What’s your relationship with diet soda? Sugary taste you love without calories? It’s actually not looking too sweet. Diet soda can be sabotaging your metabolism and tricking your brain. A 10-year study research showed that people who drank just one diet soda a day had a 70% greater increase in waist circumference compared with non-drinkers. And people who drank two or more diet sodas a day experienced a shocking 500% increase in waist size.

When you consume an artificially sweetened diet soda, taste receptors in your esophagus and stomach get stimulated, and your pancreas release insulin in anticipation of receiving something sweet. Insulin signals your body to store fat.