Artificial Sweeteners And Weight Loss

A report crossed my desk this morning from some professors at Purdue that backs up something I heard on PBS about a month ago, and had forgotten about. I wanted to write about it then, but something else came up and was committed to paper instead.

What the two gents from Purdue found was that artificial sweeteners, (Aspartame, Splenda, Sweet and Low, and others), block your body's defense system against obesity. The more artificial sweetener you consume, the fatter you'll get.

In diet soft drinks, you get a triple whammy.

You have the artificial sweetener, the high fructose corn syrup, and caffeine. All three of these ingredients play havoc with your body's defense system, and I'm not even going to go into the rest of the junk in the bottle, can, or dispenser.

The issue, according to the esteemed professors at Purdue is "mouth feel." In other words, your body's computer is programmed to sense that enough calories are being consumed, and it's time to stop eating. It does this by "mouth feel", or how the calories feel to the sensors in the mouth that communicate with the stomach and the brain.

Artificial sweeteners were designed to bypass these sensors.

Hence, it's no surprise that fat people keep on eating and eating.

It isn't just soft drinks, but almost all diet food. "No fat" and "low fat" are red flag items too, because they replace fat with sugar.

A colleague of mine lost 40 pounds by cutting 2 items out of his diet: Diet Coke, and low fat ice cream. He used to drink Diet Coke by the half gallon, and took his ice cream the same way. His waist shrank from 46 to 38, when he quit them both.

He told me that previously, he was always hungry, and he would even get up during the night to eat. Now, he is constantly surprised by how little he has to eat to get full. It's because his body is now functioning like it should.

In addition, he's taking my pharmaceutical grade fish oil. Not only that, he's thinking about playing tennis again, after an 11 year layoff. I cautioned him to start that very slowly, giving those muscles a chance to gradually get used to playing again. No matter how good an athlete you used to be...if you have taken a long layoff...start slowly. Roger Federer has plenty of competition.