I keep falling off the wagon!

I have dark chocolate about 70% in the fridge. I eat a small chunk in sugar craving or with coffee. About the cravings it is usually lack of healthy fat. Try few almonds or nuts every day or 1/4 of an avocato in your meals. I read somwhere that if you drink bcaa it will help with sugar craving. Rembember not feeling guilty if you have something sweet now and then. Also you can make a healthy crackers using oats. plenty of recipes out there.

Since we're in the MyFitnessPal discussion area I will say that logging my calories is the most helpful thing I've ever done for weight loss. I mainly follow a low-carb diet which means I'm avoiding most sugar anyway, but I still have a tendency to overcompensate with low carb calories and unless I pay close attention to my net calorie intake i don't lose weight even on a pretty strict Atkins diet regimen. My suggestion to you is start logging meticulously all your calories. You'll soon notice that a few teaspoons of sugar in tea or coffee take away your food budget for the actual meals you would like to eat. I notice it very quickly and if I'm conscientious about logging everything in it's amazing how much i learn about what gives extra calories and therefore extra weight. Honestly if you can get by with nothing but a green leaf salad with lemon juice for lunch that's probably 30 or 40 calories and then go ahead sister have sugary sweet iced tea as long as lunch total is whatever you have buffeted. What you can't do is have a full calorie lunch and then throw the bonus calories from the drink on top of it. That's the slippery slope. Over time you can make the Judgment as to whether or not the sweet drink makes your day as enjoyable as some solid less calorie-dense Foods you could eat in place of those sugar calories.

Your tastes can change over time, if you stick with something. I always had two spoonfuls of sugar in my tea as a youngster, just because that was the way my mum always made it and I was used to the taste. In my late teens I decided I wanted to cut down, and I switched to low-cal sweeteners for a while. I gradually cut those down too, and after a while my tea was completely sugarless. Now, I can't stand it if any sugar gets into my tea by accident! Coffee is a different beast, for me, but if it's good coffee I can just about stand to drink it black and sugarless (though I'd rather add cream). The cheap brand my husband likes, though, absolutely requires sweet, flavoured creamer to blunt the taste of the stuff... regular cream just won't do!

It was the same with chocolate for me... when I first started with MFP I never thought I'd be able to give up chocolate so I decided I needed to work it into my days. I've always preferred dark chocolate to milk, so I started buying bars of 85% dark stuff and rationing it out to a couple of squares every day or two. Again I gradually cut that down, and now I find that I just don't crave it like I used to. I can have a bar in the fridge for weeks on end and not touch it, which still amazes me! Anything sweeter, though, can still set me off. My usual brand wasn't in stock one week and I bought 72% instead... I couldn't make that last the week! I think that because it was so much sweeter I found it harder to stop eating it and I just wanted more, which most of the time isn't an issue with the 85%. So I decided to just not buy that in future.

It's not always easy, but it is possible for a lot of people to learn to moderate their intake. It doesn't work for everyone, but in many cases it's just a question of perseverance and pushing through the cravings.

Think about what you could substitute, perhaps... although a previous poster was against artificial sweeteners, there's nothing wrong with substituting diet sodas for regular ones, for example, if you can stand the taste. I tried Coke Zero for the first time the other day and it wasn't too bad - hubby says he can taste the aspartame in it but I didn't really notice it. I'm not a big soda drinker anyway though. You can also buy Zevia brand sodas which are sweetened with stevia, but those are quite expensive IMO. Might be worth it if you don't like the taste of artificial sweeteners but really want soda. I've learned that I'd rather eat something sweet than drink my calories!

Something like a calorie-free soda after your evening meal might take the place of a dessert for that taste of sweetness, or you could look for low-calorie dessert options and just fit them into your day. (Personally I love Chapman's Triple Berry sorbet, 60 calories for 1/2 cup (85g). Other people swear by Halo Top ice cream, which I've never tried but which I gather is around 200-250 cals for a whole pint.) You don't have to give up your sweet treats completely if you don't want to, but you might have to learn to moderate them or at least not have them every day. It can be done!

