i reduce my insulin during fasts btw. so basically what i’ve read is that sometimes sodas are considered to break wl fasts because they cause an insulin response. however i of course don’t produce insulin as a type one diabetic, although i can control how much i do or don’t take. please help😢
i specified fasting with the intention of weight loss because a lot of people do fasting for gut health, among other things, and of course this would break that type of fast*
Dirty fasting may be a good idea for you. The basic idea is to generally consume under 100 calories a day, whether that’s a soda, juice, broth, milk etc is entirely up to you. Find what works best for you and don’t worry if you can’t stick completely to a water fast, a lot of us dirty fast so you’re not alone.
From what research I saw, diet sodas don’t cause any significant insulin spikes. They mimic the flavour of sugar on the tongue but they’re not sugar when it comes to digestion.
While the flavour and anticipation of them can cause a minor elevation of insulin - this is about the same effect as the anticipation, smell or sight of food in general when hungry as we all are during a fast.
It’s kind of a myth propagated here about insulin spiking with zero cal soda. What I can say is I lost a lot of weight and things like Coke Zero were key because the carbonation gas offset the empty feeling of no food in my stomach.
Water just didn’t have the same effect.
But I don’t have any kind of diabetes so my experience may be different to yours …
Technically everything increases insulin that you trow down your throat. Even plain water.Although the level it increases hugely negotiable.
For people who eat/drink lot of sweet things, just the sweetness can increase insulin more significantly - as the body prepares for the food. The trick with the zero calorie drinks that its sweet and still no calories.Also, it depends on the sweetener. Sucralose is huge no go, but zero coke doesnt have that.
The best thing that you can test it yourself. Measure your bg, drink, then after 20min measure again. You will see how your body reacts.
That’s a good question. Insulin is the single biggest factor on weight loss, so being a type 1 diabetic and unable to make insulin, a coke zero might technically be less of a problem for you than someone like me who was just prediabetic.
However, I generally follow a humble approach to my body, in the sense that the body is an ancient but extremely complex machine that has many different triggers to it. As Dr. Robert Lustig once said in a Q and A about artificial sweeteners, when we taste sweet in our mouths, our brain is reacting and expecting food. These “diet” drinks are a chemical approach trying to trick our functions and there could be many variables at play there.
I know you specified fasting for weight loss, but it’s not like these problems are mutually exclusive. All these factors are related: insulin resistance, gut microbiome health (I believe some studies are out there specifically looking at artificial sweeteners and what they do to our gut bacteria, having a negative effect), overproduction of other hormones from overactive glands such as the adrenal glands, and autophagy. While you will not be spiking your insulin, you could be stopping the repairs to the other factors ultimately indirectly hindering your weight loss progress.
Back 7 years ago I was 20 starting to really ramp up my workouts at the gym and heard about “dirty bulking”, a belief where you could get your protein from fast food as a young guy and it’s probably okay. Knowing what I know now about the complexities of the metabolic insulin resistance syndrome, how unhealthy corn-fed meat is, the seed oils high in Omega-6 being toxic while sugar is too with so many problems that causes inside of us, down to DNA damage directly, I know how terribly wrong that is.
A last point is people are still following “a calorie is a calorie is a calorie” belief, that all calories are the same, since that’s what we were told in school. We know very clearly now that’s entirely false. Protein, fat, and carbs, be it by themselves and even their ratios mixed together, all have very different reactions to our body.
Hence, going back to my point, I believe in a very humble and natural approach to the body. If it’s a “food” that’s been developed within the last 100 years, especially diet soda that contains chemically made sweetners like aspartame, we’re playing with fire. Stick to foods that have been around for thousands of years instead, and you’ll be much better off. If you MUST have a soda to help you ween off of it during this time, I’d recommend looking into the soda brand “Zevia”, usually found in the organic section in grocery stores. It’s made with stevia as the sweetner, which is derived from a plant and doesn’t require much to make a sweet beverage, so it could be a better alternative for now.
I was a sugar/soda addict for 15 years, so I know how hard it is telling people to try to just quit cold turkey. But it gets easier if you stick to it. Weight loss is about repairing our health because being overweight is an effect of an imbalanced unhealthy body. We need to heal ourselves and as we do, your cravings will go away! For me personally, creating a habit of drinking hot tea was a huge help for me, and was my new habit to help me replace soda/sugar. The subreddit r/tea is cool for seeing all the cool stuff around tea too. :)
Good luck!