- Comfort Food Diet
Dessert Guidelines

Desserts are an important part of eating well and eating healthy. The key to making dessert part of your healthy diet is that you should consider desserts as a special part of your life. They are not something that should be eaten every day.

If you are using eatTHISdiet to lose weight, then dessert should be considered a serving that you substitute for another portion maybe once a week. Since desserts are special, I've designated them as a gold star:

Bearing in mind that 1 breakfast serving (a blue circle) is equivalent to 1 lunch serving (one yellow triangle or one-half a dinner serving (one red square), then:

1 gold star	=	1 blue circle	=	1 yellow triangle	=	1/2 red square
	=		=		=

If you are using eatTHISdiet as a guide to eating healthy, include a yellow star once each week in place of another serving (using the equivalents above). It doesn’t matter when you eat this but, again, my belief is that it should be special (that’s why desserts are “treats”).

When I am working on dessert recipe my goal is for them to be 200 calories or less. I try to minimize the simple sugars wherever possible.

There are a lot of great, ready to eat desserts that you can have that are well under 200 calories and are right off the shelf. Here’s some ideas:

• Healthy Choice No Sugar Added Ice Cream
• Turkey Hill No Sugar Added Ice Cream
• Edy’s Light No Sugar Added Ice Cream
• Breyer’s No Sugar Added Ice Cream
• Häagen Dazs Fat Free Sorbets
• Jello Pudding Cups
• Häagen Dazs Chocolate Sorbet Bar
• Fudgesicle No Sugar Added Frozen Bar
• Häagen-Dazs Raspberry & Vanilla Frozen Yogurt Bars
• Nabisco 100 Calorie Packs Chips Ahoy Thin Crisps
• Nabisco 100 Calorie Packs Planters Peanut Butter Cookie Crisps

For those with less will power, it’s also helpful to purchase desserts that come in individual packs or go out for a dessert--to the frozen yogurt store, for instance. Eat your single dessert, make sure it’s one that you love and enjoy it!