Sweets will torpedo a diet if you let them. Don't fool yourself into thinking that the occasional treat won't add to your wasteline.

It shouldn't take reading an eat healthy blog to know that sweets are terrible for your diet. Everyone knows that! However, it's worth emphasizing just how awful they truly are.

Take PotBelly Sandwich Works for example. They are a somewhat up-and-coming sandwich place that's located in a few places throughout the country. Their nutritional information online is startling. Let's compare their Chicken Salad Sandwich (one of the most unhealthy sandwiches they have since it's made with mayonnaise) to one sugar cookie:

Sandwich - 480 calories

Cookie - 520 calories

Yes, that's right, at PotBelly's, one single sugar cookie has more calories than an entire sandwich, one of their more unhealthy sandwiches at that!

Another good example is the Cheesecake Factory. Yes, they have wonderfully delicious entrees and desserts, but it's simply horrible for you! One single piece of their cheesecake has between 900-1,500 calories! That's more than half the amount of calories most people need for an entire day!

Non-Fat Yogurt: Too Good to be True!

Places like TCBY and have exploited the health-conscious market with their "yogurt", which everyone knows is much healthier than ice cream, right? Well, technically that is true. However, that's not to say yogurt should be considered healthy! The "non-fat yogurt" at Coldstone Creamery has nearly 400 calories for a medium-sized serving. This contains much fewer calories than their ice cream, but is still very high in calories for what effectively amounts to an after-dinner snack. The crux of the problem with these "non-fat yogurts" and other desserts is the sugar! Foods rich in sugar are loaded with unhealthy carbohydrate calories that, if not burned off shortly upon consumption, are stored on the body as fat.

As a general rule of thumb in dieting, if it seems too good to be true, it almost always is. The correlation between tastiness and calories is very closely aligned.

Shakes = More Hip to Shake

Another favorite sweet that is deceivingly horrible for you are milkshakes. It seems somewhat intuitive to think that since you drink it, it probably can't be that high in calories. However, this is completely untrue. For example, a regular-sized Oreo McFlurry from McDonalds has 550 calories. That's more than their Big Mac! It gets much worse if you decide to go for the large-sized goodness. Their 32 oz. shakes all have over 1,000 calories! It's almost mind-blowing to think you could consume so much sipping through a straw for a few minutes.

Healthy Alternatives

In short, there is no truly healthy alternative to cheesecake, ice cream, and milkshakes. The tastiness of such items simply cannot be maintained when the calories are cut. But no one said eating healthy was easy. It takes sacrifices. Try substituting some of these things for the big slice of pie or cookies when your sweet tooth starts acting up again:

Apples, bananas, or other fresh fruit

Cup of yogurt (low in calories and very healthy for digestive system)

Desserts sweetened with Splenda or other artificial sweeteners

Make dieting easy on yourself and avoid sweets. They can single-handedly derail an otherwise productive diet.