There is no evidence that "diet" soda is bad for you. None.
http://examine.com/faq/is-diet-soda-bad-for-you.html
Even the article contradicts your statement.
The article states there are "no studies that indicate any long-term health risks". There are plenty of documented & established health risks with diet soda. Faster eroding of tooth enamel & stomach lining are two off the top the of my head... Also off memory, Aspartame has been causally linked to trigger cluster headaches (more debilitating than migraines) and has been established as a trigger for auto-immune disease responses such as pemphigus (if i recall correctly).
There is evidence it is bad for you. Is it worse than anything else, such as regular soda? That is TBD...
Can you point to some
good studies that show that diet soda leads to faster tooth enamel eroding and stomach lining, than, say, coffee or anything else?
Ones with control groups, good sample size, etc.
Also, would like to see a reputable study on these "headaches". I do know that a very small percentage of the population report headaches, but so did people with MSG and that was proven to just not be the case. They essentially made it up.
The OP has much bigger fish to fry then futzing over diet soda.
I don't want to hijack this thread but if you create a new one to discuss, I will be happy to participate.
If this is your requirement, the examine site you reference routinely violates this. Randomly looking at a few articles, they routinely give an A (robust research w/ multiple double blind...) to a group of research that is purely data analysis. The articles are also inconsistent in their reader/editor bias. Not saying the site is bad, just identifying it doesn't live up to your measure...
EDIT: Removed comment that maybe sounded more rude/terse than I intended... I enjoy the dialogue and your points.
They're something to be said for data analysis and providing information for someone to make their own decision. They do a good job of providing information and some qualified opinion, but I don't look to it for absolute answers because there rarely are any absolute answers.
There are just varying degrees of certainty.
Further more the stuff that we'd like to see good studies on may never exist. Either for logistical reasons or just because there's no large interest in studying the topic. So, the best information is sometimes just meta analysis.
But that's different than click-bait article that cherry pick results and, really, just want you to read their crappy article to get a few clicks.
I, for one, use the data at examine and make my own decisions. That's what I'm suggesting. Some of the data is pretty telling, though, like the diet soda stuff. You can't read that analysis and say that diet soda is proven to have side effects worth discussing. Let alone side effects that would affect weight loss.
If
the guy drinks diet soda and can control his intake sufficiently, he will lose weight. It doesn't matter one bit if he can control his intake.
Now if for some reason he's an outlier and drinking diet soda makes him go on large ravenous binges then, no, he probably should abstain. I don't think is likely though. It's just information that is distracting from what matters most.
Really, the best answers in this thread are ones that revolve around watching overall caloric load and moving more. That's the long and short of it. Sure, the other "life hacks" that some of us suggest work, but they typically only work because they help drive compliance with your calorie or macro goals. Everyone has these hacks and they're fine but there's no real magic with them. Not eating breakfast, or eating a crap load of protein, low carb (ketosis aside), etc. I think they all just help drive compliance in certain populations for a myriad of reasons.
