You can eat desserts while on a diet without it negatively impacting your weight so long as the desserts are made with healthy ingredients. To lose belly fat, develop an awesome physique, and get toned, you need to know what foods to eat and how to prepare them.
Building your nutrition plan around something that doesn’t feel sustainable will only lead to failure. This is why you should eat desserts while on a diet so that you don’t overindulge from yearning for it.
While some foods do have more calories, fat, or carbs, how you prepare these foods is what makes all the difference. Fat isn’t bad, and neither are carbs. And restricting yourself to super-low calories is not healthy.
Why You Can Eat Desserts While On A Diet
If you have a serious sweet tooth and are trying to lose weight, skipping sweets altogether could backfire. If you eat desserts while on a diet, it may actually help you stay on track – here’s why:
(1) You’re Less Likely To Binge
If you allow yourself to enjoy dessert as part of your weight loss journey, you’ll be less likely to binge or fall of the wagon. How many times have you eaten a piece of cake right before starting a diet and said to yourself “this is the last bite of dessert I’m ever having” only to cheat or binge on ice cream three days later?
Deeming certain foods as off-limits and depriving ourselves of their enjoyment only increases our chances of bingeing on them later. This is called the restrict-binge cycle. In other words, bingeing can actually be a symptom of overly restricting yourself.
(2) You’ll Feel Less Deprived
It’s incredibly difficult to maintain an all-or-nothing mentality 24/7. If you attempt this approach by banishing all “bad” foods and trying to sustain yourself on only “good” foods, it’s likely you’ll end up feeling deprived.
Deprivation is not fun, and the feeling can make it even more difficult to stay away from the things you enjoy. Worse yet, totally depriving yourself of dessert may increase your cravings.
How To Fit Sweets and Treats Into A Balanced Diet
When you want more than a special treat that has a few hundred calories, earn it by being more physically active. Here are four ways you can fit sweets and treats into a balanced diet.
1. Go Natural For Dessert
Rely on Mother Nature, and use fruit as the base for desserts. Fruits are naturally sweet and abundant this time of year, super nutrition, and everyone loves them. Serve fruit cut up with a dollop of dairy topping. Or use fruit to top angel food cake, low-fat pudding, or ice cream. Fruit lets you increase the portion size and nutritional goodness of desserts. There is nothing wrong with an occasional calorie-dense piece of cake, a cookie, or candy. But these are so easy to overeat and the small portion is not nearly as satisfying.
2. Buy Single Serve Portions Of Cookies and Ice Cream
Certain treats such as cookies and ice cream are so tempting that we can’t just eat a small portion. For this reason, buy single serve sweets and treats so the portion is controlled for you. Other ways to limit portions are to buy pint size containers, and serve ice cream in a cone.
3. Keep Tempting Treats Out Of The House
Certain treats are downright taunting and just too difficult to stay away from. Therefore, don’t keep any treats in the house that challenge you. Instead, go out for these treats, or only bringing them in for special occasions.
4. Limit The Variety of Sweets
Variety may be the spice of life, but when it comes to controlling calories, less is more. The greater the variety of food, the more you want to eat, studies show. So limit what you bring into the house to reduce temptation. Restrict your treats to one type of cookie, candy, or ice cream.
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