The Truth about Diet Soda and Weight Gain- The answer may surprise you!

Hey everyone I hope you are having an awesome day! I have been seeing it a lot lately and am going to discuss what is going on with Diet Soda and weight gain. Here is what I discovered.

Over 40% of calories consumed are from soda pop, and the average American drinks 47 gallons of it a year! It is such an easy and seemingly harmless thing to drink and you don’t even feel full from it. It is no wonder that so many of us are gaining weight. “Well I drink DIET and it that has ZERO calories”, you might say. What you don’t know is that Diet soda is not helping you lose any weight; in fact it could be responsible for some extra pounds! There are two main studies relating to artifical sweeteners and weight gain, one done at Purdue with rats and another that followed two soda drinkers over time. The evidence to support that artificial sweeteners are responsible for weight gain is inconclusive and thin. So why am I even writing a post about this? Well as it turns out the reason that drinking diet or any non-diet soda can cause weight gain has to do with acidity.

With a litmus test we can see that the pH (Acidic 0-14 Alkaline) of soda is 2.5 placing it quite far in the acidic territory. The cause of this is Phosphoric Acid which is in all sodas and by its self is right next to battery acid on the pH scale. Constantly flooding the body with acid forming foods like sodas, meat and carbohydrates causes our lungs to work harder to expel carbon dioxide, the kidneys increase the acidity of the urine and minerals like Calcium, Magnesium, Iodine, Potassium and Sodium are leeched from the body to restore pH balance in the body. It is no surprise that with our Standard American Diet (SAD) loaded with sugar, meat, saturated fat and carbs, that our nation who consumes more calcium than any other has comparably poor bone health. One of the major culprits is the over-consumption of acid-forming beverages like soda, coffee, energy drinks, and alcohol.

Our body’s metabolism is regulated by our Thyroid  gland, producing hormones triiodothyronine (T3) and  thyroxine (T4) which are both synthesized utilizing Iodine and Tyrosine. We just learned that Iodine is one of the minerals that the body uses to balance pH when it becomes too acidic. So by constantly forcing the body to use its Iodine reserves to balance pH it can cause the thyroid to become deficient in Iodine thus making it more difficult for the thyroid to produce hormones T3 and T4. When the thyroid becomes deficient Hypothyroidism occurs slowing down the metabolism, causing fatigue, weakness, and rapid weight gain. Granted this is at the more extreme end, but constantly forcing your body to deal with inadequate or even ‘slightly inadequate’ mineral levels will only make it more difficult to lose those extra pounds.