If you're on a low carb diet, you can easily be overwhelmed with all the low carb candies, chocolates and sodas that are available. Why should you avoid consuming these things daily?

Healthy Eating
One BIG reason people get heavy is that they eat unhealthy foods. They eat a lot of things with no nutrient values. So their body is starving for the nutrients it needs and instead you fill your stomach with in essence good tasting cardboard. Your body gets nothing good out of the things you eat, so it demands that you eat more in the hopes that maybe SOMETHING you eat will have vitamins or minerals in it. And you get heavy.

You only have one body. And this same body is going to be what you are "stuck in" as you get older. Either you take good care of it, or it is going to collapse and you will be pretty miserable being stuck in it! So when you are eating foods, you should be thinking to yourself, "Is this bringing value to my life?" Why would you eat candy bars and chocolates when you could be eating things that are GOOD for you like cheese, celery, devilled eggs, raspberries and more? If you get full on fake chocolate, now you aren't hungry and therefore won't eat the healthy things that your body still needs.

There are so many GOOD things that are healthy and nutrient-rich, that it's a great shame to waste that "stomach space" on in essence "good tasting plastic".

Calories and Carbs
Sure, those candies and chocolates say they are low on carbs. But just about all of them are high in calories. As much as you are carb counting, calories aren't "invisible"!! They are indeed units of energy. And if you eat 80,000 calories in a day by gorging on low carb candy bars, you will GAIN WEIGHT. Yes, your body is in low carb mode. Yes, it is burning along at a great rate! But you can STILL overload it if you eat poorly. And once you overload it, those extra calories go right to your hips and thighs, as they've always done.

Sugar Alcohols and Laxitive Effects
A lot of the sweeteners out there that are sugar-free have nifty side effects. They're fine to eat in small doses, but if you start eating too many you get things like laxitive effects happening. Sure, you can get side effects from eating too many cucumbers or broccoli servings or other foods too! But at least with cucumbers and broccoli and such you get a lot of nutrients as your trade-off. With chocolate bars all you are getting are calories.

Weaning Off your Sweet Tooth
Most people in developed nations grow up with a HUGE and very unnatural sweet tooth. If you go back in history people did NOT gorge on sugar like we do nowadays!! They thought of fresh oranges and apples as treats. Nowadays most kids think it's a chore to eat fruit and opt for super-sugary Hi-C, soda, candy and chocolate instead. The result is literally that we train our tongues to only appreciate super sweet things. And since those things make us fat, we turn into blimps.

When you begin to live more healthily it is CRITICAL you also wean yourself off that sweet tooth. First, the things you eat that are sweet are generally not full of vitamins and minerals. So the less of the sweet things you choose to eat, the better. Next, let's say you train yourself to *want* a bar or two of chocolate a day. And then let's say for some reason you can't get your hands on a sugar free bar for some reason. Now you're either going to give in and eat those sugary bars "because I have to have one" or you're going to be grouchy that you "miss your sweet treat".

Why should you crave sweets at all? There are SO many delicious foods out there that are not sweet - or things like raspberries and blueberries and blackberries that are fruity but not sugar-filled. The only thing your sweet tooth can do is 1) encourage you to crave foods that are low in nutrients and 2) encourage you to cheat when you can't get your hands on those fake sugar-free versions.

Your Body and Sugary Things
I know of many people whose bodies literally react to the sweet taste of sugar-free foods in the SAME way they react to sugar-laden foods. Sure, there IS no sugar in the sugar free varieties. But for whatever reason, their tongue says "sweet!" and their body says "begin preparing for sugar!" So if they eat sweet foods, their weight loss stalls. If they cut out those sugar-free candies and chocolates, they begin losing weight again. Do you really want to risk your weight loss or maintenance plan to eat an artificially brown, artificially sweet rectangle of artificial substance?

Soda vs Water
You know that it's critical to get 8 glasses of water into you each day. This is NOT SODA. Soda is a liquid, but so is bleach. Your body does not process soda as well as it processes water. The various substances in the soda interfere with your body's functioning and tax its filtering systems. Also, Cola causes soft bones and osteoporosis. So it's not even that those chemicals in your soda are "mildly annoying things to be filtered". Many of them are actively bad.

Occasional Treats - but Not Daily
In the end, you only have 24 hours in each day. You only have a certain amount of food that you're going to ingest in those 24 hours based on your hunger levels. You NEED 8 glasses of water each day. You NEED your vitamins, minerals, fibers and essential oils from fresh, healthy foods. If you actually tried to meet all your daily requirements every day, there'd hardly be any room left for junk food. So in essence if you are filling yourself with junk food daily, you are therefore leaving out servings of foods critical to your body being healthy.

Sure, it's fine to have a treat occasionally, just as it's OK to spend a day sitting on the couch doing nothing occasionally. But if you make this into a daily habit, it is going to have a cumulative effect on your health which will affect you both in the time you are living now as well as in the years ahead. And since you can't get a new body, you are the one who will truly have to live with the results of your actions.


Lisa Shea's Library of Low Carb Books