Getting hooked on fruit

[sandraW]

I have never been a fruit eater in my entire life but I want to get hooked on it because I think that it may help me with my sweet tooth. For example, on Friday, with my lunch, I actually ate half a cup of peaches. Then later in the day I did not really crave any sweets. Do you think the two go hand in hand?

[Soldier]

Originally Posted by sandraW

I have never been a fruit eater in my entire life but I want to get hooked on it because I think that it may help me with my sweet tooth. For example, on Friday, with my lunch, I actually ate half a cup of peaches. Then later in the day I did not really crave any sweets. Do you think the two go hand in hand?

Fruit is actually a pretty generic term when you're talking nutrition. Were those peaches canned, in syrup? If so you just ate a ton of sugar, just like a soda or candy. That's why you need to get in the habit of reading nutrition labels. Yes, it's tedious at first, but after a while you'll have a good idea of what's good and what's bad. You'll be empowered by your knowledge to make better decisions.

When I was still obese, I had 2 ways to deal with cravings for sweets. One was diet soda, and the other was grapes. The only real downside to the soda is if you believe the negative hype about artifical sweeteners. Personally, I think they are overblown and still use diet soda as something sweet when I just want to put something in my mouth. Grapes are one of the more sugar heavy fruits, BUT it's natural sugars, still preferable to the sugar syrup that comes with most canned or prepackaged fruit.

The less sugar in a fruit, the better it is for your goals. Bananas are great for cramps and soreness, blueberries are packed with lots of great things, and strawberries and apples are packed with fiber. These are all preferable to more sugar heavy fruits like grapes, rasberries and pineapples, but the sugar heavy fruits are still MUCH better than prepackaged fruits.

A good rule of thumb is that if you buy it as an actual fruit, you're basically good to go.

FIBER IS YOUR FRIEND. Fiber is a type of carbohydrate that your body can't digest. That's why it cleans out your digestive system, which is great, but it also FILLS YOU UP. Quite frankly, the more fiber you can get, the better. Most fruits and veggies are fibrous carbohydrates. These are far and away the best type of carbohydrates for someone whose primary goal is fat loss. I've been known to eat 3+ apples a day when my goal is fat loss. It takes time to eat them, which satisfies your need to nibble, and they are packed with fiber while only being 30-50 cals each.

[sandraW]

Thanks Soldier you are really helping me. Yes the peaches were from a can, but there was not a heavy syrup on them. It looked like water to juice. I will be sure to start filling up on the good fruits as well. Today I did have an apple

[jdmalm123]

Fruit is better than candy!

Some fruits are better than others.

You can train your sweet tooth to respond to things that don't seem sweet right now.

Also, your own experience with the peaches tells you something....repeat the experiment and then trust your intuition.

Xenophanes (c. 570–c.478 BCE) was a self-taught poet and philosopher... A story relates how a fellow philosopher once said to Xenophanes that he was unable to find a wise person. Xenophanes replied, “That’s very likely, since it takes a wise person to discover a wise person.”

First, he holds that our concepts of things are often relative to the perceiver; he writes, “If god had not made brown honey, people would think that figs are far sweeter than they do think of about them.” This may be the first written account of a philosophical position of relativism, namely, the view that the truth of some important claims depends on the views of some individual or social group. Xenophanes’ example of the sweetness of figs focuses specifically on the information that we receive through our senses. Figs indeed taste sweet to us, but the level of sweetness that we assign to figs depends on whether we’ve ever had honey, which is much sweeter.

The point being...as you journey down this road, your perception, motivation and discipline will vastly change as you cross into new territory.

[Soldier]

That's really true. My wife grew up drinking regular soda. When we first lived together she hated diet soda, but after a while she liked it just fine. Your perception changes as your diet changes, as long as you stick to it for a little while. I find medium wings VERY hot. They are basically the hottest thing I eat, while others find them very tame, if there's even any heat at all. I just never ate hot things. I also grew up drinking diet caffiene free sodas. My mom has a bad reaction to caffeine, and my dad has insomnia, so we never had it around the house. After years of caffiene free diet pepsi, most diet sodas taste amazing, and regular sodas taste like sugar syrup. Gross.