is still out whether aspartame is actually bad for you. Since its only a combination of two commonly found amino acids I doubt there's much risk in drinking it. I would keep consumption under two 12 ounce cans per day. Even then diet coke is a great thing to have on a keto diet.

If you can find a copy, check out the documentary "Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454639/?ref_=fn_al_tt_4

It's been years since I screened it, but the two major points I recall are:

1. Phenylketonurics/Apsertame can never, NEVER be eliminated from the body. In small amounts, this chemical will not harm you, but over time it accumulates in the body, and if you are a chronic consumer of Diet Coke or aspertame in other foods, you might want to see this film because when it reaches certain levels, it's harmful.

2. The FDA rejected Aspertame when it was first submitted as a safe food additive (links to brain tumors and cancer in lab tests, IIRC). Donald Rumsfeld then used his influence with Reagan to stack the FDA panel to get Aspertame pushed through because Monsanto (Rummie's employer at the time) knew that if the USA approved the chemical, the world (and massive profits) would follow.

Post: #22

Drink a glass of water, a big glass, in the morning, then keep drinking water. See what happens in a few days. You'll be amazed at how much more energy you have (and sustainable energy, not the quick rush you get from energy drinks) by simply being hydrated. Most people are much less hydrated than they think, and therefore more lethargic. What's worse is that they use energy drinks, sodas, and caffeinated drinks which makes the de-hydration worse. Try water. If you're working out a lot, get your electrolytes from food, not sports drinks.

Post: #23

(07-22-2015 06:41 PM)Gorgiass Wrote:  Like many things the worst effects are on children, but that doesn't mean it's healthy for the rest of us. I try to limit MSG and avoid aspartame entirely, not least of all because it tastes like shit.

Agreed that its best to limit intake of any of these substances. The few times per week I do have a diet soda I might as well have a regular one, it won't be adding an undue amount of calories and it sure tastes better than diet.

I try to keep it perspective of the totality of what I'm ingesting though. You'll see guys who swear off aspartame but might use steroids, drink heavily and smoke cigars. All of those have verifiable, significant and known health impacts but its aspartame that needs to be avoided? Vegetarians or vegans that will only eat french fries and related shitty foods...

If a guy has few vices and is generally healthy, but drinks diet sodas, I think he's miles ahead of most of the population in terms of health.

Post: #24

Water and Coffee are the only non alcoholic drinks a man needs.

Post: #25

Its usually recommended to drink half of your body weight in ounces of water every day. I started doing this (along with two cups of coffee per morning) and have experienced a high energy boost. I'm 200 lbs so I drink about 100 oz of water per day and have been feeling much better and more focused.