Spring has sprung, and so I’m embarking once again on my yearly effort to eat healthy. I do eat healthy food, for the most part; I cook from scratch, lots of veggies and legumes and fresh foods, minimal red meat and processed foods, etc.
The hard part, though, is dealing with my seemingly insatiable sweet tooth. I’ve tried the usual tricks, such as eating dried fruit in lieu of sweets, waiting half an hour to see if the craving goes away (it NEVER does), etc. So what tricks do other Dopers have to keep away from sweets?
My mom suggested that I take chromium. I haven’t looked into it too much, but it’s supposed to kill sweet cravings. I get them after almost every meal, it’s horrible. I just don’t keep sweets in the house, that’s how I bypass the craving
This may not be what you are looking for, but I find that I eat a lot less hard candy than other kinds, because it takes so long to eat. Especially if you get something that tastes creamy and rich, like “Werther’s” (sp?), I can eat a piece or two and be happy, instead of the whole bag. This doesn’t help much if you are a chocoholic.
Instead of dried fruit, have you tried dates? My nutritionist recommended them. He says the sugar in them metabolizes differently, so you don’t get that insulin spike and trough effect.
And I recently was in an healthfood store, and there they sold little bottles with some juice of a plant that was supposedly very sweet without actually containg sugar. It tasted quite nicely, something like concetrated liquorice water. Maybe another Doper could give you specifics?
Like Harli said, chromium is supposed to take away sweet cravings.
Maybe you could look up sugar addiction, and look at your sweet tooth from that perspective?
Oh, I am SUCH a chocoholic. Plus I love to cook, which doesn’t help. If I’m at home for the evening in my jammies, sometimes I can wait out the craving, because it’s just too much effort to get dressed and go out again. (Also, sometimes a nice cup of Celestial Seasonings Vanilla Hazelnut tea with honey and a bit of milk does the trick.)
The hard part is when I’m at work, because I know damn well there’s a convenience store a 30-second elevator ride away, and a Starbucks and a Dunkin’ Donuts and a CVS across the street.
I just had some orange juice a while ago, which postponed the craving, oh, maybe half an hour…
Yes, thank you, that is it! Nice link. Stevia was a hot promise in dieting some five years ago, but I have not heard much from it since then. Neither positive nor negative.
Lurking at my bottle of Stevea-extract was a nice substitute for nibbling candy, though. If it was more widely available, I’d buy it more often.
As of tonight, I have successfully put off eating the last chocolate poptart for over two weeks using this method.
I find that drinking the water distracts me long enough (between actually drinking it and having pee breaks every 10 minutes) that I forget about the poptart fantasies.
