cutting down on sweets

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.

Try higher quality, dark chocolate.

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.

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.