I can't get Halo Top here, but I hear it's good! There's nothing wrong with a glass of wine either, if it fits in your calories - just try to make sure it's not pushing out something more nutritious. If you're getting enough protein, fats etc. in your day and you still have the calories for wine, enjoy it! If it doesn't usually fit, perhaps just have a glass every other day instead, or a smaller amount each day. It's always a choice between what you want to eat/drink and how much you want to stay within your calorie goal, and if you go over one day you can always try to eat a little less the next.

Make sure you don't have your goal set too low, because if you only have a few pounds to lose then you shouldn't be at a large deficit now. It'll be slow, but it'll be easier to stick to!

If you don't like the taste of artificial sweeteners and you can't stand unsweetened tea/coffee, then I guess you have a couple of choices - either cut down your intake to however many cups you can manage to fit in your day, or increase your activity to give you enough extra calories to buffer your hot drink habit. There's nothing wrong with burning more calories through exercise just to allow you to have what you want, if you don't go overboard with it!

Have you tried Truvia or another stevia sweetener, by the way? It might be worth a try to see if you like that, since many people say it doesn't have the aftertaste you get with artificial types.

You could also experiment with different types of tea... I can't drink my Tetley black, but if I want tea without the extra calories from milk (which aren't many but sometimes I want to save a few), I drink Assam or Earl Grey. My local Bulk Barn has a bunch of different types of loose and flavoured teas/teabags, so I pick up a few spoonfuls of a new one to try each time I go in there! (Not sure if there's an equivalent in the UK (I emigrated ten years ago), but there might be somewhere that sells loose tea like that where you can just buy a little bit to try it out.)

For coffee, look around to see if you can find sugar-free flavouring syrups... you might be able to find something that gives you the sweetness you want without a weird aftertaste, but it might take some experimentation. You might also like to try almond or hazelnut milk in your coffee - I hate that in tea but it's fine in coffee, and might give you a nice flavour without too many extra calories.

(Oh, and my username comes from a nickname my mum had for me when I was little - the song always reminded me of that! )

stephnelson2014 wrote: »

I just started today and already been eating what I shouldn't over loading the chocolate addiction I just can't stop

Yes, you can stop. You need to WANT to stop, and you need to ration your chocolate into smaller portions.

Don't tell yourself that it's "naughty" or "bad" or "forbidden" or any other such word, that sort of thing has a tendency to make people want to go overboard with it. Make sure you can fit some into your calories, then save it for the end of the day if you can. When you find yourself craving chocolate or something else sweet during the day, reassure yourself that you have some to look forward to after supper and you just need to hold out a bit longer. (If this is too hard to start with, try two smaller portions that you can have after lunch and after supper.)

Try to find something to occupy yourself with if you're feeling bored or want to go looking for snacks, especially if you can do something that keeps your hands busy. It does take time, especially if you've been used to just eating chocolate whenever you fancied some, so you're going to need to have some self-control and discipline... but like any other skill, that can be learned and it gets easier the more you practice it. You can do it!

(If you like dark chocolate, try that too - as dark as you can stand it. (I have tried 92% and that was just too bitter for my taste!) The less sweet it is, the easier it is to stop after a couple of squares - at least that's what I and some other people have found.)

stephnelson2014 wrote: »

I just started today and already been eating what I shouldn't over loading the chocolate addiction I just can't stop

We can motivate eat other to cut out some of these sugary foods! (As much as we can of course)

kevinlee1981 wrote: »

I have cut out as many processed carbs as I can, and replaced them with vegetables. Carbs and sugar were my Achilles heel. All my soda, or milk intake has been replaced with water, or cashew milk. I have eliminated breads, pastas, and that sort of thing, entirely, and replaced them with almonds when I need a crunchy snack. I switched from my old life style to a keto based diet, of high protein, and low carbs, and the rest is fat, trying to keep my carbs under 50g, but even then it is mostly broccoli. I am losing weight, feeling better, and looking better. I can't suggest this for everyone, as it is a very tough transition, but it is working great for me.

Keep going, one day at a time.

Also doing a similar thing!