harley
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I have a real sweet tooth myself and found substituting pastry, ice cream and the like with all kinds of fruit, figs, raisins mixed with non- salt wide range of nuts, sunflower seeds helped me to cut back 90%. I know fruit & figs have sugar but in its natural form it seems to be much better.and less caloric.
Really, it's not. I wish it was, because I'd kill to be able to eat dates and figs and bananas and even apples and .... But sugar is sugar for the most part. You probably get more vitamins and minerals from a few figs than a bagel, but carb-wise it's not a big difference. If you are able to cut 90% of your carbs that way, great! But make sure you really are, because I suspect you'll be unpleasantly surprised.
Personally I've found that nuts (particularly salted) and cheese helps to curb the cravings, and things like my favorite spinach artichoke dip from Costco with carrots or broccoli do too. But mostly that's filling up, not satisfying the sweet tooth. The only real cure for that has been time and stepping away from the carbs. After a while the sweet tooth goes away. But during that time you need to just apply willpower. I don't have much, but luckily was able to summon enough to make it through the withdrawal period. It's not that big a deal. And you're talking to a guy that used to drive to the local 7-11 at 1 AM to pick up a pint of Ben and Jerry's (usually Chunky Monkey).