How Can You Live Life Without Sweet Tastes?

On an LCHF diet, you basically dismiss everything that has a sweet taste, as it contains sugar or fructose and moreover, you cannot have artificial sweeteners, because they have laxative effects and other issues.

How can we expect people to live their lives without any sweet-tasting foods at all? Is this really the best solution? I understand that sugar is bad, that it can be addictive, etc., but at the same time, we evolved to like sugar, so have humans evolved in the wrong direction? To disease and death? I also understand that in nature, sugar is rare and not available in all seasons, and that in our civilization we have plenty of sugar available, but is the solution to sentence humans to a life without sweet-tasting foods?

I have commenced LCHF many times over the past 5 years or so, but I keep falling back into old habits. So I am trying again. But instead of losing I am gaining. I bought a ketone meter the other day. My first reading taken in the middle of the day was 0.9. The next day I measured after taking a 1-hour spin class (curiosity) and I was at 1.3.

This morning I took a reading as soon as I woke up before eating. I’m at 0.7. So I can see that I need to work on getting my carbs lower still, to get to optimal ketosis, however I am in mild nutritional ketosis. I would have thought that even if I weren’t losing at this level, I would certainly not be gaining.

I do have a sluggish thyroid – Hashimoto’s, but I feel pretty good and I do feel ‘lighter’ since starting LCHF (again!) – I just don’t understand why I am in fact heavier.

Could you please offer some explanation as to why this might be happening to me and what I can do about it. I’d like to persist, but my weight gain is really worrying me.

My name is Amy. I have been tracking my foods for a while, just to see what my ratios of fat, protein and carbs are. I am also tracking fiber. I want to stay in ketosis for as long as possible because the weight loss results have been pretty good so far.

My question is twofold. First, when calculating the number of carbs ingested, does fiber play into the equation as it did under Atkins (ex. at 30 g of carbs, 10 g of which are fiber – do I count that as 30 g or 20 g of carbs?).

Second, daily recommended intake of fiber is about 25 g per day for a woman of my age. I am not getting anywhere near that, even with copious amounts of fibrous veggies. Does it matter? If so, how can I amp up my fiber? I am worried about things like cancers of the colon from not getting enough fiber. Thanks.