Well, I drank my last soda today. Probably. I hope.

I've been drinking diet sodas for quite a long time now, thinking I was being so clever avoiding all those extra calories. But now so much is coming to light about how bad DIET sodas are for you, that it seems we should cut them out of our diets altogether.

Sodas are bad for you in many ways. When you drink a soda, you inhale the carbon dioxide from the bubbles. Carbon dioxide is heavier than air, so it sinks in your lungs and actually takes up valuable space in your lungs. This makes it impossible for you to get as full a breath as you would otherwise be capable of. Many coaches prefer their athletes not drink carbonated beverages, to maximize their air intake.

Also, sodas not only prevent calcium being absorbed by your system but also actually leach calcium from your bones, possibly contributing to osteoporosis.

The acid in sodas eats at the enamel of your teeth, contributing to cavities, and the caramel coloring can stain your teeth.

Caffeine is a diuretic and known addictive stimulant.

Those are just a few of the issues to which sodas contribute. But recent studies of diet sodas suggest there is another problem. Diet sodas were created for those who were concerned with the number of calories they were consuming. The substitution of artificial sweeteners for the already non-nutritious high-fructose corn syrup was supposed to help people lose weight. Instead, some studies show that people who consume large amounts of diet sodas may actually gain weight rather than lose it.

One of the possible reasons could be that the taste of the sweet drink "tricks" the system into thinking that something with calories has been consumed, and the system then starts "looking" for those calories. When no calories are found, it may actually trigger the system into wanting to consume more calories to make up for those that are missing. So one might end up actually eating more calories rather than fewer.

No idea if that's true or not, but it's getting to the point where the diet sodas aren't helping me anyway, so I should probably just drop them. I need to just replace them with water, or iced tea if I really need the caffeine.

I don't know if it will help, but it obviously can't hurt.