I’m 30. All my life I’ve eschewed most sweets, candy, ice cream, etc. out of choice. I just didn’t have a huge desire for any of them… give me meat, potatoes, veggies, milk, and/or seltzer water over those any day. It’s done well for me as I’m only 10-20 lbs overweight given the amount I eat. Thirty years of no cavities and only the most negligible dental problems.
This past Christmas, I received an inordinate amount of candy and cookies from co-workers and family, and have been progressively eating my way through all of it. Now I’m starting to feel like I need to top off each meal with a candy bar.
I was always proud of the fact that I never had a sweet tooth, but now I’m developing one. How do I wean myself off and go back to my old tastes?
I suspect that the more sugar you eat, the more sugar you want. I’m going through the same thing after Christmas, having tons of cookies and sweets in the house. I was good with a piece of chocolate a day; now I want to eat and eat and eat. What I’ve done is gathered it up and put it away - out of sight, out of mind works for me. If that doesn’t work for you, you might have to actually chuck it (or bring it to work and watch it disappear).
Another trick my husband taught me is instead of going for a sweet, have a glass of water. Dehydration often masks itself as hunger or cravings.
I’ll want something sweet after a meal if I’ve had something sweet after every meal for a week or more. After about a week of abstinence (which takes some amount of willpower) I won’t have that craving anymore.
Try to slowly eat less and less sweets. Or start buying those 100 calorie packs of sweet stuff and eat those instead - a lot of them are pretty yummy and as long as you only eat 1 package of 100 calories, not too bad for you.
That’s how I am. If I go to Culver’s and get a frozen custard concrete mixer, the next night I crave another one. For me, the best thing is to cut it out entirely. It is much easier if I quit it cold turkey than to give in just once and crave again. Hmmm. Sounds a bit like quitting smoking.
This almost certainly doesn’t apply to you, but I’m throwing it out there just in case. Looking back, one of the first symptoms I had before being diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes was that I developed a huuuuuge sweet tooth out of nowhere. All of a sudden, I had to have a package of something sweet in my desk drawer to munch on all the time. I NEVER used to do that.
I figured it was all OK because I wasn’t gaining weight. In fact, as time went on, I was losing weight. Life was great! :smack:
I don’t know if this helps, but I find when I’m not exercising, I get more of a sweet tooth.
I imagine it’s my body saying “Hey, we’re getting lots of food without needing to run it down? Time to store up calories!”, as opposed to when the exercise kicks back in and my body decides if we’re running away from lions/chasing antelopes every day, maybe keeping some semblance of streamlining is in order.
I knew one lady like this. She hated sweets. Then one day she started asking me to get her Twinkies and such. After a couple of days of this, I said “Jean I bet your pregnant.”
She says “that’s how much you know, I had my tubes tied.”
In my experience there is definitely an addictive aspect to sugar, and the only way out is cold turkey. And apologize to everybody. And don’t forget about a higher power.
Yeah, I’m dealing with the same thing. Before Thanksgiving I was good with maybe a nibble of chocolate here or there, and a nibble was just enough. But now after every meal I need something sweet.
About the only thing that has worked for me in the past was just to get rid of all the sweets in the house, stop carrying change in my purse for the vending machine and suffer through the cravings. It takes a couple weeks but eventually the sweet tooth goes away.
If I could only get rid of all the sweets by actually throwing them or giving them away instead of eating them myself!!!
It all started with a handful of Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate mini-bars fished out of a bin in the bulk candy section. Dark chocolate is supposed to be good for you… a bite of chocolate is better than half a box of cookies… Then it escalated. Because the bulk candy section also stocks the most adorable, delicious foil wrapped chocolates - peanut butter filling, fudge filling, caramel filling. White chocolate cookies n’ cream. Crispy rice chocolate. A handful of those can’t hurt, can they? Then Christmas comes, and people who can’t think of what the hell else to give me, give me Lindor truffles and Ghirardelli squares, and the point of all this is, I now can’t zip up my jeans. No, I don’t like the sweet tooth.
I’m 34 and I’d never really liked sweets much. I’d even pass up cake and ice cream at almost every birthday party I went to, not because of calories or anything, but because I didn’t generally enjoy sweet, sugary food.
However, for the past couple of years I’ve been using opiates on a regular basis (legally), and now I can’t get enough of sweets. I try to avoid buying them but if anyone offers me anything sweet, I can never pass it up. The last time I bought ice cream, which was just last week, I ate the entire 1.5 quart container in one sitting. Surprisingly, I’m still pretty skinny.