Intermittent fasting (IF) has surged in popularity over the last decade, although it has been used since the 1960s as a successful diet for people with obesity and related complications, with roots stretching back thousands of years in healthy and religious practices. Intermittent fasting involves cycling between periods of eating and fasting. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to eating. Every person is unique, and intermittent fasting, which can be customized to a person’s individual preference, may be beneficial for some. However, it's crucial to consider individual health conditions and lifestyles before adopting this eating pattern. For example, individuals with diabetes need to practice intermittent fasting safely because their glucose levels could drop too low. Others may find that intermittent fasting doesn't fit their lifestyle, or they may want to eat socially during fasting periods.
This article provides an overview of intermittent fasting, how it differs from other diets, and its potential health benefits. It also explores what can be consumed during a fast, how to eat after a fast, and whether intermittent fasting is suitable for you. A common question that arises is whether diet soda is permissible during a fast.
Understanding Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern that involves consuming very few or no calories for specific periods. Fasting time frames, or fasting windows, typically range from 12 to 16 hours of fasting daily or fasting the entire day (24 hours) two times a week. During a fasting window, calorie consumption is either entirely restricted or reduced to 25 percent of a person’s average daily calorie intake. Generally, non-calorie beverages like water or coffee are allowed during fasting periods.
When a person is in a non-fasting or eating window, there are minimal rules regarding how much or what types of food are consumed. Unlike traditional calorie-restrictive diets, intermittent fasting focuses more on when you eat rather than what you eat.
Popular fasting methods include:
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- The 16/8 Method: Fasting for 16 hours and eating within an 8-hour feeding window.
- The 5:2 Diet: Eating normally for five days and consuming minimal calories (500-600) on two non-consecutive days.
- Alternate-Day Fasting: Fasting every other day while eating freely on non-fasting days.
- OMAD (One Meal a Day): Eating only one meal per day, typically within a 1-hour window.
To reap the full benefits of IF, it’s crucial to avoid anything that might break a fast.
The Role of Insulin and Metabolism
During fasting, your body undergoes several metabolic changes, the most significant of which involves an insulin response. Insulin is a hormone that regulates blood sugar. Its levels drop during fasting, allowing the body to burn stored fat for energy. Fasting also promotes ketosis, a metabolic state where your body relies on fat rather than glucose for fuel. Additionally, fasting can trigger autophagy, a process where cells break down and recycle damaged components, potentially offering anti-aging and disease-prevention benefits.
To stay in a true fasted state, it's essential to avoid anything that spikes insulin, stops ketosis, or disrupts autophagy.
What Can You Consume When Fasting?
To maintain a fasted state, only beverages with no calories should be consumed.
- Water: Opt for plain and carbonated water to stay hydrated during a fast. Water is the ultimate fasting-friendly beverage, keeping you hydrated without breaking your fast.
- Tea: No cream, sugar, or milk additions allows you to drink tea during a fasting window. Herbal tea has no calories and comes in various flavors to satisfy different tastes.
- Black Coffee: No cream, sugar, or milk maintains a fast due to no calories in coffee. Other spices, such as cinnamon, could be added. Black coffee is calorie-free and can even help boost metabolism.
- Green Tea: Low in calories and rich in antioxidants, providing a gentle energy boost.
- Sparkling Water: Zero calories and can increase satiety.
Any drinks containing sugar, cream, milk, or other calorie-containing additives can break your fast.
Read also: Walnut Keto Guide
What About Supplements?
A fasted state can start after 12 hours of not eating. This occurs after muscle and liver glycogen stores are depleted, and the body uses stored fat and protein as energy sources. If you eat, this process is halted, and the food will be digested and made into an energy source. Certain supplements can break your fast and should be avoided. Supplements containing calories, carbohydrates, protein, and sugar would break a fast and switch your body from using stored nutrients to the nutrients you consumed. During a fasting window, it is essential to maintain no calorie intake.
Supplements Likely to Break a Fast:
- Protein powder
- Gummy vitamins
- Branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs)
- Any supplement containing sugar
Supplements Not Likely to Break a Fast:
- Creatine
- Probiotics and prebiotics
- Collagen
- Individual micronutrients
- Fish or algae oil
Check the supplement nutrition label for any calories, carbohydrates, protein, and sugar to determine if the supplement should be taken during the eating or fasting window.
What to Eat After Fasting
As you break a fast, start with easier-to-digest foods. You might be tempted to eat a high-fat meal like pizza. Too much fat, fiber, and sugar can cause digestive issues and make you feel sluggish. Choosing whole foods in smaller portions will help you transition to eating again. Try incorporating a lean protein source like fish, eggs, or chicken with whole grain and cooked vegetables. Smoothies and soup can be a gentle option, as liquids are lower in fiber and digested faster than solid foods.
