Sweet Tooth Solutions: How to Eat Healthy and Satisfy the Cravings for Sweets

Sweet tooth? Want something sweet without compromising your waistline? Guess what? I have some great ideas for some yummy, delicious snacks that will satisfy your sweet tooth.

Sodas
Are you a sucker for sodas? Do you love to have that carbonated, sparkly, cold beverage chock full of sugar- whether it is real or artificial? Any way you look at it, sodas are just not healthy. The regular sodas have enough sugar in them to equal the amount of sugar that you should have in 2 to 3 days- not for just one beverage.

If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself that you’re doing good because you drink diet sodas, then you are sadly mistaken. Aspartame, the sweetener used in diet sodas and in many other beverages, has been linked to cancer in studies. It is definitely not worth it to sacrifice your health in order to lose weight.

Are you ready to find out what the solution is? It is simple. You can make your own healthy soda and it is quite easy. You can buy flavored Stevia (a natural sweetener without any calories) drops and put them into plain water or sparkling water (if you want the sparkle). Then you have your very own healthy soda. If you want to read more about sweeteners, go to this article called Sugary Sweeteners: Artificial Sweeteners vs Real Sugar.

If you’d like to know where you can buy these flavored drops, you can get them at Whole Foods. If you prefer to shop online, you can find them on Amazon (sometimes a good bit cheaper). I buy the kind made by Sweet Leaf. They have all kinds of flavors such as: Lemon Drop (like Sprite), Vanilla Creme (like Cream Soda), Root Beer, Chocolate Raspberry, English Toffee, Chocolate, Valencia Orange, Grape, Peppermint, Hazelnut, Cinnamon, and Apricot Nectar. In fact, you can even combine some of the flavors to make a Dr. Pepper-like soda. They recently added a Cola flavor that my husband has fallen in love with.

Juice
Juice has just as much sugar in it as most sodas and other unhealthy sugary drinks. Unfortunately, most people feel healthy by drinking juice. Countless parents think that they are aiding the health of their children by giving them juice to drink.

The only way that juice is healthy is if it includes all of the fiber of the fruit. You can easily make a healthy homemade juice by sticking the fruit in a blender and mixing it up. Or, you can just eat the fruit whole. But, buying fruit juice that has none of the actual fruit flesh in it makes it just sugar and is not healthy to drink. Unfortunately, the juice industry markets to parents, making them think that giving their kids juice is going to make their child healthy.

Yummy treats
Are you a brownie-lover? I definitely am and I do splurge on a brownie every now and then. The problem with making brownies is that you have a whole pan of brownies. Of course, you could put some in baggies and freeze them. But who does that?

If you’d like to have a brownie but want to also get some nutrition with that chocolatey sweetness, then you would love this recipe for a protein bar. Click here to check out the recipe for the healthy brownie.

Conclusion
There are healthy ways to fulfill a sweet tooth without sacrificing your health. When you take in too much sugar, your body converts it to fat. Many times people think that they are eating healthy if they’re eating a low-fat diet. It’s much more complicated than that.

A great first step is to cut out all the sodas and the juice and eat only foods that are natural. It is okay to splurge every now and then, but you may just find that your guilty pleasure is a protein bar that tastes like a brownie, and the upside is that it is actually healthy for you!

Wishing good health and wellness to all my readers!
~ fitmom