I gained a ton of weight drinking diet soda. A ton! Then again, I've lost a ton of weight drinking diet soda. A ton! And with my weight loss rollercoaster history over the past few decades 'a ton' might actually be an accurate description. I've been consuming low calorie sweeteners (mostly in diet soda) since the late 1970's. Remember TAB? Do I think that SF sweeteners are good for me? No. Some artificial sweeteners may even be bad for me. But I do think that I consumed a lot less real sugar because of them. I can never really know what happens at the fat cell level, but my personal observations of myself is that drinking diet soda all these years has been pretty much a neutral effect when it comes to my weight. There were a few times when I switched to regular soda when I was not dieting. I seemed to gain weight more rapidly and went back to the diet stuff.

In thinking about the 'findings' of this study it occurred to me that what they are proposing as a negative might actually be a positive. If your blood sugar is high, isn't it a good thing for glucose to get stored away in fat cells as quickly as possible?. Do sucralose or other SF sweeteners fight gainst insulin resistance? If they do then maybe that is why I got so darn big and didn't officially get diagnosed with diabetes until only recently. Maybe all the diet soda I was drinking was helping to keep my blood sugar in check while I rapidly put on weight from excess carbs? Food for thought.

I do have an issue with "sweet", whether it be from real sugar or from low calorie sweeteners. Regardless of what is going on with my blood sugar, energy levels, or satiety cues - my brain likes "sweet". If I have a little, then I want more. That I can assure you is one of the driving forces behind my weight problems. If I gave in to a cookie or a donut, then I'd surely want another, likely with a more intense desire than I wanted the first one. The sweetness of a can of diet soda can do the same thing. If one is good, then two is better. But as near as I can tell, drinking a diet soda does not seem to awaken cravings for a cookie or a donut. At least for me, those pathways seem to be mutually exclusive. Where I run into trouble is with high calorie SF sweetened low carb treats. With those things, 2nds or 3rds can have the same effect on my weight as having something with too many carbs in it.