No Sweeteners?

fructose
sweeteners
sweet
sucrose
craving

#1

Is there anyone here who has successfully stuck to sweetener-free keto for any reasonable length of time?
Last time I followed keto, I made A LOT of desserts using mainly Torani flavored syrups, stevia, and erithyritol.
This time, I am considering not using sweeteners of any kind because it seems that once I break that seal, I crave them all the time. Plus, I am thinking of really simplifying my diet so that I can get everything I need from this one farm that sells pretty much everything I need except sweeteners. I’m tired of making multiple shopping trips.
So far I have had no sweeteners and am not craving them – anything sweet actually sounds terrible right now, which is a super odd thing for me to say. I’ve even been looking up LC dessert recipes for the past couple of days and have been disinterested at best with my stomach turning at worst. But it is only day 4.
I’m a previous sugar addict, so I don’t know how realistic this is, but I thought I’d pose the question to see if anyone has done this successfully.


(KCKO, KCFO) #2

I’ve done it for a week at a time. Just for the control of snacking primarily. My idea of desserts is mainly berries & nuts with cream or cheese with some port. I do make chocolate fat bombs, which I have stopped adding stevia to without noticing a big difference.

Good luck with finding what works for you. I am pretty lucky, I haven’t been a sugar addict in my adult life. I am a salty, crunchy type person. So getting rid of the little amounts of sugar I used to use is not a hard ship for me. Veggies and berries provide all the sweetness I need. I like chocolate because cacao powder is anything but sweet.


#3

Thank you!
Yes, I used to eat LOTS of fat bombs last time as well – mainly the cheesecake-flavored ones. Not sure what’s different this time. Maybe it’s that when I started last time, I was still having my daily coffee with Splenda so I never really got off the stuff. I now only drink my coffee unsweetened and have been drinking it that way for years, so I haven’t had anything super sweet-tasting so far. Who knows?
I am also finding vegetables to be sweeter now, which surprises me since I just began. When I was deep into keto last time, onions and peppers tasted like straight up candy but green veggies still tasted like veggies. I had a salad this afternoon and the lettuce tasted a tiny bit sweet to me. The same goes for my super dry red wine, which is also starting to taste sweet to my dismay.


(Liz ) #4

I do Keto totally sweetener free! As you are finding, other things start to taste sweeter, it’s kind of amazing. After I lived without sweeteners for awhile I lost my taste for them.


#5

Thank you so much for commenting!
How long have you been sweetener-free?


(Liz ) #6

I started keto in March of this year, before that I was Paleo & using honey/maple syrup. I had given up artificial sweeteners a few years ago so when I went keto I just didn’t start using them again.


(Bacon for the Win) #7

I don’t use sweeteners, haven’t in a few years now. Having a sweet taste in my food just makes me crave more sweets, doesn’t matter what the sweetener is. I don’t really do desserts or fat bombs any more either. I have one fatbomb recipe that I depend on and I just don’t add the sweetener.


#8

Please share your fat bomb recipe!


(Bacon for the Win) #9

it’s actually @Brenda’s. Let me see if I can find it here. I keep a printed copy on my fridge.

edit: I dont’t know how to share a link from my ipad. the recipe is Peanut Butter Banana filled Chocolate Keto Candies. It’s in the recipe section of the forum.


(8 year Ketogenic Veteran) #10

(Steve Stephenson) #11

Lewis Cantley, PhD, Director of the new Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medical College and New York-Presbyterian Hospital, agrees in https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-7007-12-8:

The problem with [artificial sweeteners] is that a disconnect ultimately develops between the amount of sweetness the brain tastes and how much glucose ends up coming to the brain.

So the brain figures you have to eat more and more and more sweetness in order to get any calories out of it. The consequence of people eating lots of sweeteners, no matter what they are - whether they’re natural or unnatural - is that it increases the addiction for the sweetness. As a consequence, at the end of the day, your brain says, ‘OK, at some point I need some glucose here’. And then you eat an entire cake, because nobody can hold out in the end. The only way really to prevent this problem - to break the addiction - is to go completely cold turkey and go off all sweeteners - artificial as well as fructose. Eventually the brain resets itself and you don’t crave it as much.


(Norma Laming) #12

I think it depends what you use them for. Sometimes after food that is a bit over salty, like bacon, I like erythritol in a tea or coffee. I don’t make desserts so I don’t use erythritol any other way. Several time a week I have a 35g chocolate bar sweetened with xylitol. Neither cause any problems or cravings


#13

No sweeteners ever.


(Brian) #14

No real problems with the artificial sweeteners here. Most of what I use is a few drops of liquid stevia in my coffee of a morning. I will use some erythritol when I make things like keto cookies or a sweet treat such as that. But often, I don’t find those all that sweet. (I still wonder whether some of the sugar alcohols bake off in the oven but there just isn’t a lot on the internet to say one way or the other.)

About the only thing that’s ever been an issue was when I made a keto cheesecake and ate too much of it in one day. I did end up with a headache but I think I ate too much too fast. I’ve not had that since. I’ve not noticed any real difference in weight loss between times of using artificial sweeteners and not using them.

I’m sure they affect different people differently and I’m sure some people are way more sensitive.

Something I wondered about is whether your body becomes accustomed to your normal routine, whether it’s like my stevia in the coffee or something similar, and adapts it’s response accordingly. Since I almost never eat real sugar, has my body figured out that when it tastes “sweet”, it’s most likely to be stevia or maybe erythritol?


(Brigitte) #15

I used to be able to have xylitol ( stevia taste like medicin to me) but now it gives me stomach ache and more… I have also tried Sukrin but that makes me sick too - is there any sweeteners that are safe to use? I know going cold turkey is the best but I am not there yet…