- Soup
- Vegetables
- Healthy fats
- Smoothies
- Yogurt
- Dried fruits
- Lean proteins
- Whole grains
Diet Soda: What Is It?
Diet soda is a carbonated beverage marketed as a sugar-free alternative to regular soda. Instead of sugar, it contains artificial sweeteners.
Some of the most common sweeteners are:
Read also: Weight Loss with Low-FODMAP
- Aspartame: One of the most common sweeteners, found in Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi.
- Sucralose (Splenda): Used in many "zero sugar" and naturally flavored drinks.
- Saccharin: Found in older diet soda formulas.
- Acesulfame K: Often paired with aspartame or sucralose to enhance that sweet taste.
- Stevia or Monk Fruit: Natural sweeteners that are sometimes used as alternatives.
These sweeteners provide intense sweetness without calories, making them attractive for those watching their sugar intake to combat those sugar cravings. However, their effects on overall health concerns, insulin, metabolism, and gut health risks remain a topic of hot debate in the health community.
Why Do People Drink Diet Soda?
People love diet sodas because they let you enjoy the sweet, fizzy taste of soda without the calories of sugary drinks. Marketed as a “guilt-free” beverage, diet soda is often consumed by those following low-carb diets like keto, intermittent fasting, or general weight loss plans. Diet soft drinks a go-to for anyone trying to cut back on caloric intake, lose weight, manage blood sugar, or stick to low-carb diets like keto. Since they don’t have any sugar, they won’t spike your blood sugar, which is why people with diabetes often reach for them. Some people in an intermittent fasting window also drink diet soda to help with cravings, since the carbonation can make you feel full and keep hunger in check. Other diet soda fans just like the drinks' taste and caffeine boost, especially if they’re trying to cut back on coffee or energy drinks. Since diet sodas are everywhere-in restaurants, vending machines, grocery stores and ads (Diet Coke break, anyone?)-it’s easy to grab one when you need a fizzy fix.
Does Diet Soda Break a Fast?
Since most diet sodas don’t have calories or sugar, you’d think they’d be totally fine while fasting, right? Well… it’s not that simple. While they technically won’t add calories to your day, some ingredients in diet soda-like artificial sweeteners-could have sneaky effects on your body that might mess with the benefits of fasting.
Calories and Fasting: The Basic Rule
A traditional fast means consuming zero calories so your body can burn stored fat for energy. Since diet soda has no calories, it shouldn’t break a fast from a pure calorie standpoint. If your main goal with fasting is to lose weight, then diet soda probably won’t interfere as long as you’re staying within your eating window when it’s time to eat.
However, fasting isn’t just about calories-it’s also about your body's response, keeping insulin low, metabolism steady, and autophagy activated.
Artificial Sweeteners and Insulin Response
One of the biggest debates about diet soda and fasting is whether artificial sweeteners cause an insulin response. Insulin is the hormone that controls blood sugar levels, and when you’re fasting, you want to keep insulin secretion low so your body keeps burning fat instead of storing it.
Most artificial sweeteners are calorie free, so they shouldn’t spike insulin the same way sugar does. But some research suggests that certain sweeteners-like aspartame, sucralose, and acesulfame potassium-might still trigger an insulin response in some people.
In studies, some people seem to have zero reaction, while others might experience a small insulin increase. For fitness, if your goal with fasting is weight loss, a tiny insulin spike might not make a huge difference. But if you’re fasting for metabolic health, even a small insulin response could reduce the benefits.
Diet Soda and Autophagy
Autophagy is your body’s way of cleaning up old or damaged cells-kind of like a built-in detox system. It’s one of the biggest health perks of fasting, helping with anti-aging, brain health, and disease prevention.
For autophagy to work best on intermittent fasting, your body needs to be in a fully fasted state. That means no calories, insulin spikes, or disruptions in cellular processes. While diet soda doesn’t have calories, some experts believe that artificial sweeteners could still interfere with autophagy, especially if they cause an insulin response.
There’s not a ton of research on this yet, but if you’re fasting specifically for autophagy and longevity, it’s probably best to stick to water, black coffee, or tea instead of grabbing a zero calorie soda.
Gut Health Considerations
Your gut microbiome (the trillions of bacteria living in your digestive system) plays a huge role in metabolism, immune function, and overall health. And some research suggests that artificial sweeteners may negatively impact gut bacteria, which could lead to inflammation, sugar cravings, or metabolic issues over time.
