Cutting - sugar or sugar-substitute?

[jason]

I'm trying to cut, and having a harder time than usual. I'll be 36 in a month, so I think my metabolism just ain't what she used to be

Here's my question, though. Normally, on weekends, I usually treat myself to a Coke Zero (0 calories, sweetened with aspartame), and during the week, I usually drink sweet tea with meals, but water when I'm just drinking.

The debate is, while cutting, is it better to drink Coke Zero with meals, or unsweetened tea + Splenda? Or is regular tea sweetened with sugar just as good?

Everything I read simply says "soda = bad, tea = good". But I'm not finding any real information on WHY this is. Other than antioxidants that might help prevent cancer (which is dubious to me), and the argument that diet soda might cause you to crave other sweets, I'm not finding anything.

Is sugar substitute something that, while technically it doesn't have calories, your body still turns it in to fat so it's really no better than sugar? Or are zero-calorie drinks always better than some-calorie drinks? Or is the whole thing just a bunch of irrelevant marketing information from the sugar / non-sugar industries?

[thatnuckolskid]

sweet tea has a TON of calories (in my experience, here in the south). something to watch out for is that most "0-calorie" sweeteners use maltodextrin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltodextrin) as a binder, and therefore do still have some calories if you're eating it by the bucketload. but yes, unsweetened tea plus splenda would be much better than regular sweet tea. also, your body can't turn anything to fat which has no caloric value. sugar substitutes have been shown to produce an insulin spike in some people (http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/30/7/e59.full), but in my eyes: insulin spike - carbs > insulin spike + carbs. heck, it might even help keep you semi-anabolic during a cut.

[3speed]

Diet soda might not help you stay trim after all, new research suggests.
A study presented at a American Diabetes Association meeting this week shows that drinking diet soda is associated with a wider waist in humans. And a second study shows that aspartame -- an artificial sweetener in diet soda -- actually raises blood sugar in mice prone to diabetes.

"Data from this and other prospective studies suggest that the promotion of diet sodas and artificial sweeteners as healthy alternatives may be ill-advised," study researcher Helen P. Hazuda, Ph.D., a professor and chief of clinical epidemiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio's School of Medicine, said in a statement. "They may be free of calories but not of consequences."

In the first study, researchers collected height, weight, waist circumference and diet soda intake data from 474 elderly people who participated in the San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging. They were followed up an average of 9.5 years later, according to the research.

Researchers found that the diet soda drinkers had waist circumference increases of 70 percent greater than those who non-diet soda drinkers. And people who drank diet soda the most frequently -- at least two diet sodas a day -- had waist circumference increases that were 500 percent greater than people who didn't drink any diet soda, the study said.

Artificial sugar didn't produce any better results in the second study in mice. Researchers for this study found that diabetes-prone mice that were fed a diet that included aspartame for three months, had higher blood glucose levels than mice not given aspartame.

This isn't the first news illuminating diet soda's health risks. A study published earlier this year found people who drink the beverage every day have a higher stroke and heart attack risks. And UK researchers found earlier this month that sugary drinks can dull taste buds, leading consumers to crave the sweet stuff even more.



The above article is from Healthy Living News.



Also, a quick search on PubMed found a recent study that reported for every diet soda consumed on a daily basis, the risk of developing Type2 Diabetes increases by 41%.

The same study also found a 54% risk of becoming overweight or obese for diet soft-drink drinkers compard to 33% for regular soft-drink drinkers. The study suggested that by consuming drink or food that has been sweetened by artificial - 0 or low calorie - means, the individual confuses their body which is expecting calories and cause it to seek the calories elsewhere.

[thatnuckolskid]

3speed, not to argue with your statistics, but this could very well be an instance of correlation not necessarily implying causation. what seems like a more likely explanation to me is that people switch to diet sodas when they're already obese or developing insulin sensitivity issues. sort of like how people who floss have a substantially smaller risk of heart disease than people who don't floss. people who floss also tend to engage in other healthy behaviors. most people don't switch to diet sodas unless they've already realized they have a problem.

furthermore, the study was based on epidemiology statistics, not a controlled study. the results don't mean anything to me unless macronutrient consumption was controlled between groups. it could simply mean that, psychologically, people drink diet sodas to justify unhealthy food choices.

[3speed]

My daughter has competed in dance for the last 15 years. Dancers seem to be forever battling with their weight. Most of the girls who were in her studio drank diet soft drinks because they thought the lower calorie content would help them keep their weight down.

One day while I was waiting to pick up my daughter, several of them asked me about controlling their weight. I talked to them for a while and then told them to give up the diet drinks and switch to water. Within a month, every one of them thanked me for the advice and said that they had lost weight.

Nutrition is one of the least studied and understood aspects of our lives. We are only just beginning to understand that it isn't as simple as "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie". As we begin to understand just a little of what is actually happening and how different bodily processes are affected, we are starting to see just how little we actually understand. The human body has multiple feedback pathways that are designed to autoregulate and have millenia of survival instinct imprinted into their genetic code. One prime example of this is how cutting calories will only result in weight loss for a definite period of time before the bodyweight levels off without additional modifications. (You actually reach a point where increasing calories can result in weight loss)

Yes, sweet tastes have been shown to produce an insulin response in some people. Yes, insulin is anabolic, but it also triggers the body to store fat. In this way, a zero calorie product can signal the body to store more fat. This is just one more example of how compex our systems truly are.

[thatnuckolskid]

i agree with everything you just said, and your final point i acknowledged in my first post that the insulin response to sugar substitutes is anabolic, but anabolic doesn't necessarily mean you exclusively store fat. managing insulin is one of the most difficult parts of dieting. if you don't release enough, you have a hard time maintaining muscle, but if you release too much (or at the wrong times), you run the risk of retaining or storing more fat. hence the rising popularity of diets like cyclical or targeted keto diets. and of course the girls will lose weight by switching to water from diet soft drinks. keeping insulin low is obviously important if your sole goal is weight loss. however, since the OP is posting on a PL forum, i assumed he was looking to lose weight and maintain muscle in the process. i was simply trying to answer his question as to which of the proposed approaches was preferable.

[dbunch]

I also read that artificial sweeteners are uber sweet to the taste buds so when you eat something naturally sweet your body crave more of it which leads to over eating. Also, I understand that it’s not thirst quenching so you ten to drink more of it. I don’t have anything to back it up so it might be all BS. Personally, Except for my cup of coffee in the morning I mostly stick with water and lots of it.