Sweet food alternatives! Help!

I've been making large batches of sugar free jelly & putting them into little pots as a post meal dessert. Ends up being about 5 calories each pot (if that!) Relatively cheap too!

Work the foods you love into your day. Most days, I have ice cream or chocolate. Just less than I used to. If I buy chips, I don't buy a huge bag anymore as I'm tempted to eat the whole thing. I buy the individual sized bags..that way I can still eat chips without killing my calories.

This doesn't have to be a torturous process!

FWIW -

I use hard candy as a substitute sometimes. 20 cals per piece is usually enough to get me through my weaker moments.

So first, I'd say you need to take a minute and think about how you tend to respond to sweets.

While I know a lot of advice is 'go ahead and eat it, but in moderation,' that doesn't always work. If you crave the taste, but don't necessarily feel the need to eat a lot of it, then I think the idea of having just a small portion of it is great. I've even seen some people set up small portions of sweets ahead of time to help - like putting ice cream into an ice cube tray, so you have just a little portion of it you can pop out once a day for a hit of a sweet you like, you know?

However, if you have a very difficult time eating in moderation when it comes to sweets, then eating any of it is probably not a good idea. You'll be spending a lot of energy struggling not to eat too much of the food, and it ends up just adding more stress to your day, and often failure if you can't do it.


Since you've got a number of suggestions for the 'eating in moderation' concept, I'll just approach it from the other angle, so you've got a range of suggestions. :-)

So first - if at all possible, don't buy what you don't want to eat. Just do NOT buy it. Can't eat what's not in the house, right? However, if it's hard to not buy it, one thing I've done in the past is every time I'm at the store, I will take the money that I could have spent on a sweet, and save it instead. A few months and you can buy something nice with the saved money. :-)

If the sweets are going to be brought into the house by others, however, I'd see if you can keep them in a place that you don't look at much, and ask for understanding from the others there. Like, if they go in the cupboard, have a place right behind a bulky item that hides them. Same for the fridge. Out of sight, out of mind, as it were.

For sweet substitutions -
I got an electric ice cream maker (it was around $30 or so). Then I would blend soft, ripe fruit in the blender and put it in the ice cream maker and make a healthy sorbet. No sugar added, and the sorbet was ALL the fruit, so you still have all the fiber and so on. If the fruit was hard, like an apple, I'd cook it ahead of time before blending it up.

3 variations I liked were:
Cooked apple, with a little cinnamon and maybe nutmeg added, seriously tasted like apple pie sorbet. It was awesome.
Watermelon and mint (and sometimes lemon juice)
Canteloupe and lemon juice


If honey doesn't make you start craving too many sweets, a little honey mixed with cocoa power and some cashews or walnuts is pretty tasty.

Or you can add more general sweetness to your foods during the day. Like, for any meat dishes, consider adding a fruit compote, or just some sweet, cooked fruit (no sugar added) that's been mashed or chopped a little. Like applesauce and ham, for example. Or even sweeter sauces like tomatoes or bell pepper, which'll sweeten as you cook them longer, with no sugar added. I use a roasted bell pepper sauce over salmon, for example.

One thing I do is figure out some snacks I really like and keep them very handy, so when I get a sweet taste craving, I go for those. It does NOT make me not crave sweets. It's more that I'm substituting the pleasurable feelings from sweets for pleasurable feelings from OTHER foods I like.

This does not work unless it's another food I REALLY like. Not always the best or healthiest foods, honestly. But I notice I only have to do it for 2-4 weeks, while really dodging sugar and added sweeteners, before the cravings with finally go away. And then I can wean myself off of eating my other food too, but I find that much less of a challenge than the sweets. :-)

If it's just sweet you are craving, fruit is about as sweet as anything. I'd have a piece of fruit. Some are sweeter than others -- to me pineapple is not only super sweet, but juicy and delicious. I rarely just want sweetness, but if I did, that would hit the spot, as would a clementine, an apple or pear, or (if it were summer) a peach or plum, cherries or strawberries (sadly I think strawberries are awful out of season, but frozen make a good smoothie blended with some plain greek yogurt).

More often, for me, it's not sweetness, but something specific, like chocolate or ice cream (both of which I enjoy when they aren't very sweet at all). If it's that, maybe try a dark chocolate (I love Chocolove 88%) or an unsweetened brewed chocolate drink -- you could add chocolate to the latter to taste. There are artificially sweetened options too, like a chocolate pudding my dad used to be into or Halo Top if you enjoy that.

I've found with ice cream that I'd rather have a little bit of one I truly love than a lot of one I like less, but experimenting is a good idea.

I also think it's worth thinking about when you want sweet and if you feel like you have trouble controlling it. If you do struggle with control, it can be habit, and you might want to take a break, but it also can be that you are telling yourself NEVER and so when you have it you fall into "last time ever, might as well make this count" or "I already ruined it and I am bad, so might as well go nuts" modes.

I got into a habit for a while of snacking, especially when I felt bad, or having something dessert-y as a "bad day, so" kind of thing, and for me it was helpful to break this. I still like having a little something after dinner, but I make sure I vary it -- sometimes ice cream or chocolate, sometimes the low cal brewed chocolate, sometimes fruit, sometimes cheese, so on.

I like blended frozen bananas as a frozen desert (sometimes with pb2, sometimes without).

romilly35 wrote: »

I have massive trouble steering clear of sugary and sweet foods such as chocolate, ice cream etc. Can anyone recommend some recipes that will help satisfy my sweet tooth but that aren’t to damaging to my diet? Cheap and cheerful if possible! Thanks x

I think I'm reiterating some of the people who already posted, but:

Fruits, especially berries (strawberries, raspberries etc). You have to get your mouth used to registering them as sweet again. They don't taste as satisfying as chocolate or candy at first but once you adjust it's wonderful. You can also eat a hell of a lot of most fruit without it being especially caloric. Per gram it's way, way, way less calories than "sweets" anyway.

Sugarfree jelly is basically no calories.

Icy poles of any kind (I prefer the ice pops from Aldi for taste and for value for money) are about 70 cal per, which is basically nothing as long as you stop at one a day.

Gum, suckers (i.e. chupa chups) and hard candies are good because they aren't very much cal for a single piece but because it's a "prolonged" experience it's usually satisfying. You have to take time to enjoy it, it's not like having a bag of gummy bears and inhaling half of it in 30 seconds.

I wanna reiterate @JustRobby1, Skinny Cow is delicious and a godsend. SC products are high enough in calories that you need to be mindful (like, anywhere in the region of 130 - 200 depending on the exact product) but it's still a fraction of the amount in other foods. Just be aware that the sugar replacement is maltodextrin so if you overeat SC products you will get the runs.

Yogurts are a good choice but I can't recommend a specific brand as the one I eat is regional. Find one that's relatively natural and not too stuffed with sugar and thickening agents (looking at you, Yoplait).

I haven't really found a good replacement for chocolate, like block chocolate and chocolate bars, though. So when I mess up on my diet it's usually because I really wanted a Snickers or something. Otherwise, the above satisfies my sweet cravings most of the time.

I like frozen yogurt as a sub for ice cream. I like to keep it around 150 calories and that's a very small amount of ice cream, but I can get 4 or 5 ounces at the froyo shop to keep me happy.

For days I don't want to eat ice cream I take either Greek yogurt/plain yogurt & add a serving of sugar free Jello Pudding mix (love the Cheesecake flavor the most) & a Stevia packet.

With the Greek yogurt it makes a nice protein frosting.

Edy's Slow Churned ice creams are usually 90-140 calories depending on flavors & a lot cheaper per serving than Halo Top/Enlightened.