OK so it's been about a week and a half since I stopped what was probably closing in on a 12-pack a day habit of diet soda and started drinking water and coffee (and juice and milk) instead.*
The bottom line is that I've lost 4 pounds in that week and a half. I'm not plagued with hunger pangs all day and I'm not mind-numbingly thirsty all the time. And I'm sleeping better.
My analysis: Diet soda is poison.
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* Well, I still drink one or two diet sodas a day, but generally only with meals, rarely by themselves. Yesterday was an exception; I drank two cans of diet Pepsi because the building I was in has no air conditioning and I'm not fond of drinking city water -- even as clean as the water in that building is now after $40K+ in cold water pipe replacement.
I've cut down from about six diet soda's to two. I'm still drinking the same amount of diet lemonade. I haven't noticed much of an effect yet, but I just started Monday.
Anything with artificial sweeteners is pretty much gone from my diet now.
A laudable undertaking.
While I would argue it is Pepsi products that are poison, that is purely a religious opinion.
I was up to 12 a day last year, or more.
Watch out for cold turkey caffeine headaches. Seriously. You won't know what the hell hit you.
I'm not a soda drinker beyond a very occasional root beer or the like, but even if I was I wouldn't mess with the diet stuff. I have always been able to taste the difference between real and artifical sweeteners. Splenda, in particular, tastes like chemically modified ass.