The Unsweet Truth About Aspartame and Weight Loss…
Are you looking for the truth about aspartame and weight loss? Diet products are everywhere. Diet pop, diet gum, diet cookies, diet mints, diet shakes, diet candy, diet meal replacements… the list goes on. In most diet products, aspartame is found. Aspartame is found under common names of Nutrasweet, Equal and Spoonful. It is also found as a tabletop sweetener for coffee or tea. It is used in diet products because it has fewer calories than sugar and thus the thinking is that by cutting calories using these products, you will lose weight. What’s the real deal about aspartame and weight loss?
Obviously many factors contribute to the rising rates of obesity. However there have been several doctors, medical researchers, and aspartame victims that have started to speak out about the damaging effects of it, including the effects on weight loss. While it would take forever to cover the growing evidence on the negative effects of this chemical, we’re going to focus here on the effects that aspartame seems to have on weight loss.
With all of the research piling up, we believe that aspartame indeed may be hindering weight loss. Here are the top 3 reasons why.
#1) Aspartame can make you actually crave MORE sugary sweets
According to the book “Dieting Secrets that the Government Doesn’t Want You To Know” by Astrid Lasco, B.Sc. M.Sc., “Aspartame is by far the most dangerous substance on the market that is added to foods.” She then goes on to quote several resources including Richard Wurtman, an MIT neuroscientist, whose studies have shown that aspartame makes you crave even more carbohydrates!
According to some experts, this is because the taste of aspartame (which is 180 times sweeter than sugar) in your mouth actually fools your body into thinking that sugar or high glucose carbs are moving in. The body then readies itself to receive those high glucose foods, but nothing comes. This causes your body to crave sugar or high-calorie carbs, the ones it was expecting to get in the first place. While this theory has not been proven, it does make sense.
Elizabeth Marglin at Prevention.com says, “A study published in Physiology & Behavior tells us that artificial sweeteners mess with our brain chemistry, increasing the craving for more fattening sugars, starches, and carbohydrates. The link in our brains between sweetness and calories gets out of whack.”
#2) Aspartame is difficult for your body to break down, which stresses your digestive system and causes it to store more of your food as fat
This is a theory that seems to be supported by what happens AFTER people give up all aspartame. According to Dr. H.J. Roberts, people getting off aspartame completely lose an average of 15 pounds. We’ve read several aspartame forum posts where people have said that after giving up aspartame completely, they lost pounds without changing anything else. Perhaps it’s not aspartame and weight loss, but LACK of aspartame and weight loss.
#3) Aspartame fools you into thinking that you can eat more than your body really needs
This is more of a psychological problem involving diet products in general. Diet products still do have calories (even though there are technically less calories than similar non-diet products). When people consume diet products they tend to think they can keep eating since they are eating diet foods.
Thus it’s easy to eat a little more than usual since they think that the diet products have saved them calories. This results in actually more calories consumed and thus weight gain instead of weight loss.
Those are several reasons why we believe aspartame can actually hinder your weight loss. If you’d like to see for yourself if aspartame is slowing down your weight loss, just try cutting it out for 2-3 months and see if that makes a difference.
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