Dessert off limits?

If it weren't, I wouldn't!! I still eat sweets, something sweet everyday!! In fact a had cookies today!! :noway: Calories in, calories out.

You just need to control the portion size and often something smaller and richer can be more satisfying than something bigger, think a smaller piece of dark chocolate vs. a Hersey's bar!

I love my sweets, if I were to cut out all foods I love, I would hate this. Just spend a little more time working out so you can enjoy the foods you like. The key is moderation!

Absolutely. Dieting isn't supposed to be a temporary solution -- "I'll get to X weight and then I can eat whatever I want again!" -- it's meant to be a lifestyle change. So, the way you eat and the stuff you eat while on a diet is meant to be how you're gonna eat even after you lose weight.

So if you look at that and think "I'll never get to eat a pizza/chocolate bar/piece of cake/fries EVER AGAIN!" you are setting yourself up for failure. The more you deprive yourself, the more you will wear down your willpower and make it steadily harder to stay the course.

Dieting is more about learning to moderate your food intake. Instead of eating half a package of Oreos, eat one. Instead of a giant slice of cake and a side of ice cream at the birthday party, share a slice with someone else and skip the ice cream. Or vice versa.

Know your weaknesses, though, and definitely stay away from those until you get used to eating differently. If you LOVE a particular brand of sweet/chips/soda/cocktail what have you, and know you're not going to be able to stop at "just one", then avoid it.

The best way to add treats into your diet is to plan your meals out ahead. I've included a soda for lunch into my meal plan and not gone over my daily calories because I tracked what I'd eat before I ate it. Plan around these treats, and it'll release the guilt and allow you to enjoy it, and reduce the chance of binging. You've already written down how much you can eat!

Buy a box of angel food cake and a box of your favorite flavor of cake. Put both into one ziploc and shake them together really well. In a LARGE coffee mug put 3 Tablespoons of cake and 2 Tablespoons of water. Mix until frothy. Microwave for one minute. OMIGOSH so good and 140 calories for strawberry cake!

I read an article about weight loss and was a bit skeptical whan it said that you can still have desserts even when trying to lose significant amounts of weight (not just 5 or 10 lbs). I have sworn off all sweets because I thought it was necessary to limit or eliminate sugar as much as possible. I am currently not using any added sugar in any of my foods. Do you think its possible to eat sweets/desserts at all while trying to lose weight?

Yes, yes, and emphatically HELL YES!!!!!

Sorry. Let me calm down a bit. Just finished a heavy workout. To earn dessert.

Look, this site isn't about losing weight. Well, OK, it is, but it's about LEARNING HOW to lose weight in a way that will allow you to KEEP the weight off.

If you give up anything "for your diet", then you'll go back to it "after your diet". And if you go back to it, I absolutely 100% guarantee you will go back to YOUR OLD WEIGHT that you just put all this work into getting rid of.

Call me Mr. Yo-Yo. I have 30+ years of experience in this. I'm a card-carrying, hard-barrelling, beer-gutted middle aged idiot who has been struggling with weight since I was eleven years old. I lose 40 pounds on a "diet", I gain 50 over the next year. I work my tushie off and lose 60, I gain 50 back. Three years later, I'm the same person I started as, only with battle scars for all the hard work I put into "dieting". I've never resorted to pills or gimmicks, thank goodness, but I've done the "iron man tough it out exercise more deny everything" diet more times than I can remember.

This is a lifestyle change. Your diet has to become both reasonable and something you can live with for the rest of your life. Make huge sacrifices now, and I guarantee you'll be back here a year after you reached your goal weight with a post entitled "starting over". I could write it for you now, if you like. I've got it memorized. "this time, I will deny myself even more and lose the weight even faster!"

Eat dessert, as long as you can find a way to fit it in your caloric budget. Because when you reach your goal, you're going to want dessert, and you'll know exactly how much of it you can eat without gaining the weight back.

Calories are what matter. The source, not so much.

This is very true. Having said that, balancing fat and carbs and proteins in reasonable proportions does make it a whole lot easier to keep within those caloric budgets without hunger, and of course there are long-term implications to starving yourself of specific nutrients.

But as far as pure weight loss, it's all about calories in - calories burned.

Buy a box of angel food cake and a box of your favorite flavor of cake. Put both into one ziploc and shake them together really well. In a LARGE coffee mug put 3 Tablespoons of cake and 2 Tablespoons of water. Mix until frothy. Microwave for one minute. OMIGOSH so good and 140 calories for strawberry cake!

^^Are you an angel??? That is awesome!!!!!!!!

The last few days I have been sick, and have struggled eating all of my calories. Regaurdless of all that I planned on having a small piece of cake today. It is my Birthday. So.... why not?

I can, but I'm special. All you mere mortals can't do what I do.