I LOVE Sweets. Does That Make Me a Keto FRAUD?

#21

I can relate so much… But I usually use a quarter of the original amount at most… Except when it’s 2 cups as I simply don’t use more than 40g erythritol in any dessert (I probably make the dessert smaller too, it helps with this attitude). A small cake should be fine with that much :smiley: 40g is a lot! (Fine, maybe the filling may contain a tad more sweetness, not necessarily from sweeteners. And we always can add chocolate. I have sweetened chocolate too for that purpose.)
But when I went keto, I already had a very changed sweetness perception merely due to cutting out added sugar way before (I still trained myself a bit… I did keto on a budget and eating lots of sweetener sounded weird anyway). All my family members who cut out sugar had the same, no matter carb intake and natural sugar intake (and the training only I did :frowning: ), I don’t know what is the logic in that… The nice change stopped pretty early but after several years, I tried carnivore and it gave me a boost. Almost everything is sweet to me now. (It can be annoying as tons of things are way too sweet now. Like plain tea. But it’s good for sweets. Animal sugars are definitely sweet. I started to prefer sugars. It’s not like I need much and I eat a little lactose anyway, sweets or not…)

Never? It’s pretty common here, I think kids had it for good sleep or something too…? I met this practice many things, I read about it in cookbooks (I don’t know about other countries, our ancient cookbooks have super simple recipes too. And I love ancient books)… I had milk with honey as a kid myself too. A Hungarian youtuber always mentions it when he gets upset… So it’s a comfort drink. Warm milk with honey. Kids probably got/get it when having a sore throat too… Honey never did anything to my sore throat, it was merely delicious. But I can understand the comforting effect.

Oh my, who does THAT? :smiley:
(I surely had my own crazy things… It was merely surprising, never ever heard about such a thing. And doesn’t seem appealing to me at all. I put vinegar and/or sour cream into most soups… It worked and it’s very decent, Mom added sugar too and it was the proper recipe, not a personal abomination.)

#22

Does the monk fruit sweetener affect the nutritional ketosis?

(Mother of Puppies ) #23

Artificial sweeteners still raise insulin.

When I cheat, I use real sugar. Baking keto desserts tended to extend the cheat for me. And now artificial sweeteners taste bad to me.

(Bob M) #24

This is the one I got, which I found at a local store:

Note that in the past, I’ve also used “regular” BBQ sauce, because I find them so strong that I don’t use much. But this one is good, too. There are a bunch of others:

(Bob M) #25

Thanks, all, about the milk+honey info. That makes sense. My kids will probably apply apple cider vinegar to everything, since that’s what my wife tends to do. :wink:

I go back and forth between real sugar and fake. Before covid hit, I could find small (as in really small) cheesecakes that were only about 20 grams of carbs. Add some chocolate chips, and you’re up to maybe 30 grams. Too much for a normal day, but not bad if you do hard work on the house all day, and decide to have a treat, or it’s your birthday. They’ve been unavailable since covid, though. So, we’ve been making sous vide cheesecakes with fake sugar when we want them.

For things like ketchup and BBQ sauce, I tend to go with the low carb varieties. The ketchup, when I make cocktail sauce for shrimp, has to make a lower carb cocktail sauce than store-bought. And I tend to eat a lot of cocktail sauce when eating shrimp.

(Jack Bennett) #26

Some keto practitioners seem to make the sweetener thing into almost a moral issue or a status competition: it is morally righteous to adapt your taste away from enjoying sweetness, and suspicious to take pleasure in sweetness. “My taste buds are so sensitive that the cabbage I ate last night tasted like I was eating candy alongside my steak!”

It’s probably a natural psychological side effect of a diet that eliminates almost all sugar (for good reasons). The mental process is likely something like: fructose is bad; fructose is sweet; therefore, anything sweet is also bad. And also: glucose is sort-of-bad; glucose is sort-of-sweet; therefore, anything sort-of-sweet is sort-of-bad.

I think a better question is - “is it useful?” Does allowing non-sugar sweeteners in your food help you adhere to the WoE? Or is it better when you remove all sweeteners? Or is it case-by-case?

Variables that might be relevant to this question of sustainability include:

  • subjective experience of fullness/satiety
  • presence/absence of cravings and response of cravings to artificially sweet tastes
  • blood insulin levels (hard to measure over time)
  • blood glucose levels (complex but possible to measure over time)
  • weight gain/loss
  • other feelings and observations like
    • energy level
    • digestion
    • happiness/sadness and other mental states
    • perception of sustainability (“I hate this and can’t wait for a cheat day” versus “I could eat this way forever”)
#27

this is key. you only have it this much IN A year LOL so I get this cause I eat some 88% chocolate like 4-5 times per year also so what this is…well is nothing ya know LOL

I was all in with some choc. til Cheryl started a zc challenge thread to clean up and go all in and I dropped my chocolate and believe me, that is when my weight loss came again so?? Tied in there? not sure but we are all human and will do a tad of whatever, but full on carnivores would never do it more than a few times a year like us :sunny: cause in truth we can’t if we follow zc menu guidelines and believe in the concepts of why we do this plan and how our bodies work with foods etc… Just natural to be carnivore and put the other crap way way low on the richter scale :slight_smile:

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #28

The terms “natural” and “artificial” are ambiguous at best. Arsenic and cyanide both occur in nature, after all, so not everything “natural” is good for us. (And even such beneficial substances as water and oxygen can damage the body when taken in too great a quantity.) And many people on these forums use supplements that are synthesised in a factory and so “artificial,” and nevertheless find them helpful.

