For most of us, dessert is that ultimate treat we allow ourselves to indulge in when we deserve a little something special. For others, dessert is part of breakfast, lunch and dinner — the only part. After all, grab-and-go desserts or “healthy” treats like fro-yo seem like an excellent alternative to a calorie-filled meal. Fast? Check. Tasty? Check. Quick energy? Check. But what happens when you’re a little too sweet with sweets, and you’ve replaced all your meals with dessert? Enter the phenomenon of “dessertorexia.”
What is “dessertorexia”?
Sometimes, having a “healthy” dessert seems like a good alternative to eating a large meal. For fewer calories, we feel full, and fast. Plus, a lot of us figure that if we eat a small amount of sweets instead of a big lunch on a daily basis, we might even lose weight.
However, some girls take “just desserts” to the extreme. They consume hundreds or even a thousand calories of dessert every day, but eat practically nothing else. Katie, a collegiette™ at Loyola University, had a friend in high school who adhered to a sweets-only diet. An aspiring culinary school student, “she would always bake tons of cookies, brownies, or other baked goods and eat nothing but that,” Katie says. “She would have a cookie or two for lunch, and maybe some candy later on in the day.” If there were no baked goods around, Katie’s friend simply wouldn’t eat.
Katie’s friend did this because she thought she could indulge in a sugary diet without gaining weight as long as she kept her overall calorie intake low. She worked out excessively and despite her dessert-rich eating habits, was extremely thin. Her behavior reflects the trend of “dessertorexia”—young women eating a low-calorie, nutrient-poor diet of nothing but sweets.
Although Katie’s friend might have appeared fit, girls like her have a high risk of developing nutritional deficiencies or eating disorders. Eating nothing but desserts is “clearly an indication that someone isn’t paying attention to the quality of their calories or overall health,” says Jackie Keller, certified wellness coach and founder of Nutrifit.
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“Sweets are a common trigger food, especially for people with eating disorders,” says Keller. A trigger food is a specific food that causes someone to overeat or lose control of dietary behavior. Emotional eaters often turn to dessert as a comfort food, and end up eating more than they planned; just ask any girl who has drowned her break-up sorrows in a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. Keller explains that eating sweets set up cravings for more sweets, which is why many bulimic girls tend to binge on dessert.
“You can’t assume that eating desserts is an indication of anorexia or bulimia,” Keller says, but she explains that eating excessive amounts of any single type of food can be a warning sign of an eating disorder. Regardless of your health status, replacing meals with dessert is dangerous—even if you limit your calories and actually lose weight.
Do calories matter?
Sure, a mini pack of Oreo thins has fewer calories than a turkey sandwich, fruit cup, and flavored water combined — but when you’re trying to stay healthy or even trying to lose weight, calories aren’t the only factor. “When you eat dessert in place of a meal, you may come out ‘even’ in terms of calories but you’re probably coming out behind in terms of nutrition,” says Monica Reinagel, a licensed nutritionist and the author of Nutrition Diva’s Secrets for a Healthy Diet: What to Eat, What to Avoid, and What to Stop Worrying About.
While calories do matter, not all calories are alike. No matter how few calories a meal-replacing dessert contains, “you’re going to be missing out on fiber, protein, vitamins and minerals that you would get from a more balanced meal,” Reinagel says. “Do that on a regular basis and you could be coming up short in terms of meeting your nutritional needs.” This is how girls who constantly munch on high-calorie sweets, but nothing else, end up with serious medical problems. Instead, the majority of your daily calorie intake should consist of nutrient-rich foods, like fruits and vegetables.
Desserts, more often than not, have little nutritional value, so they are referred to as “empty calories.” Dr. Sarah Short explains that empty calories are made up purely of sugar (simple carbs), rather than vitamins or other nutrients. Short advises collegiettes™ to limit their daily consumption of not-so-nutrient-dense foods to 250 calories a day. If you have a bowl of fro-yo for lunch you’ll definitely exceed this limit.
