Carbonated beverages induce increased food consumption in rats
Whenever these `weight gain linked to soda` studies come up, I'm always confused.I've been told I'm in fantastic shape (>90% in all http://strengthlevel.com/ measurements and under 10% body fat) at the moment, and I used to consume a lot of diet soda every day. At it's worst, I consumed >1 liter a day.For me it was a caffeine source (since I dislike the taste of coffee and never saw the benefit in acquiring the taste) that helped me focus when I needed to get work done (I did a lot of tweaking around with amounts to make sure it was a marked difference and not just a placebo effect for me) and acted as an appetite suppressant so that I could manage my caloric intake without getting distracted by hunger frequently throughout the day.I constantly looked at aspartame/stevia/etc research to see what damage I would be doing to myself. While I couldn't really find much in the way of negative health effects (excluding weight gain, which I never noticed a problem with), I ultimately cut off my consumption because of a semi-irrational fear that either information was hidden by soda-corp et al, or that just because of how these chemicals work that there might be bad effects that just haven't been put under rigorous study yet.As a side note, my metabolism is actually slower than average and I need to eat on average ~10%  calories less than any macronutrient calculator says to stay in the shape (low bf + strong) that I enjoy being in.