What's your advice to control the urges to eat sweets?

I only go for the really tasty stuff, and not every day. Instead of the three portions I truly want, I only have one.

I love the fiber one bars or yasso bars. If I allow myself one of those at night, I seem to be good. For a while I was eating a yasso bar every night (it tastes just like ice cream, though made with Greek yogurt and very low cal). That kept me on track all day. After about a month of that, I don't need a bar every night and don't have much trouble staying away from candy/cookies.

lhtbuzz123 wrote: »

Completely agreed with @Azuriaz .

I'm in team "in moderation" - You can eat anything you want in moderation. Stay under your daily calorie goal, have a little of what you're craving, accurately measure & log it.

A suggestion I heard the other day - If there's a treat you know will be a weakness for you, decide what would be a reasonable portion of that treat (calorie-wise), then weigh & divide the treat into snack sized portions in sealable bags. That way you can have 1 reasonable portion of your treat all ready for you to grab & devour when you get a craving ... My internal argument against this was "what stops me having another bag... & another..." BUT with willpower it could work & be much better than eating all the crisps/sweets/cookies from their packet

I've also heard a lot of people will freeze their favorite weaknesses. Makes it harder to devour as quickly.

i am one of those that say eat what you want in moderation. otherwise, the craving will get out of hand.

I should mention, and we keto/low carb people should mention this more often in our posts:

Diabetics need to go to their doctor and let them know they're changing their diet because medications may change. It's great that some Type 2s even come off medications after a while on keto/low carb, but it's definitely not something that should be done without a doctor monitoring the situation and adjusting as needed.

I feel guilty, I don't think I've mentioned this once since I've been back on here, and it's important.

ilovecereal1982 wrote: »

Dang you sweets!! Even now you are ruling my mouth as I chomp down some sweedish fish. ..come on though can anyone say no to a sweedish fish? ?? I feel like it should be Swedish fish but my phone is currently accepting both spellings....hmmm I apologize in advance to the people of Sweden if I've offended but hot damn you make a delicious candy fish

I was worried for a second you were eating candied fish. Which might be a thing somewhere in the world, but doesn't sound tasty at all to me.

It depends on you. I eat what I want in moderation. A snack bag of chips is 150 calories. A Yasso bar is 100 calories. A fun sized Snickers bar is 80 calories.

In the past, I used to avoid "trigger" foods and find substitutes to have instead.

There are short and long-term fixes here. Substitutes are a short-term fix if you want to incorporate the foods you like in your life eventually. Long-term fixes require some work.

You mentioned both salty and sweet items, so I'm going to assume you mean all hyper-palatable foods, or snack foods, not just one particular type of food like sweets.

Ask yourself a few questions. Are you willing to live forever without these things in your life? If you're not, then you need to do some hard thinking about your behavior with them. Yes, they taste good, but they are a source of calories. So is all the other food you eat. The key is for you to be able to come to a place within yourself where you feel in charge of your food choices.

Another thing to examine is the conditions under which you're overeating. Are you bored, anxious, depressed, tired? Have you let yourself become over-hungry because your next meal isn't ready? If you are really honest with yourself and if you (general you, not just OP) are eating for any of these reasons, you'll have to admit that none of them is a good reason to eat. Get up and walk around a bit instead. Take a drink of water. Read. Engage in a hobby. Talk to a friend. Pamper yourself instead.

There's no reason to permanently ban snack food from your life if you don't want to. Food has no power beyond that which we give it. I used to believe I was addicted to sugar and carbs and gave those foods too much power. I've taken that power back and learned, instead, that I'm the one that gets to be amazing. I firmly believe in the potential everyone has to find their own amazing and kick food's butt and make their own choices when it comes to it. You can be in charge of just how much of it you eat, no matter what kind of food it is.

MMM swedish fish are one of my favorites. And gummy grapefruit.

I enjoy sweets in moderation. A little every day. I don't wait until I have cravings which seems to really prevent me from downing a whole package of cookies or whatever.

JannickOcampo wrote: »

This is all good advise people. I'm fighting it, and so far I am doing well. The only candy I can't resist is, Red Hots. They are so good... low in calories, but I eat the whole box....
Please add me as your friend for mutual motivation. We are in this together ; )

If the only thing you can't put down is Red Hots, I'd say you're way ahead of a lot of people here.

Unless it's the movie theater box and you buy one every day!

I enjoy sweets in moderation. You can try dividing the box of Red Hots into separate baggies before you eat them. The act of weighing my foods really helped keep me in check when it comes to portion control.

Team 'moderation!' I still indulge in everything I did before but now I portion it out and make sure it fits into my daily calories. One thing that helped in the beginning was measuring out a portion of whatever treat I wanted and then making the rest of it difficult to get - put it up in a high cupboard, store it in the trunk of the car, wherever, just make it more difficult to get to than just opening up a box. Now, I just keep everything in the cupboard

There are foods that I don't keep in the house. When they're in the house, I buy just enough for everyone to have a portion. When baking, I try to do the same and not bake in mega batches. I halve cookie recipes (with our family of seven, 3 dozen is perfect for everyone to have a portion and then I send the rest with my husband to work.)

When I know I'll be eating splurge type foods, I make sure I have enough calories to cover it and make sure I'm on track the rest of the day.

You'll have to figure out what works for you and go from there.

Drink a lot of water, eat something healthy and then have a taste of the unhealthy snack (one cookie only), that way you are satisfied and still got the good taste by the end. If this does not work I failed you

PeachyCarol wrote: »

It depends on you. I eat what I want in moderation. A snack bag of chips is 150 calories. A Yasso bar is 100 calories. A fun sized Snickers bar is 80 calories.

In the past, I used to avoid "trigger" foods and find substitutes to have instead.

There are short and long-term fixes here. Substitutes are a short-term fix if you want to incorporate the foods you like in your life eventually. Long-term fixes require some work.

You mentioned both salty and sweet items, so I'm going to assume you mean all hyper-palatable foods, or snack foods, not just one particular type of food like sweets.

Ask yourself a few questions. Are you willing to live forever without these things in your life? If you're not, then you need to do some hard thinking about your behavior with them. Yes, they taste good, but they are a source of calories. So is all the other food you eat. The key is for you to be able to come to a place within yourself where you feel in charge of your food choices.

Another thing to examine is the conditions under which you're overeating. Are you bored, anxious, depressed, tired? Have you let yourself become over-hungry because your next meal isn't ready? If you are really honest with yourself and if you (general you, not just OP) are eating for any of these reasons, you'll have to admit that none of them is a good reason to eat. Get up and walk around a bit instead. Take a drink of water. Read. Engage in a hobby. Talk to a friend. Pamper yourself instead.

There's no reason to permanently ban snack food from your life if you don't want to. Food has no power beyond that which we give it. I used to believe I was addicted to sugar and carbs and gave those foods too much power. I've taken that power back and learned, instead, that I'm the one that gets to be amazing. I firmly believe in the potential everyone has to find their own amazing and kick food's butt and make their own choices when it comes to it. You can be in charge of just how much of it you eat, no matter what kind of food it is.

Dang! Cosigned!

I am a moderation eater. I allow my self one sweet a day but only one serving. So if it happens to be M&M's I only eat half the bag and save the rest for another day or I only eat 3 Oreos or whatever the serving size is.