Welcome to the last week of our Upgrade your Essentials Challenge! So far we’ve touched on your main proteins, strategic side dish selection, revisited cooking oils & sauces, and talked about smarter snacking. We’re going to cap off this campaign the same way you’d cap off an epic meal - with dessert!

(Jump straight to the bottom of this email 👇 if you just want to know what treats we’re putting on sale this week, or stay with us for a few tips for when it’s time to indulge.) 

Look, let’s not pretend you don’t eat dessert. We humans are hard-wired to love things that taste sweet - evolutionarily, that usually meant we’d found a food that contained a lot of calories we could consume and store for energy...unfortunately in the form of body fat!

But - with a few simple guidelines, you can make more informed decisions around treats & desserts, and minimize the damage when it’s time to satisfy that sweet tooth.

• Knock out that craving with lighter desserts on non-special occasions. If you’re in the habit of having a treat after your everyday meals, try to train yourself to satisfy that craving with a lighter indulgence like a piece of fruit, a bit of dark chocolate, some grass-fed Greek yogurt with a bit of grain-free granola, or a popsicle and then move on. Try to save your heavier treats for special occasions or a weekly indulgence.
  
  

  
  “Our dark chocolate, made with Thai cacao by our friends from Siamaya Chocolate in Chiang Mai.
  We sweeten only with grass-fed milk - as close to a guilt-free indulgence as you can get!”
   

• Upgrade your ingredients! The same rules apply to desserts as the rest of your meal - just eat real food. Less ingredients is usually better, and prioritize whole, unprocessed foods.
  
  Darker chocolate (with higher % cacao) has less sugar mixed in, baked goods with almond or alternative flours allow you to skip the gluten in conventional (wheat) flour, and raw unprocessed honey is just as sweet as cane sugar but comes with some antioxidants. 🍯
  
  If you develop your taste for nature’s natural sweeteners, like honey, cacao, fruits, maple syrup, etc., you’ll find the next time you pick up a processed-food dessert with lots of added cane sugars (or worse, high fructose corn syrup!), it will taste unpleasantly too sweet!
  
  

  
  Baked goods are one of life’s pleasures - swap out the gluten and cane sugar for alternative flours and
  natural sweeteners to upgrade them! PS - not a stock photo - this is our gluten-free banana bread.
   

• Go for a walk. Studies show that taking a 15 minute walk after a meal is an effective way to manage your blood sugar (mitigating huge spikes) and kick start your metabolism to put all those new calories to work...rather than storing them as fat. This is a great way to minimize the damage after an especially indulgent dessert - walk it off! 🚶🏻‍♀️🚶🏻‍♀️🚶🏻‍♀️
   

Don’t stress about it! If you’ve got good habits most of the time, you’re doing great already. It’s 2021, and Ben and Jerry’s exists. It’s great. We recommend tucking into your favorite desserts - real food or not - once in a while. The dose makes the poison. Just make mindful decisions 😇

We hope the last five weeks have given you some fresh ideas around the foods that we eat in our everyday routines - if you ever want to revisit these ideas, check out the deep-dive posts from this Challenge that are on our Blog!

And stay tuned for lots more fun challenges and new products coming in the next few months 😎

With our best wishes,

The team at Paleo Robbie