S12E5: 3 Sweet Treats That Won't Wreck Your MS Diet
[00:00:00] It's 3:00 in the afternoon, your energy just fell off a cliff, and suddenly you're standing in the pantry looking for something sweet. You know sugar isn't great for you. You've known it for years, but knowing sugar isn't great for you never stopped one craving. Today we're talking about treats, why cravings show up, and how to enjoy something sweet without wrecking your health.

And before we get started, I wanna invite you to something special. Living with MS can feel overwhelming, but one habit can shift everything. That's what I'll show you inside my free webinar, How to Help Slow MS Progression Starting with Just One Habit. Think of it as your first step towards more energy, confidence, and hope.

Save your seat at alenebrennan.com/webinar. Welcome to my MS podcast, where women with MS learn how to slow progression and live a [00:01:00] life they love. I'm Alene Brennan, your MS sister, and a practitioner who knows the science and the reality of living this too. Each week I share simple, science-backed habits to boost your energy, stay consistent, and feel like yourself again.

Because MS may be a part of your story, but it doesn't get to write the ending. Welcome back, my friends. So if you listened to last week, you know we kicked off a little trick or treat series here on my MS podcast. Last week was the tricks. Energy, bathroom, and heat. And if you missed it, definitely go back and give it a listen because those three things come up over and over and over again here in our MS community.

But this week, I'm diving into the fun part of it. This week is treats. And look, I could give you a whole nutrition lesson right now on blood sugar levels and sugar and what [00:02:00] it does to the body, but I don't think you need one. I think you already know sugar isn't doing your health any favors. So I'll keep it real simple.

When you eat sugar, your blood sugar levels, they spike. You get a quick hit of energy, and then it crashes. And when it crashes, your energy crashes with it, and you're usually reaching for something else to bring it back up That's the rollercoaster we talked about last week. And when you're already living with MS fatigue, that's the last ride you wanna be on.

And then there's inflammation. Blood sugar that goes up and down all day keeps inflammation going. So again, for those of us with MS, that part is important to pay attention to because MS is a chronic inflammatory disease. So yeah, we know sugar wrecks your health from an energy standpoint and from an inflammation standpoint.

But we also keep it real [00:03:00] here. And I would love to tell you that knowing all of this about nutrition and the body means that I never get a sugar craving. But again, knowing sugar isn't great for you has never stopped a single craving for anybody, right? Like, ever. So here's the thing. Before we even get into the treats, I want you to look at the cravings a little differently because the craving itself isn't the problem.

It's more like a message. And one of the things that I've walked so many women through inside my Healing Habits program is figuring out what that message actually is, like decoding your cravings, because it's different for each of us. For some women, there's something missing in your diet. Like, maybe the meal didn't have enough protein or fat in it, so in an hour later, your body is asking for some quick fuel.

Or for other women, it's sleep. When you are not sleeping well, your body is tired, and a tired body [00:04:00] wants fast energy, and nothing is faster than sugar. So for these women, we actually work on sleep strategies, not sugar strategies. And then for other women, it's simply a habit, something you've trained over time.

'Cause let's be honest, at the end of the day, you're exhausted. The kids are finally in bed or you finally close your laptop. You're done with work. You sit down on the couch, and it's like, "Ah What comes next? Something sweet. Or maybe for you it's around 10:00 AM or that 3 o'clock window when your energy tanks and you reach for a donut or a muffin, or maybe you're not reaching for a donut at all.

Maybe it's something healthy like a sweet protein bar, like a Larabar. Whatever it is, you're in the spot where you're like, "I just need something sweet. I just need something sweet." And yes, that absolutely can be your blood sugar, but it also could be that your brain is just trained to want sugar at that [00:05:00] time of day.

That is actually a very real thing. Sometimes it's your blood sugar, and sometimes your brain just knows what time it is, and that's why it's so important in understanding why you're getting a craving. Because once you know the reason under the surface, that then guides you to how you can best address or resolve it.

