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You know your own life best but you might be missing the underlying causes.

Overweight person A drinks diet soda because they struggle with losing weight and use it to avoid drinking calories.

Underweight person B drinks diet soda because they have body image issues and/or a mild-to-severe ED and are afraid to gain weight.

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Yeah, all valid. I guess the reason it seems obvious to me that the diet soda is directly affecting weight is that so many of the people with weight problems don't seem to think the soda can have anything to do with it. "But it's diet!" says, for instance, my mom.

What is your mom's average daily calorie count?

Why would I know that? Why would you even ask that?

Because if you were consuming 4000 calories of food and drink before and reduced it down to 3000 by drinking diet soda. It's still a lot, but less. Which is better.

Oh I'm just questioning why you think I would count my mom's calorie intake, or why it would specifically matter.

It specifically matters because the number influence on a person's weight is calorie intake/calorie usage.

Other things might influence to a degree, but the main problem is always going to be caloric in nature.

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