[irthomasthomas]

The fattest person I ever worked with used to drink 4-8 litres of diet coke a day. When I met him again two years later, his weight was normal. Asked how he did it, he just stopped drinking the diet coke.

NNSs trigger the same insulin/fat storage mechanism as sugar, but they arent absorbed, and stay on the blood longer, leading to insulin resistance.

[Tokkemon]

Also interested to see if there's any proof of this. I know, anecdotally as an obese man, that whether I cut out diet soda or not doesn't seem to make a difference. Maybe I'm not doing it for long enough?

[irthomasthomas]

Are you drinking 4-8 litres a day?

[Tokkemon]

Nowhere near that much.

[irthomasthomas]

Good. The dose makes the poison.

[amanaplanacanal]

Please point us to some science about this, because of that is true, it’s a pretty big deal.

[irthomasthomas]

There's lots. Here's one that tested sugar+sweetener, note the decrease in insulin clearance when sweeteners are consumed, vs just sugar:

sucralose ingestion caused 1) a greater incremental increase in peak plasma glucose concentrations (4.2 ± 0.2 vs. 4.8 ± 0.3 mmol/L; P = 0.03), 2) a 20 ± 8% greater incremental increase in insulin area under the curve (AUC) (P < 0.03), 3) a 22 ± 7% greater peak insulin secretion rate (P < 0.02), 4) a 7 ± 4% decrease in insulin clearance (P = 0.04), and 5) a 23 ± 20% decrease in SI (P = 0.01).

https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/36/9/2530/37872/Su...

[bombcar]

It's anecdata but I've seen similar - however, it could also be explained by "not taking weight loss seriously if all you do is switch to gallons of diet drink".

And for lots of sodas, caffeine plays, too. It's hard to factor out the various issues that could also be present.