Too sweet or not to sweet

I've been thinking about this for a while - Whether or not eating sweet foods increases the cravings for sweet foods.

YES IT DOES! - SO how to combat those cravings. Just don't eat the sweet foods? - I don't think it is as easy as that.

Here's how it started. Last time I joined ww to loose weight, I chose to try and combat my hunger by using very low kilojoule/fat/sugar yoghurts etc - this in an effort to increase my calcium intake as well, but it wasn't only restricted to yoghurt, I purchased and ate all sorts of items with manufactured sweeteners included.

I began to loose weight quite well, but by week 3 I was suffering the hugest cravings for anything sweet, chocolate, lollies, biscuits etc. So I turned to using diet labelled snacks. It didn't help, the cravings got worse. I struggled along till I'd lost about 8 kilograms and then gave up.

Soon after this experience I wondered if there was any relationship between the cravings and the use of sweet foods and foods with fake sweeteners.

My opinion is that YES - eating the sweet things whether they contained real (natural sugar), or manufactured sweeteners definitely increases the cravings for sweet things - WHY do I think this.

At the end of January 2009 I went back to ww to loose weight and consciously chose not to use sweeteners of any kind and to drastically reduce my use of sugar (like on cereal), biscuits, jellies, etc.

Now I am getting the fastest and most amazing results I've ever experienced with weight loss. So far I have now lost over 12kg, have had very few "bad" days and even less cravings, mostly I am only hungrey when it is appropriate to be hungry, and when I am hungry I turn to not so sweet snacks like - rice biscuits with vegemite, vegetable sticks (carrot, cucumber, capsicum etc).

I know my head space is in the right place at the moment, but it sure helps if you are not suffering from cravings - in particular cravings for sweet things.