Diet Soda in the Firehouse

Drink Diet Soda?

There’s been a lot of discussion around the firehouse lately about the “dangers” of drinking soda and diet soda. The topic was started after I revealed my personal “diet soda” experiment.  Three years ago I wanted to know if diet soda was bad for you or just getting a bad rap.  My experiment was to drink one 16 ounce diet soda everyday for one month and report my weight, energy level and overall health throughout the month.  The results....by the middle of the month I had gained 5 pounds and was drinking over 32 ounces of diet soda a day.  My energy was awfully low, I craved and ate sugar all the time and had some bad mood swings.  Needless to say after that little experiment I decided to avoid diet sodas as much as possible. 

It's not surprising that drinking all the sugar in sodas would cause weight gain, but what is surprising is that even diet soda will pack on the pounds.  In fact, researchers from the University of Texas Health Science Center monitored 475 adults for 10 years, and found that those who drank diet soda had a 70 percent increase in waist circumference over the 10-year study, compared with those who didn't drink any soda. It also found that those who drank more than two diet sodas per day saw a 500 percent waist expansion!  

Why does Diet Soda lead to fat gain

The main reason diet sodas are leading to weight gain--the artificial sweeteners.  These sweeteners have been linked to an increase in sugary food cravings.  These cravings lead you to seek out higher calorie, sweet, unhealthy snacks to fill the sugary void.   In my personal experiment I felt like I couldn’t eat enough to stay satisfied, I even had late night cravings that led to midnight trips to the store for sugary foods (not kidding). 

What Should You Drink Instead?
The best advice is to avoid diet (and regular) sodas and switch to drinking water, green tea, or black coffee.  This will prevent exposure to artificial sweeteners which may alter your body’s ability to recognize high-calorie, sweetened foods, which could lead to weight gain.  By switching to water or other beverages, you will be keeping yourself hydrated (which is very important to the fire rescue athlete) and potentially boost your metabolism to burn more fat.
This is just one of the many reasons why diet soda is bad for you. 

 I challenge you to stop drinking it and feel the difference for yourself.

Stay Safe and Healthy,

       A.      Zamzow

Firefighter Fitness and Metabolism ... Part 2

How to Make Your Body Burn More Calories.

Here is the low down on weight gain/loss. 
Metabolic Rate is the rate at which the body burns up calories. A body that consumes 2500 calories a day, and burns 2500 calories a day will stay at the same weight. A body consuming 2500 calories daily but burning only 2000 will gain weight at the rate of about 1lb a week.

This may explain why that ‘lucky’ person across the table from you does not get fat from all that junk food; they consume less calories than they burn.

You can do quite a lot to speed up your metabolism – the secret of burning calories lies in knowing what determines your metabolic rate and what you can do to influence it.

1) Basal Metabolic Rate (Metabolism or BMR) — This is the amount of calories you burn just by being alive – even when you are lying down, doing nothing. BMR accounts for approximately 60% of the calories burned for an average person.

2) Burning Calories with Activity- This is the energy used during movement – from lifting your arm to driving your car to cleaning the windows. This accounts for approximately 30% of the calories burned by an average person.

3) Dietary Thermogenesis — The ‘thermogenic effect’ described as meal- (induced heat production – the calories burned in the process of eating, digesting, absorbing and using food.


You can influence all these factors, and speed up your rate of burning calories using some, or all, of the following tactics:

1) Build Muscle—Increase the amount of muscle in your body. For every extra pound of muscle you put on, your body uses around 50 extra calories a day. In a recent study, researchers found that regular weight training boosts basal metabolic rate by about 15%. This is because muscle is ‘metabolically active’ and burns more calories than other body tissue even when you’re not moving. If you need help getting on track with a fitness program, you can download my FREE 28-page FireRescue Fitness Quickstart Program here.  

2) Move More-Although the average person burns around 30% of calories through daily activity, many sedentary people burn around 15%. Simply being aware of this fact – and taking every opportunity to move can make quite a dramatic difference in the amount of calories you burn. Aerobic exercise should also be performed regularly not only to burn calories but also to work the heart.  Try this, wear a pedometer around the station, see if you can get above 5000 steps in a day.

In addition to the actual amount of calories burned during exercise – studies have shown that after sustained, high-intensity exercise (like that in the 28-page FRF Quickstart Program) you burn more calories for several hours. Try the program here.

3) Eat Smaller and Often-There is some evidence to suggest that eating small, regular meals will keep your metabolism going faster than larger, less frequent meals. There are two reasons why meal frequency may affect your metabolism. First, levels of thyroid hormones begin to drop within hours of eating a meal, and metabolism slows. Second, it may be that the thermogenic effect of eating several small meals is slightly higher than eating the same amount of calories all at once.  Provided your small meals don’t degenerate into quick-fix, high fat, high sugar snacks, eating little and often can also help to control hunger and make you less likely to binge.

To find out how many calories you are burning each day, and how many you are eating - try to log your food. There are plenty of websites that allow you free access to calorie databases. All you need to do is create a profile. I have used www.Fitday.com which is a free website that has some great options to help you chart your daily progress.  You can also download many free apps on your phone.  Try to log a couple of days, I think you would be surprised at what you find out about how many calories your consuming.