So just hold onto that nugget for a second, because I'm gonna give you one small way to start figuring out your reason at the end of the episode. But first, I promised you treats, so let's dive into it, and let's start by saying we all know that fruit is an easy go-to when you're craving something sweet.

But it's Halloween We need something a little bit more than a bowl of berries, right? So treat number one, upgrade your candy. Like start scouting out some allergy-friendly candy brands. A couple I personally love and use here in our home, YumEarth for [00:06:00] like any gummy candies. Unreal is a great one for any chocolate candy alternatives.

And then Costco, they have great options too. A lot of like fruit bars, fruit strips. I actually have gotten, um, Unreal candy there a couple of times, so they do have like the brand name, but then they also have just good alternatives of more natural brands with better ingredients. So if you live by a Costco, definitely a good spot to check out.

Basically, if you have a favorite candy bar, something you know you look forward to every Halloween, see if this year you can find a better quality version of it and a more allergy-friendly version, like maybe you're choosing a dairy-free option, or maybe you're just getting one with less junk in it. And of course, I feel the need to say it is still candy, right?

So this is not me saying that that candy is healthy or that allergy-friendly candy will not impact your health [00:07:00] or your energy in any way. Of course it can. But my passion, and therefore so much of what I talk about on the podcast, on Instagram, in my Healing Habits program, are the real-life practical things that we can do to just make small incremental changes each and every day because, yes, they do add up and they do make a difference.

So maybe this year the upgrade is the ingredients. Fewer of things you don't want in your body. It's not a free pass to eat the whole bag. Pop some in the freezer if you feel like you need a little support with portion control. But just think of it as one step forward that you are taking today All right, treat number two, you might laugh at me for this one, but this is one that helped me tremendously when I was trying to reduce my sugar cravings, and I still eat to this day, years later.

Dates are the things that I used to wean [00:08:00] myself off of sugar because back in the day when I was changing my diet, yeah, I had strong sugar cravings, and what I learned at the time was that it was very much connected to my energy. My energy was low, and I was leaning on sugar to give me a boost, and what I quickly realized was it wasn't working because after the sugar wore off, my energy would tank deeper than before I ate the sugar.

So I was only digging a deeper hole every single day. So I started to switch over to dates. Now, I would lean a lot on, like, the gummy candies. I wasn't a big chocolate eater, and that's probably because chocolate triggered debilitating migraines for me early in elementary school. So I stopped eating chocolate when I was really young.

But I also just really enjoyed more of the gummy candies, the Skittles, the Twizzlers, the gummy bears, like, all of that stuff. That was my wheelhouse. So when I was trying to wean off of sugar, I felt like I needed something with that similar [00:09:00] experience, and I found that in dates. You can get the whole pitted dates or even the coconut rolled dates.

I really love them, and they were a great option because yeah, they're high in sugar, so they gave me that sweet satisfaction, but they also have some fiber in them, so you get the benefit of that, and that does help stabilize the blood sugar levels a little. And also, just the reality is it's not the processed sugar that you find in all the other candies, not to mention all of the artificial sweeteners and colors, too.

And also, you can do so much with dates. You can eat them whole. As I mentioned, you can roll them in, um, coconut, or you can even make your own energy bites. I know that's something that I have loved over the years. I share a lot of recipes and healing habits with it, and then so many of our, um, community members have come to develop their own recipes.

And then another form of, like, nature's candy fruit. But like I said, it doesn't have to be a boring bowl of berries, especially right now in the fall. Slice up [00:10:00] some apples and drizzle some of your favorite nut butter over top. Maybe drizzle a little bit of honey for that extra hit of sweetness, and then sprinkle some raisins, cinnamon, or some of your favorite nuts and seeds, and now you have, like, apple nachos.

Or you could blend some dates with coconut milk to make a date caramel and then spread that on top of some apples, sprinkle some cinnamon, again, those nuts and seeds on top. It's delicious. This was one of the recipes I included in the Healing Habits Recipe Pack this past week. So good. So yeah, it doesn't have to be a boring bowl of berries.

