While some diets allow treats, others seem to require you to give up certain things like sugar and white flour products for just about the rest of your life.
Which type of diet is best?
To know the answer to this, you just need to look honestly at your own past eating history.
If you are a person who seems to be addicted to something like sugar, so that just having a little will set you off on a binge that lasts for days or weeks, then you will often be recommended to cut that item out of your diet completely.
However, a lot of people find that it is possible to have treats at certain times or in certain circumstances, without it completely wrecking their diet.
The problem with refined sugar, for example, is that it converts just about instantly to blood sugar. This gives us a huge rush followed by a crash later when we feel tired and feel that we need more sugar.
Refined flour products like pasta, white rice and white bread have almost the same effect. This is why people become addicted to these foods.
However, if you eat these foods in their naturally occurring form, they come with fiber that slows down the conversion to blood sugar. So eating whole fresh fruit does not have the same effect as eating candy or even fruit juice.
That's also why we are advised to eat whole wheat bread or pasta and brown rice on most diets, in place of their white varieties.
Taking this one step further, you may find that you can eat candy without having it trigger a binge if you make it part of a meal. That way it is absorbed along with a lot of other foods that will stop it giving the same rush.
The problem is if we were eating the candy to get the rush, rather than just for the taste. Then having it along with other foods will not satisfy that wish for a sugar rush.
So it is very important to learn how to manage your treats when following a weight loss program.
