Sweet Tooth

The biggest problem that I've always had food wise is that I love sweet junk food: chocolate, sweets, cakes, biscuits, trifles...you think of a sweet food and I love it. So as you can imagine this was always going to be the biggest hurdle I had to get over in order to loose weight.

In December 2013 I had to mentally prepare myself for the absence of sugary food, it had to be a choice and it had to be something that I wanted to do otherwise I was bound to fail, it would be like trying to give up smoking but not really wanting to give up.

I had one minor hiccup in early January where I had one chocolate coated ginger biscuit, but fortunately I felt so bad about it that was the only lapse I have had. I now only have sweet food as a dessert when I'm out for a meal with my partner and we will always share it rather that have one each, but day to day my sweet food after dinner is fruit and low fat yoghurt and it's amazing how well it satisfies the sugar craving and it's also good for you.

The main fruits that I eat are:

• Banana: on average 105 calories.
• White seedless grapes 100g: 66 calories
• Strawberries 100g: 40 calories
• Cherries 100g: 115 calories (I'm never sure if this calorie count is with or without stones, so I weigh them with stones).
• Navel Oranges: on average 69 calories

Now it's always nice to have something with the fruit and I find low fat yoghurt is a good solution, while they do have sugar as long as you don't go over 100g the calories content isn't too bad:

• Yeo Valley Orange, Carrot and Mango 0% Fat: 100g = 74 calories /12.4 g of sugar
• Onken Fat Free Vanilla: 100g = 75 calories / 12.2g of sugar
• Rachel's Organic Low Fat Vanilla: 100g = 87 calories / 13.1g of sugar
• Rachel's Organic Low Fat Raspberry: 100g = 92 calories / 14.8g of sugar
• Total 0% Greek Fat Free: 100g = 86 calories / 6g of sugar
• Tesco Fat Free Greek Style Natural: 100g = 55 calories / 4.2g of sugar
• Sainsbury's Basics Low Fat: 100g = 62 calories / 7g of sugar

Also a lovely surprise was discovering that Hartleys produce ready made no added sugar jelly that tastes fabulous and has very few calories, depending on the flavour and size of the pot they have between 6 and 10 calories, they are fairly well hidden in the supermarkets as they are in the dried food section, not chilled, in my local Tesco they are with the cereal bars.

If like me you have a sweet tooth like any addiction you will need to break it first and for me cutting it out completely to start off with worked well and now I rarely think of sweet junk food and can be offered chocolate, sweets or cake and happily turn it down. How you do this will be down to your own mindset, but I literally had to keep telling myself "sugar is poison" and actually grit my teeth to get past the urge to indulge.

I wish you the best of luck if you decide to cut out sweet junk food as I found giving it up harder than giving up smoking, but like smoking when you finally manage to quit you will feel very proud of yourself and feel the benefits in no time at all.