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Do Diet Colas Slow Down the Body's Metabolism?

Raising your metabolism--the rate at which your body burns calories to keep itself going--is a key to getting the most out of any diet. A fast metabolism means your body is burning more calories at rest, resulting in faster and more sustainable weight loss for you. Thus, you should do everything in your power to avoid taking any steps that could impair your metabolism. Unfortunately, you might be inadvertently undermining your own dieting progress by drinking diet colas.

  1. Metabolism

    • Given two similar individuals performing the same activity at the same level of intensity, metabolism will be the "X-factor" that determines who burns the most calories during the process. Thus, assuming perfect compliance with an exercise and nutrition plan, metabolic rate is the most likely factor that will help or undermine your overall dieting success.

    Metabolism and Diet

    • When you diet, your body goes into a caloric deficit. That is, you expend more calories than you are taking in. This tends to slow your metabolism over time, as metabolism is a constantly fluctuating thing, and not a stagnant process. This is the main reason that dieting becomes less effective the longer you follow a particular diet--your body adjusts its expenditures to its caloric allowance, putting the brakes on fat loss.

    Diet Soda and Metabolism

    • According to a recent study published in "Behavioral Neuroscience," items containing artificial sweeteners, such as diet sodas, have an unknown but undesired effect on metabolism. Rats in the study who were given artificial sweeteners ended up gaining more weight than rats in the control group, who were fed natural sugars. Thus, the sweeteners used in diet soda might be worse for your metabolism than consuming regular sugar--an astonishing result.

    Playing the Odds

    • To avoid this effect, limiting your consumption of diet sodas would be a reasonable first step. Furthermore, merely limiting your intake of diet sodas might not be sufficient. According to Dr. Marie Savard, a medical contributor for ABC news, research has shown that individuals who consume at least one diet soda per day were at an increased risk for weight gain. According to Sharon P. Fowler, MPH, one of the scientists involved in the study, your risk of obesity climbs 41 percent with each can of diet soda you consume per day. In other words, if you drink one can of diet soda per day on average, you have a 41 percent greater risk than a non-diet soda drinker of becoming obese. Note that while this sounds like a fairly impressive figure, if the general risk of obesity were relatively low--for example, 2 percent--a 41 percent increase would only bring your risk level up to 2.82 percent, and an 82 percent increase (two diet sodas per day) would only result in a hypothetical risk of 3.6 percent.

    Additional Adverse Effects

    • Beyond slowing your metabolism, diet soda acts as a psychological cushion, empowering dieters to take steps that are not in compliance with their dietary plan. You might be familiar with this effect, seen where someone orders a relatively unhealthy meal coupled with a diet soda, thinking that it balances out the overall nutritional value of the meal. Considering this, you are probably better off abstaining from artificial sweeteners and diet cola entirely, assuming you are serious about your efforts to lose weight.

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