It confuses your body Artificial sweeteners have more intense flavor than real sugar, so over time products like diet soda dull our senses to naturally sweet foods like fruit, says Brooke Alpert, RD, author of The Sugar Detox. Even more troubling, these sugar stand-ins have been shown to have the same effect on your body as sugar. 'Artificial sweeteners trigger insulin, which sends your body into fat storage mode and leads to weight gain It could lead to weight gain, not weight loss

Diet soda is calorie-free, but it won't necessarily help you lose weight. Researchers from the University of Texas found that over the course of about a decade, diet soda drinkers had a 70% greater increase in waist circumference compared with non-drinkers. And get this: participants who slurped down two or more sodas a day experienced a 500% greater increase. The way artificial sweeteners confuse the body may play a part, but another reason might be psychological, says Minnesota-based dietitian Cassie Bjork. When you know you're not consuming any liquid calories, it might be easier to justify that double cheeseburger or extra slice of pizza.

Drinking a reasonable amount of diet soda a day, such as a can or two, isn't likely to hurt you. The artificial sweeteners and other chemicals currently used in diet soda are safe for most people, and there's no credible evidence that these ingredients cause cancer.

Some types of diet soda are even fortified with vitamins and minerals. But diet soda isn't a health drink or a silver bullet for weight loss. Although switching from regular soda to diet soda may save you calories in the short term, it's not yet clear if it's effective for preventing obesity and related health problems.

Healthier low-calorie choices abound, including water, skim milk, and unsweetened tea or coffee.

How many people do you know who lost weight simply by switching from Coke to Diet Coke?

Probably not many.

That’s because unless followed by other lifestyle changes, choosing diet drinks is absolutely useless. Diet sodas are carbonated beverages.

Instead of sugar, they are sweetened with artificial sweeteners like aspartame, cyclamate, saccharin, acesulfame-k or sucralose.

Almost every popular sugar-sweetened beverage on the market has a “light” or a “diet” version… Diet Coke, Pepsi Max, Sprite Zero, etc.

These drinks are calorie free, which technically should help people lose weight and prevent sugar-related diseases like metabolic syndrome and diabetes.

However, the evidence for these beverages having any use is completely nonexistent.