cutting down on sweets

kimmaltsev

Over the years I had consumed a lot of sweets such as Little Debbie's, chocolate, cakes, ext each week. In that last few years about 2 years I cut down a lot of the sweets to about 1-3 days a week instead of daily like I used to. I find it hard to cut down a bit more on it. Any suggestions. This also goes for fast food restaurants as well.

KatieMusselwhite92113

Everyone here is going to respond by telling you that you don't need to cut down on sweets unless you have a medical reason why, and you should fit these foods into your calorie goals because everyone should have some treats. I agree with that, because you will lose as long as you're at a deficit.

BUT, assuming you are trying to cut down for the sake of eating healthier and not JUST for the sake of weight loss... I would say to pick a day each week where you're going to have one big sweet, maybe at a restaurant (portion control made easy). Don't have the Little Debbies in the house, because you know if you buy them you will eat them. Try to find foods that satisfy your sweet tooth that are lower calorie. Some things that work for me are carrots (sounds weird but try it!) fruit, fruit smoothies (careful though, these can get high-cal fast), fruit snacks, protein/granola bars (chocolatey ones yum!), dark chocolate (healthy and very rich so a couple squares should satisfy), or something like yogurt or sorbet. I also look at this blog called chocolatecoveredkatie.com she is a vegan dessert blogger, and has a lot of low calorie options and just general "healthy" choices to help you in your quest. I have tried 10+ of her recipes and only one has come out gross. Message me if you need recommendations.

tl;dr: don't deprive yourself completely, but if you're wanting to do this for the sake of health, cut down, find replacements, and/or look at that awesome dessert blog.

rebprest

I feel like the way to cut down on sweets is to just not eat them. I'm not sure of any other method... you could try tricking your brain by having naturally sweet foods like fruit instead of desserts. I've heard that eventually your body stops craving such high levels of sugar.

I would never give up chocolate, and I work it into my calories every day. I don't think a square or two of chocolate has any negative effect on weight loss aside from adding calories.

Liftng4Lis

I make room in my allotment daily, for some kind of sugary goodness.

arditarose

Try higher quality, dark chocolate.

kimmaltsev

Any recommendations on high quality chocolates? Or any other recommendations on anything to do with what I posted?

lemurcat12

KatieMusselwhite92113 wrote: »

Everyone here is going to respond by telling you that you don't need to cut down on sweets unless you have a medical reason why, and you should fit these foods into your calorie goals because everyone should have some treats. I agree with that, because you will lose as long as you're at a deficit.

Not me. I mean, I agree with the second part, unless someone really wants to drop sweets entirely, at least for a while, but I don't think it's common to say that people who are eating too many calories shouldn't "cut down" on sweets. Sweets are usually high calorie and contribute little nutritional value, so they are a great thing to cut down on when cutting calories if someone is getting lots of calories from them. (I just say there's no need to cut them out or look first at them if that's not your particular source of lots of extra calories.)

But what is difficult here is that the answer is just either (1) eat sweets less frequently (which OP already seems to understand) or (2) eat smaller portions or lower calorie options (like the small piece of high quality chocolate vs. chocolate bar or a half cup of ice cream vs. a sundae). Since it's so obvious, there's obviously something more to these kinds of questions--such as the particular struggle the OP is having with doing these things--but without more details there's no advice that can be given, we'd just be guessing based on what our particular struggles were.

So my question to the OP is why does she think she's having a hard time cutting down on sweets? Is it an issue of eating larger servings than intended, eating them in specific situations where she did not intend, what?

I've learned that I tend to go for sweets when my will power is low (stress, lack of sleep) and I don't have other food to distract me--this happens at work at a certain time when I was in the habit of using food that was around for emotional purposes (and it need not be sweets, popcorn is just as common an issue for me in this situation). So because I know that's an issue I prepare for it (and one way of preparing is having better sweets available later if I don't waste calories on stupid snack stuff at the office).

I've also learned that I have a hard time resisting really good baked treats at my book club. But since those are good (one of the members is an excellent baker), and I think worth the calories, I just make my not all that frequent book club a time when I have those and plan for it in how I eat the rest of the day.

jemhh

When I first started, I was out of control with sweets and desserts. In order to retrain myself, for about 5 months or so I only allowed myself one serving a week, on an assigned day (Sunday.) That helped me get over the "omg sugar I have to eat it all now" because I knew that, every Sunday, I'd have a treat.

Now, I have a dessert or pastry probably twicr a week but I may also have a few chocolate covered almonds another time or two each week. But I still try to keep big quantities of tempting sweets out of the house because of a tendency to think "well I'm gonna eat it all in the end anyway so might as well eat all of this in one sitting."

Francl27

I still eat them. Found that if I tried to go a couple days without them, I would end up binging. My servings are typically limited to a serving of ice cream or a couple cookies - I typically have 50-60 calories worth of chocolate a day (a square of Lindt, because I stocked up on them when they were on sale). So usually between 50 and 250 calories of sweets a day (my goal is 1800, just don't look at the last week on my diary because I've been very hungry and yesterday was my birthday, so not very representative of what's normal, lol).

Once in a while I have something that has more calories, like pastries, donuts, cake, or croissants, but maybe once a month and only on days when I'm not that hungry and have calories to spare.

I have to add though that those Yoplait Greek Whips are a really good way of helping your sweet tooth... only 100 calories, 10g of protein or so, and it's delicious, although not very filling at all.