Is eating regular food really all that bad?
Now I will be the first to admit that I was all about artificial sweateners a few years back. I put equal in my coffee, I never drank regualar soda and I preached the benefits of "diet" everything. Sugar was the enemy to me at the time. As I've admited in other threads I have a wicked sweet tooth, and I used to combat it with sugar free candies and sugar free jello and all that stuff. My roomate in college was even worse than I was. He never went anywhere without a diet coke, and he even put splenda on his vegetables. He was in impressive shape always jacked and lean, so I figured what the hell it's working for him.
So fast forward to now. He's been complaining for a long time about getting headaches a lot, and also feeling anxiety and having trouble sleeping. He also admits that this has gone on for a long time and he never mentioned it. So he started looking into what he was putting in his body and he emailed me these links:
this one is on aspartame side effects
http://www.anxietypanic.com/aspartame.html
this one is on splendas side effects
http://www.deepdownwellness.com/alth...dasymtoms.html
this one is on all artificial sweetners TOXICITY THREASHOLDS
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/md26.htm
After reading this, he swore off artificial sweeteners. In the first 3 weeks he said that he lost 5 lbs and not muscle (he measures his lean mass like weekly, so I was inclined to believe him). He also claimed that his anxiety and sleeping problems began to fade. After 6 weeks he said he felt great.
I have since stopped using artifical sweeteners as well. I haven't drank coffee much for several months, but when I do I bite the bullet and use sugar. I also have long since stopped drinking soda all together, diet or otherwise, and have trained my self to pretty much drink just water.
Now before any of you Splenda advocates lynch me, I realize that the amount of sweetener in a serving of "diet" whatever is minimal, and that for most people it would take a very large amout of this stuff to cause any harm. But the reality is that there are some people that consume a large quantity of this stuff on a regular basis, trust me I know some of them. You also can ignore the fact that just like anything eles those toxicity levels are based on the average, and there are always going to be people that will be more sensative to smaller quantities.
Again, I admit that I was taken in by these by these "diet" products in the past so I'm not criticizing people who are using them. Most people honestly don't know any better and many are really trying to do what they think will help them. In the end one of my major issues with these artificial sweeteners is that they are something that is not healthy for you being marketed to us in the name of health using words like "diet" and "low carb". It seems that it further clouds our message as fitness professionals that proper nutritions and exercise is the best way to get lean and healthy. "Why should I force myself to drink water. Diet soda doesn't have any calories either and it tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper." "Why do I need to workout when I can just drink this diet soda and eat my low carb WW bars and I'll loose weight like the people in the adds."
Much like the mirical fat loss in a bottle other get fit quick fads that lure people away from the right way to get fit and in most cases doom them to failure.
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