DETROIT -- Did you know the average person drinks 52 gallons of soda a year?

If you drink diet because you think it will help cut calories, think again.

It's amazing how quickly it adds up. If you're choosing diet soda to help you lose weight, you may be in for a shock because it turns out, calorie-free may not be so free after all.

Diet pop drinker Kris Bruttell said she couldn't get through the day without it.

"I start the second I get up in the morning," said Bruttell. "I have one in my hand all day long and drink it until right before I go to bed."

Diet pop may have zero calories, but experts said all that soda can still add up on the scale.

When researchers followed 1,500 pop drinkers for eight years, those who drank diet pop were actually 10 percent more likely to become overweight than those who drank regular soda.

Researchers said people who prefer diet pop also tend to overeat.

"When you're drinking diet pop, you think you're doing really well and you're cutting back on calories and you're going to lose weight from it, but the reality is, we tend to drink diet pop with a hamburger and fries," said Beaumont dietititan Silvia Veri.

Veri said switching from regular pop to diet would help you cut calories, but the pseudo sweetness could create a real craving.

"Patients have told me that when they do drink diet pop, it has that false taste of sweetness, so they tend to crave sweets later on in the day," she said.

Some experts believe artificial sweeteners like aspartame can also cause headaches, rashes, and even seizures. So far, no large-scale studies have shown a definitive link to health problems, but not everyone is convinced.

And there's no question what diet pop does to your teeth.

Like regular pop, diet gets its tangy taste from phosphoric acid.

Dr. Susan Luft-Marcotte, a Farmington Hills dentist, said sipping soda all day leads to decay.

"You're bathing your teeth in this acid all day long," she said. "Phosphoric acid essentially gets into the mouth and starts to erode the enamel and starts to dish out the teeth so that you get a very funny appearance to the teeth."