Tips for Kicking the Sweet Tea Habit FOR GOOD!

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Blueberry Tea from Adagio Teas

I have battled an obsession with sweet tea for my entire life. The funny thing is, I don’t actually have that big of a sweet tooth.  I love desserts as much as the next person, but I don’t HAVE to have them and never crave sweet things. My cravings are always for things like fried catfish, mashed potatoes, bacon, pizza… things like that.

Yet.. when it comes to tea, sweet tea has been as big a part of my life as cats, baseball, and old movies.

Over the years I have tried and failed miserably to switch from sweet tea to unsweet tea. Doing so saves calories (which can then go toward the foods mentioned above!) and cuts out sugar which has been proven to be worse for us in more ways than just our waistline.

I’ve made “Drink Unsweetened Tea” a New Year’s Resolution countless times – literally countless, I wouldn’t even know where to begin counting. And, obviously, since I keep making the resolution, it has never stuck. A while back, I thought I had found the answer – I believe I even blogged about it here or on my self help blog. I thought I had the game won, but (unfortunately) I was still in the game – and woefully behind.

I did, however, realize where I made my mistake – and, this time around, it has helped me to beat the obsession for good. How do I know it’s “for good” this time? A few reasons:

1. Because I have hit the “magic turning point” where I actually prefer unsweet tea to sweet tea. I never thought I’d get here, but I made it!
2. Because, even when it’s just me (without another soul to witness it), I choose unsweet each and every time. Why? It’s simply better to me, now.

If you have an addiction or obsession with sweet tea, please keep reading, I know you can get there too. TRUST ME, if I can do it, anyone can. It had a complete and total hold on me for over 20 years.

The tips for giving up sweet tea that worked for me are below – including the last one, which is where I slipped up before. Pay careful attention to this one!

Tips For Giving Up Sweet Tea

1. Adding frozen fruit to your tea is a fun and tasty way to make it more interesting to you.
2. Experimenting with different flavors of tea – in addition to black and green – is an exciting way to experience great flavors. When you combine flavored tea combinations with black tea AND frozen fruit – you open up a whole wide and wonderful world of tea flavors! My personal favorite is raspberry flavored tea and peach flavored tea, combined with black tea – with frozen peaches added to each glass. I also love orange and blueberry teas a great, great deal.  Simply brew your chosen combinations together and you’re set. Just do not add sugar! The fruity flavors keep your taste buds and your brain entertained and you don’t even miss the sugar. You can find flavored teas in the supermarket, and there are glorious options online – from websites like Adagio. They have many, many flavors of tea and they are all excellent.
3. Why do I combine flavored tea with black tea? For the caffeine! I love the perk I get from caffeine and a lot of flavored tea or herbal teas are caffeine free.
4. I’ve found that brewing your tea a little stronger  than normal also helps. You taste more of the deliciousness from the tea leaves and this flavor is what will, one day, seal the deal for you. You will come to realize that the sugar has deadened a lot of that great tea flavor.
5. Okay, this one will sound a little like something a Disney cartoon would say BUT there’s a lot of truth to it. Watch your words. That’s the tip. When we keep telling ourselves we are missing “sweet tea” and are drinking “unsweet tea,” the wording, alone, comes up short! I mean, if I were a glass of tea, I’d rather be named sweet than unsweet! With my flavored drinks, I’m able to say I’m drinking “Raspberry Peach Tea” or “Citrus Green Tea…” or any other concoction I’ve brewed at the time. However, when I’m simply enjoying fresh black tea or fresh green tea, I make a point of referring to them just like that… “fresh tea.” Sounds silly, I know. I admit it readily! However, I also readily admit that this has gone into the mix of things that finally “clicked” for me. When my husband and I are eating out at a favorite restaurant, I used to fill our drinks this way: Sweet tea for me, and Unsweet tea for him. Now I fill them up with Fresh tea for both of us.
6. This tip, and the one that follows are where I have messed up: Common sense tells you that “allowing yourself a cheat day” will be helpful. That wasn’t the case, at all, for me. Many times over the years, I told myself, “Okay, one day a week you can have sweet tea,” but all the cheat day did was make me want MORE. When your brain registers that you “get to have what’s best” one day a week, it isn’t long before it says, “Nah… I want the good stuff every day of the week!” All the cheat day does is reinforce what you are missing out on – and, until you hit that magical turn in the road (and realize that tea actually does taste better without sugar), having a cheat day is a sure-fire way to set yourself up for failure.
7. Finally, this is another “common sense” tip that proved disastrous for me: The approach many people make is to simply cut back on the sugar at first. They’ll add less sugar than normal, then after a while, add even less than that – weaning themselves off of it entirely. Did NOT work for me. It wasn’t long before I stopped  paying attention to how much I was or was not adding. For a while, in restaurants, I’d fill my cup up halfway with sweet and halfway with unsweet – but I was still masking the superior taste of unsweet tea and I was still feeding the sugar addiction. Common sense says that this approach is golden, but for most people it simply isn’t. It’s honestly best to simply walk away from sweet tea and never look back.

If you’re battling the sweet tea addiction, you have all of my sympathy – I know how hard of a habit it is to kick. But you also have all of my support and all of my confidence that you will make it. Again, if I did, anyone can!

Trust me… it won’t be long before you much, much, much prefer Fresh tea to Sweet tea.