Retraining your taste buds to appreciate less sugary, lower-fat sweets can work wonders for your waistline. Stock your shelves with these types of sweets to avoid derailing your diet, and leave less-healthy choices out of your shopping cart. Get creative with combinations, mixing healthy sweets together to make different desserts every night. Appeasing your sweet tooth with healthier choices can enhance your weight-loss efforts and become a key part of your sustainable lifelong eating plan.
Fruit
Naturally sweet, low in calories, high in dietary fiber and packed with essential vitamins and minerals, fruit takes center stage in the dieter's dessert arsenal. High-fiber fruit helps fill you up by taking longer to eat, giving your stomach more time to signal your brain that it's full. Fibrous foods also take longer to digest, making you feel fuller for longer. Most fruits are low in fat and contain 100 calories or fewer per serving.
Low-fat Dairy or Soy
Sweet dairy and soy products suitable for dieters include low-fat and nonfat yogurt, frozen yogurt, frozen dessert bars and cottage cheese. Read labels for serving sizes, calories and fat content to make sure you're not inadvertently over-consuming calories and fat from these foods. As noted by MayoClinic.com, some yogurts can be low in fat but still contain large amounts of sugar and, therefore, higher calorie counts than you might expect.
Whole Grains
Instead of eating high-fat, high-calorie baked goods packed with refined sugar, flour and health-damaging trans fats, reach for low-fat, low-calorie, whole-grain treats. Lightly sweetened whole-grain cereal with a splash of low-fat milk makes a healthy dieter's dessert, as does a low-fat, whole-grain muffin topped with a tablespoon of all-fruit jam. Replacing the refined grains in your diet with whole grains reduces your risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer, notes MayoClinic.com.
Dark Chocolate
If you want to include one high-fat, higher-calorie sweet in your diet plan, dark chocolate might be the best option. According to an article published in the June 2011 issue of "Antioxidants & Redox Signaling," research suggests that regular consumption of dark chocolate likely provides more health benefits than risks. Dark chocolate's high antioxidant activity accounts for this. Since it is high in fat and calories, enjoy dark chocolate in moderation to avoid sabotaging your diet.
Member Comments