Sugar, sweeteners and cake eating

I celebrated my 60th birthday a couple of weeks ago (yes, amazing I know ??) and it got me thinking about the celebratory events in our lives and how to stay on track with eating well when temptation, treat mentality and cultural pressure abounds. To eat cake or not? That is the question!

The only cake I ate over my birthday period was baked by me, so I could make it less sweet and lower carb. And be sure to have something I like! Read on for my views on indulgent ‘treats’, artificial sweeteners in place of sugar, a couple of low carb cake/dessert recipes and a few top tips to help you navigate celebratory occasions without going completely off the rails.

A sweet treat is not really a treat

Sugar in nature is a quick source of energy, not always naturally available, that helps us store fat for times of food scarcity. For most of humanity our brains have worried about not getting enough to eat and now we struggle to deal with the overload and constant supply of sugar in our modern world.?

We are in blackberry season at the moment (I love blackberries!) and in a few weeks they will be gone from the hedgerows but not from the shops, where we can buy them and most other fruits all year round. As much as we can possibly want. Every day if we desire. This sweet overload is not a natural human diet and too much fruit and sweet foods can be a big contributory factor in chronic health and weight issues, damaging us metabolically.

We need to be wary of the constant availability of sweet foods and retrain our minds to not consider them a treat, weaning ourselves off sweet flavours. The profile of our tastebuds do actually change as we reduce the amount of sugar in our diet, leading to us finding that the same foods taste sweeter and we need less to give us that sweet pleasure hit.

It takes just 10 days without sugar to see substantial metabolic benefits and this is a critical stage for those wanting to lose excess weight.

What about artificial sweeteners – can’t I just switch to these?

Artificial sweeteners are not the answer! The clue being in the word artificial – aspartame, dextrose, saccharin, sucralose etc. are all chemicals manufactured to tickle our sweet taste buds but offer no nutritional benefits. Consuming them can actually mean our penchant for sweet tastes continues and we struggle to wean ourselves away from sugar.

Artificially sweetened beverages are promoted as a suitable alternative to sugary drinks and supposed to help with weight loss but the evidence is not there that they actually achieve this. You may be interested to learn that drinks industry funded academic studies of foods and drinks are 20 times more likely to find a favourable outcome for the sponsor than independent ones! There is much bias and agendas at play here, with a lot of money at stake. But turning to artificial sweeteners is actually not helping our health. Whilst occasional ‘diet’ drinks are unlikely to do much long term damage, they won’t make you slimmer or help reduce your sweet tooth.

Blood sugar levels can also still be affected by artificial sweeteners, as they confuse the brain causing a metabolic response and they can negatively affect the gut microbiome.?

I found this jar of Canderel in my cupboard recently, bought when I first went low carb 12 years ago, and it is now 9 years past it’s sell by date and it has a 3 year shelf life! This shows how little I have used it and based on what I know now, I think desserts with a tiny bit of table sugar are probably a better way to transition away from sweet desserts than adding chemicals our body doesn’t know what to do with.

What about natural sugars from plants?

Sugar alcohols, which have appeared in recent years, are less sweet than artificial sweeteners but we don’t absorb them very well and they can cause digestive problems, mess with our gut microbes and keep us hooked on that sweet taste.

Their names generally end in –ol so mannitol, morbitol, mylitol, malitol etc. Erythritol is generally considered the best of a bad bunch as it causes less gastric distress. Stevia is the other alternative which comes from a South American plant and tastes 300 times sweeter than sugar. But ponder the Coke Life story before you dive in - launched as a natural diet version it was discontinued due to complaints about the taste as it stimulates both sweet and bitter receptors at the same time, so did not sell well.

Some of my clients find that using sweeteners can help with transitioning to a lower sugar way of eating, but over time you should use them very sparingly and eventually avoid all together. Just because they are natural doesn’t mean they are good for us!

To reduce sweet cravings you need to retrain your taste buds by avoiding sweet tastes and eating the right diet. It gets easier over time, I promise.

Low carb baking and desserts

For birthdays and other celebratory occasions do consider making your own lower sugar, lower carb versions of cakes and desserts. There are plenty of recipes out there – just Google ‘lower carb’ or ‘keto’ versions of your favourites and experiment – you may surprise yourself. And your friends and family!

I tend to use actual sugar in dessert recipes rather than artificial sweeteners but always halve (at least!) the amount and choose desserts to make that are not very sweet anyway.? Think creamy (tiramisu or ice cream), nutty (ground almond based cakes), fruity (low carb blackberry crumble) or dark chocolatey (low carb chocolate cake) adding flavourings such as coffee, sea salt or nuts to ring the changes and add interest.

The low carb crumble and chocolate cake recipes show in the photo are both on my website watchyourwaist/recipes where you will find more food ideas and inspiration.

Breaking the habit of something sweet after a meal

Sweet foods are very pleasurable and giving in to temptation is understandable. Don’t beat yourself up when you do indulge but think about strategies you can adopt to change your habits if you have a persistent issue. We need to come up with alternatives to help us resist the immediate pleasure gain over the long term pleasure of being healthier and feeling better about ourselves. Helping clients come up with these alternatives is something I do regularly in my coaching sessions.

Making conscious choices until you become unconsciously competent – saying ‘no’ automatically – is something that can happen in just a few weeks. I now refuse desserts, biscuits, cakes etc. on auto pilot as a knee jerk response when anyone asks me.

If eating something sweet after every/most meals is your habit, think about how you can break that association. What are you going to do instead? That could become your new routine. What pleasure can you get from this? So for me it is having a coffee after my meal, to signal the end of eating and for the enjoyment of a nice coffee….

Consider also leaving the table, going for a walk, brushing your teeth, playing a musical instrument or a favourite song. Do whatever you will enjoy that will help break the association and make you feel good.

Tips for celebrations and sweet occasions

That’s it from me as a new 60 something, who has never been healthier, more active or more energetic. I hope you have found this article useful and it helps you make better choices, more often, in those challenging social situations.

If you want personalised coaching to reduce your sugar intake to help with weight loss or for health benefits then I offer a 1 hour habit change session for ￡45 to discuss your situation and how you might go about making sustainable change. Message me for more details or book directly at a time that suits by following this link to my calendar: wyw-habit-change-session

Eat well, stay well and look after yourself.

Caroline

I am a Nutrition and Health Coach, working with clients to help them lose weight and improve their health through real food, low carbohydrate eating and lifestyle change.

Contact me to arrange an initial chat if you want to improve your diet, struggle to sustain weight loss or are worried about diabetes or prediabetes to discuss how I could help you make sustainable changes to your diet that fit with your lifestyle, helping you improve your long term health. I can help you find your waist again.?