The situation is complicated when it comes to sweeteners. The term “artificial sweeteners” serves the sugar industry well, but most non-sugar sweeteners occur in nature. This includes aspartame (first discovered in asparagus, hence the name), stevia, monkfruit, erythritol, and several others of the sugar alcohols. And so forth. And even refined sugar takes a fair amount of processing to get out of the canes or the beets.

I believe that the term used by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is “non-nutritive sweeteners,” but even that doesn’t apply in all cases, since sugar alcohols have some caloric value, and it could be argued that sugar, despite its calories is “non-nutritive.”

The one thing guaranteed is that a non-sugar sweetener sold in the U.S. will not raise your serum glucose, because the FDA requires proof that it will not, before allowing it on the market. The FDA cares nothing for what these sweeteners do to your serum insulin, however, so manufacturers don’t test for it. This means that, while there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that certain sweeteners may raise certain people’s serum insulin (and to suggest that none of them raises everyone’s insulin), there has never been any systematic research done on this matter.

(Bob M) #29

My problem with some (many?) artificial sweeteners is what they do to me. The sugar alcohols, for instance, are evil. Too much maltitol = get some reading materials for the bathroom.

I’ve also experienced negative effects that I believe I can trace to certain artificial sweeteners. In that context, it becomes an issue: take the carb hit with real sugars or use artificial sweeteners?

Also, I avoided sweetness for years, mainly because I STILL – after 7 years low carb/keto – can overeat sweet things. For me, things that cause me to eat more than I normally would are things I try to avoid eating.

That’s why I buy one tiny sugar-laden cheesecake (and only one) and eat it: I have no more to eat.

(Tracy) #30

I grew up on hot milk and honey. It was a cure-all for illness, insomnia, or just for comfort. I’d love to find some sugar free honey to add to my hot almond milk.

(Tracy) #31

I’ve learned that my mental health is as as important as my physical health. If one suffers, they both suffer. Since June 2019 I haven’t deviated from my keto lifestyle a single time. The worst I’ve done is maybe eat 2 pieces of low-carb pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving instead of one. My goal weight was achieved a long time ago and hasn’t gone up. The only time I feel like I’m suffering is if I try to deny myself a small treat with my coffee every day. I use stevia or monkfruit, erthyritol in small amounts and I feel like those are safe to eat. So I’ve concluded I’m going to keep enjoying my coffee and crumpet. It’s funny how I am so critical of the small amount of keto treats I eat when compared to the dump truck of sugar I used eat daily and never batted an eye at.

(Tracy) #32

I’m going to consider some of these. I don’t eat BBQ sauce often enough for it to be a problem for me. The few times I do need some is when I make ribs or pork butt. I usually just go without any sauce because I get exhausted from making everything from my own sandwich bread to my mayo. I’m ready to take some help from the store. Thanks for the recommendations.

(Vic) #33

Love that K :+1:

After about 2 years avoiding sweets I have developed a dislike for sweet. I genuinely started to find sweet things discusting after 3 years.
It may be psychosomatic?
Cravings are still a thing, I think that is just being human. So, I give in and eat a bag of beef jerkey or cheese or raw meat. If the craving is towards sweet, greek yogurts taste incredibly sweet.
Paying the price afterwards with heartburn , overeating is overeating.

After reading this tread and learning new stuff. S hould we not stay away from all sweetners? They are just addictive slow poison.

#34

I think also this is 2 fold in that ‘off sugar’ we desire no sugar obvy, but then as humans we crave thru whatever in life as most normal people will LOL but in that final end before we eat it, we think…sugar omg so bad and we refrain…well that is what stops me. I think with big time on a plan we flip our thoughts in truth of what ingested crap will do to us, hey takes a while to get here tho LOL

#35

I very nearly always make my own sweets but my approach is the same. I never mastered the skill not to eat up all the sweets/cake I have… Sometimes it happens but I can’t count on it.

Maltitol is evil, I am fine with erythritol and xylitol. Any amount is fine using them (at least I can’t possibly eat too much) while 10g maltitol is noticeably problematic (and about as sweet to me as 2g erythritol. completely worthless or a bit worse).

I think many of us can eat sweets after we gets satiated… It may be even helpful but of course, often the opposite. Still, not carby sweets are better than carby ones. I could eat a ton using the latter. Added fat just made matters worse.

They are definitely not according to my body :slight_smile: Of course, it matters which sweetener, it’s individual to some extent and amounts matter A LOT. A little sweetener (including sugars) may very well worth it to me, it gives me joy and I don’t sacrifice anything, good deal in my books. As long as I don’t overdo it or I am not a slave of my desire, I don’t overeat etc., I see no problem. It’s cool if one doesn’t mind not having sweets anymore but some of us like them very much now and then.