Oh nothing is 100% on an issue or side.

I know it's addictive...and very difficult to find replacements. I don't think loading up on anything (except water) is a good alternative, personally. I wonder how the flavored water fares for health? Too new to know yet?

It's just that if you think you've tried everything else to lose weight, but still drink soda... you may never have thought to stop the soda.

I can't taste; carbonation gives me a sensation that nothing else does. I will have a ZERO coke with my plain popcorn at the movies... otherwise I lose some of the ambience and therapy of going to movies.

The study was of people not formerly obese... from the webmd link:

"There was a 41% increase in risk of being overweight for every can or bottle of diet soft drink a person consumes each day," Fowler says.

More Diet Drinks, More Weight Gain
Fowler's team looked at seven to eight years of data on 1,550 Mexican-American and non-Hispanic white Americans aged 25 to 64. Of the 622 study participants who were of normal weight at the beginning of the study, about a third became overweight or obese.

For regular soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:

26% for up to 1/2 can each day
30.4% for 1/2 to one can each day
32.8% for 1 to 2 cans each day
47.2% for more than 2 cans each day.
For diet soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:

36.5% for up to 1/2 can each day
37.5% for 1/2 to one can each day
54.5% for 1 to 2 cans each day
57.1% for more than 2 cans each day.
For each can of diet soft drink consumed each day, a person's risk of obesity went up 41%.