12 Healthy Ways To Satisfy Your Sweet Tooth

One of the biggest challenges of maintaining a healthy lifestyle is managing a unweildy sweet tooth.

You don’t have to give up your love for sweet foods in order to eat well. A healthy, balanced diet includes the entire spectrum of flavors that nature so abundantly offers: sweet, salty, savory, sour. Food is supposed to taste unique and delicious. It’s just up to us to enjoy these flavors in natural, healthy ways – not out of the overly processed, artificially flavored box.

Here are a few of my favorites:

– Peanut butter-stuffed dates. All you need is a dime-size drop of peanut butter, a pitted date and “voila!” nature’s candy bar. I have to be careful with these because they are ridiculously good!

– Peanut butter and banana “soft serve”

– Frozen yogurt bites. These will be my go-to over the summer. So perfect for hot days.

– Dark chocolate with sea salt. Some days ONLY chocolate will do. A little dark chocolate is good for the heart and good for the soul.

I also tossed the question out to all of you on Facebook & Twitter and you all had great ideas! Here are your suggestions…

@PilatesJuliet: Extra sugar-free apple pie gum!

@DonnaQueza: I’ve been making homemade smoothies! The natural sugar is making me drop the Girl Scout cookies!

@yogalina: a healthier hot cocoa: unsweetened almond milk, raw cocao, stevia & cinnamon. #healthy

@dianemulholland: I just discovered Nakd bars, best thing after a run. They’re like Lara bars as far as I can tell.

@AudraMcElyea: Nutz Over Chocolate Luna bars!

Kahlee: blueberries & carrot juice.

Sunny: These vegan rice krispie treats courtesy of Alicia Silverstone. So gooey and delicious – but I’ve found without the white sugar they’re not addicting. Perfect for me!

Laura from LB’s Good Spoon: Apple and peanut butter does the trick! Satisfies my hunger too!

Do you have a favorite healthy treat that didn’t make the list? Post it in the comments!