My sweet tooth has been the downfall of every diet I’ve ever been on. When I was doing the low-fat thing, or Weight Watchers, eating sweet was allowed as long as it was low-fat sweet and there were plenty of options there! LF chocolate pudding comes to mind (and who couldn’t eat about 4 of those little cups?), 100-calorie packs of cookies, Snackwell’s cookies, and even low-fat brownies. All of these were “allowed” foods on a low-fat plan but for me, they sent me on a death-spiral into Sugarville each and every time – so that all of my calories were spent on sugar and I would feel like crap. Crap with no energy, to be more specific. Crap in a sugar-coma!So now I’m on the low-carb road and am finding that I still crave sweet stuff. Having been on every side of low-carb in the 7 months that I’ve been on this plan, I now find myself unsure of which way to go. For a while I did Paleo (October, 2010) where there was no dairy, and the sweetest thing I got to eat was sweet potato & peppers. And that’s not sweet enough, in my book! I have eaten Atkin’s bars, artificially sweetened cheese-cake-like desserts, sweetened vanilla ricotta, and Breyer’s Low-Carb ice cream and bars. I start every morning with a diet Coke and sometimes add some heavy cream into a diet root beer for dessert. I eat Chocoperfection bars daily, and when I don’t have those, I search out very low-carb, very dark chocolate.
What I struggle with is the question of purity. Is it better to be low-carb at all costs, artificial sweeteners & all – or is it better to avoid sweets at all costs, stick to “real” food? And is the diet Coke helping or hurting? I went off it for 7 days and then went back. That stuff is like a drug to me. Sugar is like a drug to me.
I’ll continue to ponder this question for a while, I’m sure. Stay tuned.
Time for a root beer “float”.
