It can take a while to get addictive and emotional reasons for eating under control. One thing that helps me, however, is that a ketogenic diet has restored my hormonal signaling for hunger and satiety, so I now know the difference between needing food and wanting food as a pacifier.
Mark, Kyle, and Daisy have all brought up good points. I would say to bear them in mind, and if you really need a keto treat, then try one of those recipes. Just do it warily. Most of these recipes are only relatively low-carb, so you don’t want to binge on them, any more than you’d want to binge on real cake. Better to have some double-cream yoghurt with a few berries in it as a treat.
There are a number of savory keto replacements. I find I really enjoy pizza made with a Fathead crust (a recipe promoted by the producer of the movie Fathead), but most of the “bread” recipes taste to me like ways of ruining perfectly good eggs. The sweet replacements tend to be more successful, but then we run into the issue Mark and Kyle brought up.
My sister and I have tried making a few keto desserts for special occasions. I wasn’t wild about the keto pumpkin pie, though I do like the two cheesecake recipes we found. The problem with a keto sweet is that it’s either (a) disappointing, about which enough said; or (b) delicious, in which case it can waken sleeping cravings best let alone. (There is a reason that recovering alcoholics avoid non-alcoholic beer and wine, after all!)
The cheesecakes I’ve made fall into the second category for me, so I can really only make them for special occasions (church events, holiday gatherings), when most of the cheesecake will be eaten by other people. Granted, bingeing on sugar-free cheesecake is better than bingeing on real cheesecake, but nevertheless . . . .
There is one biochemical issue that also needs to be mentioned, which is that a lot of people on these forums report that one or another of the non-sugar sweeteners can cause their insulin to spike—thus interfering with the whole point of a ketogenic diet, which is about keeping insulin levels as low as possible for as much of the time as possible. This is completely anecdotal evidence, but it’s been reported by enough people that it is a concern. The response appears to be completely individual too, so that a sweetener that others swear by can cause you problems, and vice versa. Since there is no home test for insulin, this can be a subtle problem to diagnose. (It has to be inferred indirectly from the pattern of glucose readings after ingesting the sugar substitute.)
Okay, now that you know the potential issues, do what works best for you. As Dr. Phinney has said on more than one occasion, artificial sweeteners aren’t ideal, but if you need them to help you stay on a ketogenic diet, that’s better than going back to the standard high-carb diet. But now you can make an informed choice.
