I lost 50 lbs over last 7 months. Stopped the diet Mt. Dew.
Twice I started drinking it again and wham the cravings for junk food and sweets roared back.
Pure poison. Also noticed when I drank it again the joint pain and lethargic feeling came back overnight
Insulin is dumped into the bloodstream when you consume artificial sweeteners, just like it is when you consume sugar. Among the functions of insulin is taking the glucose out of the bloodstream and getting it into the cells in the body. Insulin doesn't know if your blood glucose level is high or low. It just knows what it's job is. Whatever glucose is in the blood stream will be moved into cells.
So you increase the feelings of hunger due to low blood sugar. Your blood sugar gets lower if you drink diet soda than it would have if you had consumed water, or unsweetened coffee or tea, or nothing at all. Drinking diet soda, or using artificial sweeteners including stevia, leads to eating larger amounts of whatever you usually eat, and probably larger amounts of foods that are higher in sugars, since your body will produce hormones telling your brain that your blood glucose is low.