Depressed when cutting out sweets.

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  • cavefallss
    cavefallss Posts: 39 Member
    usually fruit for me hits the spot. frozen grapes are super good to. if i want something more than that i usually eat a bar or a more healthier kinda snack. frozen cherries are also really good.
  • pandareads
    pandareads Posts: 18 Member
    I have a sweet tooth too, especially for cake, and usually at night after dinner but before bed. I try to use sheer willpower but when that doesn’t work I have a Diet Coke and that usually works. On the odd occasion it doesn’t, I go upstairs to bed early and read. I’m distracted by the book and too lazy to go downstairs for a snack after brushing my teeth.
  • Zinka61
    Zinka61 Posts: 563 Member
    I have a powerful sweet tooth, but I find if I include any sugary snacks, I'm likely to binge on more. I know just what you mean about the world being gray without them, but what I did was substitute sweet treats like nice cream (large, sliced then frozen banana pureed with 2 T. unsweetened cocoa powder and 5 T powdered peanut butter (I look for lower sugar ones, but the small amount in there doesn't bother me much), maybe 1/4-1/3 c. milk (I used unsweetened cashew milk or unsweetened Silk soy milk and if you have enough calories to spare, a scoop of vanilla protein powder (I used Evolve, pea protein powder). This makes a huge bowl of very nutritious and guilt free nice cream, very sweet and chocolaty. I also freeze black grapes and eat about 1 1/2 cups of them slowly, as an afternoon snack. They are very sweet, like little Popsicles. These are enough for my sweet tooth, and good for me, and over time I do believe they've retrained me for the most part. When I do splurge on a candy bar (or several, ok, let's be real), I usually notice it makes me feel a little sickish in my stomach compared to my usual treats, but I confess, it does bring back the happy rainbows. I try to save them for occasions when I really need them these days. :)
  • Commander_Keen
    Commander_Keen Posts: 1,179 Member
    GrumpyCat80 wrote: »
    My diet is fairly ok, although I should probably include more vegetables. But... My downfall is my sweet tooth; biscuits, chocolate, ice cream, cakes and the list goes on. The problem is that when I try to cut down or cut sweets out completely, I just become depressed. Life just turns grey... It is ridiculous, I'm a grown woman and I should be able to cut out this stuff, but it just seems impossible. How do you do it?

    Why do you cut it out.

    Re-realistically if you have 10 sweets, then have 9
    Once your comfortable with 9, then have 8, then 7 .... until not having sweets is not a big deal

  • talkinghead86
    talkinghead86 Posts: 66 Member
    PrincessMel72 wrote: »
    I work in sweets every day to my calorie count and trust me, when you only have 1200 calories a day, you have to make it work. I buy Dove dark chocolates and Yasso fudge frozen yogurt bars and have one serving a day. I can't cut sweets. I just can't.

    Just stick to your daily calorie goal of 1200 -- and you will definitely continue to progress/improve on that. The weight loss in itself will increase your brain's dopamine receptors -- the same ones that get released when we dive into a pot of ben and jerry's (no wonder it's hard to let that stuff go completely).....Nothing worth having comes easy for anyone.
  • OooohToast
    OooohToast Posts: 257 Member
    melaniekboe wrote: »
    I had a TERRIBLE sweet tooth until a friend suggested Magnesium as a supplement. I figured - what do I have to lose?!? If my body didn't need it, I'd just 'expel' it. lol It's been a God-send! I no longer have any cravings for sweets and it's been a month. Maybe this will work for someone else! HTH!

    This - Magnesium really helped me with this too. Can help with sleeping as well !
  • patrickaa5
    patrickaa5 Posts: 70 Member
    Is there a reason you want/need to cut out sweets? If not, why bother?

    I tried doing a lowish carb (100grams) diet early on, but quickly decided it just wasn't worth it to me. I'm old (60) and life is too short to feel deprived all of the time. So, if I want cake, I eat it. I have ice cream almost every night. Bag of M&M's - no problem. I include all of the calories in my plan and just go from there.

    Having said that, I will say if you can cut back some on the sweets, you'll have a lot more calories left for "real" food that will be more filling. So, you have to eat sweets in moderation, for sure. I'm on day 290 of my diet, have lost 70lbs and haven't completely cut out anything.
  • ErinWard1986
    ErinWard1986 Posts: 46 Member
    I eat a 100 cal pack of m&ms, dove bar, or Milky Way bar everyday...I love chocolate and don’t plan on giving it up! Just work it in to your allotted calls and stay in a deficit and you’ll be fine. I’m day 4 and down 4 so far...good luck!!
  • VictoryGarden
    VictoryGarden Posts: 194 Member
    Because of a strong family history of diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and heart attacks, I've completely cut ALL sugar and fructose, with the exception of the very small amount that is in Lindt 95% dark chocolate. (Seriously, how many women can give up chocolate!?!?!?! I only eat 1/4 serving per day now. )

    I won't lie, the first two weeks post-sugar are rough. Your brain and body are fighting back, HARD.

    But once you get through that, it is amazing how FREE you feel. Sugar no longer holds power over you. If someone had told me before that I was addicted to sugar, I would have laughed at them, but they would have been right. I was so addicted. Now that I am free from that white hell, I can't even begin to explain how liberating it is to be able to walk past a plate of cookies in the breakroom, or skip dessert, or turn down a morning donut. You will regain control over you, and the sugar won't do your talking for you.

    And losing 40 pounds in 6 months sure hasn't hurt any, either.
  • SoaringOccamy
    SoaringOccamy Posts: 57 Member
    I have struggled with sugar for years. well before I even knew what the issue was. I have now switched to sugar free drinks, sweets, and the like. When I have dieted in the past, I would naturally cut down the sugar just by eating less calories, but the first few days I would literally break down and cry. my family could always tell when I was starting a new weight loss attempt.

    After the initial few days of being a wreck, then maybe a week or two of cravings, I would find that I wasn;t constantly hungry. I even stopped biting my nails for the first time in my life because I didn't have the constant gnawing cravings, And I would do well for a few weeks, a few months maybe... until the next big holiday where I would eat sweets. And then I would be back to square one, eating and eating without any ability to stop.

    After a few of these cycles I noticed the correlation between reintroducing the sweets in large quantities and the return of cravings. I considered cutting out sugar because I could see that it was a problem, but I couldn't emotionally handle it. I was even convinced that I might rather die than give it up.

    Last year my dad had to quit smoking after having major heart surgery. He had smoked for over 40 years, since he was just a kid. I believe he claims he was as young as twelve or so when he started. I figured if he could do it, I could do it. So a few months later I finally worked up the emotional fortitude to give up the sugar.

    Once I got going, the cravings and depression evened out after a while. If you can, try to stick to it. It will get better. And if you can keep yourself from going back, all the better. I don't have the same experience some of the others have had here, where veggies and fruit taste hyper sweet, since I am still eating my candy and soda, just sugar free, but the cravings are significantly reduced for me. I hope to cut out the artificially sweetened candy as well eventually. I am definitely using them as a bit of a crutch.

    I know some people say that it is just a fad thing to blame the sugar, but my experience is that it is the thing that caused all of my other food cravings. I had plenty of foods on my "binge trigger" list that didn't have large amounts of sugar in them, and I have no trouble eating them in moderation now.

    TL;DR- I use sugar-free, artificially sweetened candy and soda to ease the emotional transition to sugar free and it is working for me.

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