Taste buds are more sensitive when you give up soda. 

It's not your imagination: Without your usual diet soda chaser, you may find that food has more flavor. It has subtlety. It's more enjoyable.

That's because the artificial sweeteners in your diet soda overwhelmed your taste buds with an onslaught of sweetness. Aspartame ranks 200 hundreds times sweeter than table sugar. Splenda? 600 times. In fact, brain scans show that diet soda alters sweet receptors in the brain and prolongs sugar cravings rather than satisfies them.

"We often see patients change snack choices when they give up diet soda," says Heather Bainbridge, RD, from Columbia University Medical Center Weight Control Center. "Rather than needing sugary treats or something really salty like pretzels and chips, they reach for an apple and a piece of cheese. And, when they try diet soda again, they find it intolerably sweet."

Kidney function improves.

Now that your body no longer has to make sense of the unpronounceable ingredients in diet soda, your kidneys can get back to clearing toxins, stabilizing blood pressure, and absorbing minerals. One study looked at 11 years of data and found that women who drank 2 or more servings of diet soda doubled their chances of declining kidney function.

When you give up soda your attitude towards food changes.

Since diet sodas have no calories, people drinking them often feel it's okay to indulge elsewhere, finds Bainbridge. Often she sees her diet soda-drinking patients make poor food choices, like a burger and fries, a piece of cake, or potato chips, because they think they can afford those extra calories. Plus, soda often accompanies unhealthy foods. "Sometimes those poor choices are built up habits," she says. "You're conditioned to have soda with chips, fries, or something sweet. When you eliminate the soft drink, you also break the junk food habit."

We drink buttermilk. Slim, zero sugar and lots of calcium. No fizzy drinks

WiseGeek agrees buttermilk is good:

The primary health benefits of buttermilk come from its high content of vitamins and minerals, particularly vitamin B12, riboflavin, and potassium. Buttermilk is also considered a digestive aid, and is often tolerated by many of those who are lactoseintolerant. Benefits of buttermilk that would be important to those trying to lose weight, or who are suffering from obesity-related illnesses, would include its low content of calories and fat.

Source: http://wisegeek.com/what-are-the-health-benefits-of-buttermilk.htm

Diet soda doesn't help you lose weight at all. 

A University of Texas Health Science Center study found that the more diet sodas a person drank, the greater their risk of becoming overweight. Downing just two or more cans a day increased waistlines by 500%. Why? Artificial sweeteners can disrupt the body's natural ability to regulate calorie intake based on the sweetness of foods, suggested an animal study from Purdue University. That means people who consume diet foods might be more likely to overeat, because your body is being tricked into thinking it's eating sugar, and you crave more.

How to Beat Your Sugar Addiction

Source is Diet Soda is Doing These 7 Awful Things To Your Body:

http://www.today.com/health/diet-soda-doing-these-7-awful-things-your-body-1C6558748

More from Prevention: The scale finally goes the right way.

While you may have started drinking diet soda to facilitate weight loss, quitting it may actually do the trick. A recent 9-year study found older adults who drank diet soda continued to pack on  belly fat. The study piggybacks on research that found each daily diet soda increases your chance of becoming obese in the next decade by 65%, and a study published in Diabetes Care that found drinking diet soft drinks daily was associated with an increase in metabolic syndrome—obesity, high blood-pressure, high triglycerides—which leads to heart disease and diabetes.

Soda’s connection to the obesity epidemic is so intertwined, Harvard researchers have calculated each additional soda consumed increases the risk of obesity 1.6 times.

Source: 

http://www.medicaldaily.com/pulse/soft-drink-dangers-8-ways-soda-negatively-affects-your-health-319054

Aspartame is linked to depression and sugar is linked to dementia and reduced memory:

The FDA has linked aspartame to severe depression. Clinical depression affects about 6.7 percent of adults in the U.S. every year. Aspartame increases this risk by up to 36 percent! If you persistently feel sad or worthless and lose interest in activities that once held interest for you, it may be time to give up the soda — and seek medical guidance.

...

Sugary sodas incrementally increase blood sugar, increasing risk for dementia and interfering with the brain's ability to create memories. If you're a diet drinker, the FDAin your soda can contribute to headaches, blurry eyes and memory issues.

Source: 

http://familyshare.com/health/6-disgusting-things-soda-is-doing-inside-your-body

That page also has this stat:

A recent national Gallup poll found that 48 percent of Americans drink one or more glasses of soda per day — with 7 percent reporting that they drink four or more per day.

What happens to your body when you stop drinking soda:

http://www.medicaldaily.com/bye-bye-sugary-drinks-what-happens-your-body-when-you-stop-drinking-soda-326034

More things I've learned about Diet Soda:

http://pandawhale.com/post/60256/what-diet-soda-does-to-belly-fat

http://pandawhale.com/post/23919/diet-soda-does-more-harm-than-good

http://pandawhale.com/post/19834/both-sugar-sweetened-soda-and-artificially-sweetened-soda-are-associated-with-increased-type-2-diabetes-risk

http://pandawhale.com/post/56749/diet-soda-may-alter-our-gut-microbiome-raising-the-risk-of-diabetes

New York Times on the decline of Big Soda:

http://nytimes.com/2015/10/04/upshot/soda-industry-struggles-as-consumer-tastes-change.html

See also the 538 analysis:

http://pandawhale.com/post/60795/diet-soda-drinkers-are-disappearing-by-fivethirtyeight

Prevention on diet soda and alcohol:

It's a fact: Diet soda gets you drunk faster. When you mix it with alcohol, your stomach empties out faster than if you used regular soda, causing a drastic increase in blood alcohol concentrations, according to an Australian study in the American Journal of Medicine. And when you add caffeine, look out. Another study in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research found that bar patrons who mixed drinks with diet colas were intoxicated much more easily and frequently. (Here's what alcohol does to your body.) Your best bet for a mixer? Club soda, which is naturally sugar- and calorie-free.