Sucralose and aspartame, in particular, have been linked to changes in gut bacteria. If you’ve ever had digestive issues like bloating, gas, or discomfort after drinking diet soda, this could be why!
If your goal with fasting is to improve things in your gut, cutting back on diet soda might be a good idea-especially if you’re sensitive to artificial sweeteners.
Diet Soda and Ketosis
If you’re doing intermittent fasting with keto, you might be wondering: Can I drink diet soda on keto?
The good news is that most diet sodas won’t kick you out of ketosis, since they don’t contain sugar or carbs. However, some people find that artificial sweeteners increase cravings for sweet foods, which could make sticking to keto harder.
Also, if a certain sweetener triggers an insulin spike, it might slow down fat burning-which isn’t ideal if you’re using fasting and sticking to keto for weight loss. If you’re doing strict keto, it might be worth switching to stevia-based sodas or unsweetened tea instead.
Potential Health Concerns Associated with Diet Soda
While diet soda may seem like a harmless alternative to sugary drinks, several studies have raised concerns about its potential impact on health.
- Type 2 Diabetes: A 2018 study revealed that using artificial sweeteners in diet drinks does not lower the risk of diabetes, and diet soda can be an independent diabetes risk factor. A 2015 study indicated that drinking sugar-sweetened beverages significantly increased the incidence of type 2 diabetes, independently of adiposity.
- Mental Health Issues: A 2014 study found that consuming artificially sweetened drinks showed higher risks of depression. A 2017 study indicated that frequent consumption of coffee and non-nutritive sweetener use was directly linked to depression among populations in Atlantic Canada.
- Dental Issues: A 2005 study indicated that too much consumption of carbonated drinks in the long term can cause erosion lesions.
- Osteoporosis: A 2020 study revealed that both diet and regular cola can cause bone mineral density loss in women. The caffeine and phosphorus content in cola can disrupt normal calcium absorption, leading to mineral density loss and osteoporosis.
- Kidney Cancer: One study found artificially sweetened soft drinks were associated with an elevated risk in kidney cancer among American postmenopausal women. However, results from another study on healthy European women found that after adjusting for obesity, artificially sweetened soft drinks weren’t associated with kidney cancer.
- Neurological Issues: Aspartame could interfere with compounds in the brain, setting off a chain of events that can inhibit the release of neurotransmitters (like dopamine and serotonin) and make the brain more vulnerable to oxidative stress (or molecular damage). This reaction could lead to possible neurophysiological symptoms, including learning problems, headaches, seizures, migraines, irritable moods, anxiety, depression, and insomnia.
- Increased Appetite and Cravings: Drinks that contain sucralose may increase food cravings and appetite in women, as well as in people who are obese.
- Irregular Heart Rhythms: Artificially sweetened drinks are linked to an increased risk of irregular heart rhythms. Adults who consumed two liters (about 67 ounces) or more of artificially sweetened beverages each week had a higher risk of atrial fibrillation (AFib), a quivering or irregular heartbeat.
- Disrupted Sleep Patterns: Consumption of soft drinks (not restricted to zero calorie varieties) is linked to decreased sleep duration in adults and children. Caffeinated beverages - which include many diet sodas - are particularly prone to lessen sleep duration. Additionally, artificial sweeteners like aspartame can stimulate the nervous system, potentially disrupting sleep patterns.
- Gut Microbiome Disruption: Artificial sweeteners used in diet sodas, such as aspartame and sucralose, may also influence the composition and function of the gut microbiota - the trillions of microorganisms residing in the digestive tract. A disrupted gut microbiota has been associated with various health issues, including metabolic disorders and inflammation.
Diet Soda Alternatives While Fasting
To avoid the potential negative effects of diet soda, consider these alternatives during your fasting window:
- Water: The ultimate fasting-friendly beverage, keeping you hydrated without breaking your fast.
- Black Coffee: Zero-calorie and can help suppress appetite and boost metabolism.
- Herbal Tea: Calorie-free and comes in various flavors to satisfy different tastes.
- Green Tea: Low in calories and packed with antioxidants, providing a gentle energy boost.
- Sparkling Water: Refreshing with no calories or sugar.
- Bone Broth: Low in calories and can provide electrolytes and nutrients, especially in homemade varieties (use with caution due to potential calorie content).
- Apple Cider Vinegar Drink: A tangy zero-calorie drink (diluted).
- Electrolyte Drinks: Zero-calorie electrolyte drinks that help maintain hydration and electrolyte balance during fasting periods.
- Plain Unsweetened Almond Milk: Low in calories (use sparingly due to potential calorie content).
- Lemon Water: A flavorful, calorie-free drink that can help digestion.
tags: #diet #soda #and #intermittent #fasting