Particularly for women with eating disorders, eating nothing but dessert is particularly harmful. For anorexic or undernourished women who are trying to get their health back on track, empty calorie-filled “desserts don’t help improve one’s nutritional status, as foods should,” Keller says. A girl who has become underweight might panic and eat lots of sweets to gain the weight back quickly, but the empty calories will leave her body far below healthy status.
Likewise, when bulimic girls binge on desserts, the empty calories raise their blood sugar levels, triggering a surge of the hormone insulin in the body, and later, a crash when insulin levels drop. “Without any fiber or protein to balance out sweets with no nutritional value, an instability in insulin occurs, and may contribute to the onset of diabetes,” says Keller.
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How Desserts Can Make You Gain Weight
Even if you keep your overall calorie count low while replacing meals with dessert, you might still gain weight, Short says. A long-term diet of insufficient calories literally causes your body to starve. Although you might lose a significant amount of weight when you first switch to a dessert-only diet, over time the body adjusts to the change and you stop dropping pounds. Skipping meals causes the metabolism to decrease, so that fat takes longer to burn off and might build up in excess, increasing your weight.
In addition, because most desserts don’t contain much fiber, “they don’t have the satiety factor that other foods do,” Keller says. “So you can still be hungry, even if you’ve consumed a lot of calories.” Replace a meal with dessert now, and you might end up craving that meal—or even more dessert!—a short while later. This leaves you with more calories, sugar and fat than you originally intended. Further, if you continue overeating without exercising more on a daily basis, you’re bound to see a higher number next time you step on the scale.
According to Keller, consuming excess sweets also leads to chemical changes in the body, which releases hormones to fight the out-of-control insulin levels. These hormonal changes may affect the metabolism in a negative way, helping contribute to weight gain.
Healthy Alternatives
No matter how frequently or rarely you do it, skipping meals is never ideal. No snack, whether sweet or savory, can replace the nutritional content of a full, balanced meal, which is necessary to keep your mind and body in good condition. A healthy lunch or dinner involves plenty of protein, fiber, and nutrients. “Always try to eat 3-4 servings of protein (low fat dairy or lean meats) a day,” says Keller. Also aim for “whole grains with every meal, at least 3-5 servings of fruits and 6-10 servings of vegetables everyday.” Every hard-working collegiette™ needs a lot of nutrititious food to keep her body at its best.
As busy collegiettes™, though, we don’t always have the luxury of getting in the kitchen to make a wholesome meal or even sitting down for lunch. Sometimes, all we have time for is a quick bite to eat — but when snacking, it’s important to snack healthy, and not all the time.
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For a sweet on-the-go fix, you can’t go wrong with fresh fruit. “Fruit satisfies the sweet side of brain, but keeps you full,” Short says. How do 100 calories of fruit stack up versus 100 calories of frozen yogurt? “Fro-yo leaves you hungry sooner because it contains no fiber or protein.”
Turbo-charge your fruit by adding yogurt and nuts to make a parfait. Keller says that fruit parfaits can be a great option when life leaves you too busy to have a sit-down meal. She recommends making or buying a parfait with low-fat or non-fat yogurt, and topping it with fresh fruit and nuts, like walnuts and almonds. “This will offer protein, fiber, antioxidants and healthy fats,” she says. Also, “be wary of parfaits with excess added sugars, often found in fruit gels or jellies” that are sometimes used in place of fresh fruit in parfaits.
Parfait not parfait for you? For your next on-the-go snack, try a combo of two or three options listed below:
- For protein: Nuts, hummus, turkey jerky, tuna, all natural reduced fat peanut butter, or hard-boiled eggs
- For fiber and vitamins: Raw vegetables such as carrots, peppers, or cucumbers
- For good carbs: Dried or fresh fruit, whole-grain crackers, granola, regular yogurt, string cheese, or cottage cheese
Now that you know the real deal with sweets, take the time to take care of your body — and go ahead, order dessert with that sandwich for lunch, so long as you’re not just eating the treat!
Sources
Jackie Keller, certified wellness coach
Katie, student at Loyola University
Monica Reinagel, licensed nutritionist and author of Nutrition Diva’s Secrets for a Healthy Diet: What to Eat, What to Avoid, and What to Stop Worrying About.
Sarah Short, Professor of Nutrition Science at Syracuse University