And then treat number three isn't really Halloween focused. It's not fall focused. It's birthday focused. My birthday was this past weekend, and I am a girl who has had a sweet tooth her whole life, and I love cake. I especially love celebrating my birthday with a little sweet treat. And sugar isn't completely off limits for me.

I do keep it low, but I definitely do not have [00:11:00] a sugar-free diet. I mean, sugar is in everything. It's in ketchup, barbecue sauce, salad dressing, all the things. So yes, I choose the highest quality and really try to limit it But on my birthday, I want a piece of cake. Well, a couple weeks ago, my daughter got in-invited to a birthday party, and they were serving cake pops.

And she has some allergies too, so what I always do is I make an allergy-friendly version of whatever is being served at a party so that she can have it. So when I got the text from the mom that they were having cake pops, I'm like, "Hmm, looks like I'm gonna be making some cake pops." And if you haven't made cake pops before, you basically bake a cake, and then, um, once it's cooled, you crumble it down and mix a little bit of icing in it and then form the balls, chill them, and then dip them in a coating on the outside.

But I discovered a fun and huge time-saving hack that helped me tremendously. We have a bakery close to our house that has a ton of allergy-friendly options, including [00:12:00] allergy-friendly donuts. There's no gluten, dairy, soy, nuts, or egg in them, and they're delicious. They are actually made to order, so you get them hot.

Ah. It's such a special treat. So in any event, last time we went, I got a box of donuts, and as I mentioned earlier, I put them in the freezer. So we have one the day that we go, and then I put the rest, um, individually wrapped in the freezer. So if we're, like, going to a fall festival and I know that they're gonna have some apple cider donuts, I will bring one with us so my daughter and I can enjoy an apple cider donut as everybody else is having one as well, but we are having ones that best support our body and our health.

In any event, I had some donuts in the freezer, so I just got one out. So I defrosted it, crumbled it up, put a small bit of allergy-friendly icing in there, rolled it up into... I got four balls, so four cake pops out of the one donut, and then I dipped them into some allergy-friendly melting wafers, put some sprinkles on them, and when I tell [00:13:00] you they were amazing, my friends, they were so good.

And I kid you not, I think my daughter made the other kids jealous at the party because she had the better cake pop. But here's why I'm sharing this. The cake pop wasn't me grabbing some sweet at 3:00 in the afternoon because my energy crashed. I was celebrating. One, I made sure that my daughter had a cake pop for the birthday party that she was going to, but I wanted one on my birthday as well.

That's the difference. Something like a cake pop is an intentional treat and not something that is just a habit that has slipped into a daily routine All right, so let's bring this back. Three treats. Upgrade your candy and have your portion without making it a habit. Reach for nature's candy, some dates or doctored up fruit.

And then celebrate on purpose, maybe with some cake pops. But here's one small step I want you to try this week, and it's not a swap. When the sugar craving [00:14:00] hits, just notice the time. Maybe you write down a note on your phone, whatever. Just keep it simple, and don't try to fix it yet. Because if it's hitting at the same time every single day, that tells you something.

And if it's after a bad night's sleep, that tells you something, too. You can't change the strategy until you know the reason. So I'm curious, what will you discover? And I'd love to hear from you. Send me a DM on Instagram and tell me what time your sugar craving hits, or tell me your favorite allergy-friendly candy, because I love to have that growing list for our community here.

And of course, everything that I talked about here today is linked over on the blog at alenebrennan.com/blog. All right, my friends, have a great day, and Happy Halloween. And that's it for today's episode of my MS podcast. I hope you're walking away with one small step you can put into practice today, because that [00:15:00] is how real change happens.

And remember, MS has its own biological clock, which means the sooner you start, the more power you have to influence your future. The best time to begin is now. That's why I created my free webinar, How to Help Slow MS Progression, starting with just one habit today. Grab your spot at alenebrennan.com/webinar.

See you there.