As sweet as sugar....600 times over!

Nothing tastes better to me than my morning coffee with a little bit of milk and my favorite sweetener: Splenda. Yes I know, as a nutrition geek you would think I wouldn't go near the stuff but I won't lie to you, I love it. I started using it years ago in my coffee and even as new sweeteners have appeared claiming to be more "natural" and better for you, I still clung to my little yellow packets of gold.

Recently, I started using two packets in my coffee because one just wasn't enough anymore. I needed more sweetness. Things started to get a little out of hand when I started having INTENSE sweet cravings that no reasonable sweet treat could live up to. These cravings were so bad that they would often result in me baking a whole batch of cookies just to satisfy this manic craving. Something was up and I was tired of losing my evenings to the inevitable hunt for sickly sweet foods. There could only be one culprit: Splenda.

Some little known things about alternative sweeteners: some are lower or even no calorie, but they all lead to the perception that you are eating sugar or something sweet. That's the whole idea right? Well that's great for your waistline and blood sugar, but not so great on your brain. You perceive taste with your brain so every time you add a packet of Splenda to your coffee, you're sending sweet signals to your brain that are 600 times sweeter than regular sugar. 600 TIMES!

No wonder I was having sweet cravings that couldn't be touched! My brain was telling me that I needed something 600 times sweeter than my sweet treat for the night. It was time to cut back and ween myself off of the little yellow packet. I started cutting down to one packet in my morning coffee and avoiding foods that read "sucralose" on the ingredients label to prevent accidentally ruining my plan. I'll tell you, I feel a lot better and I'm starting to respond better to naturally sweet foods like fruit again. I tried stevia as another step-down process to help my poor addicted brain, but both SF and I made faces at the aftertaste (which I had never noticed before in my 2 Splenda packet taste coma).

So I guess the only thing to do is to ween myself off of the Splenda little by little until it's all gone. As much as I love being able to have my super sweet coffee and not have any caloric impact from sugar, it's just not natural and it was driving me to actually eat MORE sugar through my cravings. I'd rather get used to the taste of unsweetened coffee and be able to control what kind of sweet foods I eat instead of feeling powerless to my cravings.

Take a second to think about your sweetener usage. Is it possible to cut back a little? If it is, give it a try and see how much more in control you can be of your food choices. In the mean time, check out some info from Mayo Clinic about sweeteners so you can better decide what works for you!
Artificial Sweeteners and Other Sugar Substitutes