Satisfying Your Sweet Tooth While Avoiding Sugar

So we're doing this 21-Day Eat Clean Challenge, and it's got me thinking about things I do to keep my healthy diet on track. I have been on-and-off the Cleaning Eating wagon for years, though each year I feel like it gets easier and easier and I do better and better. I found the hardest thing for me was getting rid of sugar. I have SUCH a sweet tooth, but the older I get, the more I feel really awful when I eat it. That, along with the all the stuff I've read about the negative effects of sugar, made me finally kick my sugar habit for good this past January.

Around the holidays, I had been eating lots of sweets, because they were THERE. I began to realize that for me, sugar was like a drug... the more I ate, the more I craved. I could see that I was in a vicious cycle of craving sugar, eating sugar, feeling awful but still craving sugar, eating sugar, and on and on. I decided to quite cold turkey in January.

The first few weeks were hard. But soon, the cravings started to disappear. I do still sometimes crave a little something sweet, but now I can be satisfied with having just a little bit of something naturally sweetened. The few times I have had something with refined sugar, I definitely felt it.

Here is a list of my favorite treats for when I need a something sweet:

Banana "Ice Cream" (on it's own, or with the topping)


Energy Snacks
Fresh Fruit
These cookies
Frozen fruit pops (Just puree some fruit and freeze in popsicle molds)
One square of dark chocolate (Yes, I know this has some sugar in it, but only a tiny amount)

Even though these things are "healthy" it's still a good idea to keep portion control in mind. Some of these things are quite calorie-dense, so if you eat an entire batch, you will pack on the pounds.

Banana "Ice Cream"

What are your favorite naturally-sweet treats?

Energy Snacks

Healthy Cookies