You CAN have your cake and eat it too.

You've heard that phrase, "You can't have your cake and eat it too," right? You get the gist of that? You can't have two things incompatible. You can't have a truly yummy dessert/treat that is low calorie and low fat, right? I'm slowly learning how wrong that is.

Now, dear friends, I am a sweets girl through and through. I would gladly eat an ice cream sundae at any given time. But, as you may remember, I'm dieting (kinda).

As I sliced up a banana for my kiddos the other night, twin B asked for "cream in my mouth" which is code for throw some whipped cream on there for me Mamma. As I pulled the can of Cool Whip out, I looked at the label. Eh, wasn't too terrible for 2 Tablespoons. I certainly don't use 2 Tablespoons of the stuff on sundaes.

As I gazed further into my condiment shelves, I looked at other common sundae toppers such as the cherriesAnd the chocolate syrup.Again, these values didn't look so bad. It was then that my sundae substitute was born. The REAL devil in my beloved sundae, was the ice cream. If I could keep most of the yumminess of the flavors intact, would I REALLY miss the ice cream? Answer: NOPE.

Ya know what sealed the deal on that little situation? I did the math. You read that right, I did math. For a standard Banana Split Sundae (with 1/2 Cup of vanilla ice cream *stop laughing, I know, no one uses just 1/2 Cup of ice cream, but let's pretend*), you're looking at 355 calories and 11 grams of fat! For a full cup of ice cream, it's 535 calories and 20 grams of fat. Yipes.

With my little faux sundae, I was consuming a mere 165 calories and 1.5 grams of fat! The bonus being that it still tasted sinfully awesome!

Here's what I did. I sliced up one small banana (90 calories), drizzled about 3 tsp. of chocolate syrup on top (50 calories), topped it with some Cool Whip (we'll go with the serving size of 2 T for 15 calories and 1.5 g of fat), and one cherry (10 calories). I gave the three pictured to the kids. I don't think they missed the ice cream, do you? I have another guilty pleasure during the winter time. I love, love, love hot drinks like hot chocolate, mocha's, and lattes, especially during the colder months. At Starbucks, you can order a yummy Vanilla Creme: A soothing and creamy combination of steamed milk and vanilla, topped with whipped cream (optional). A caffeine-free alternative. I don't much care about the caffeine aspect. After all, I loves me some caffeine. It's just a yummy drink. Then I looked at the nutritional info 260 calories and 12 grams of fat in a tall (120z)with 2% milk!! WHAT?! How is that possible? Anyway, I set out to make it a little more waistline friendly.

I steamed 12 oz of non fat milk, added a few drops of vanilla extract and bammo, had my drink. Ah, but this time, there were only 120 calories and no fat. I skipped the whipped cream in my home version. If you have a cappuccino machine, when you steam the milk a teeny-weeny amount of milk will froth (2% or whole milk will froth a TON. Not so much with the skim) and I just topped my drink with that. Truth be told, you can order the Vanilla Creme with non-fat milk and skip the whipped cream, at Starbucks. It's just gonna cost you more Moo-La and somehow they slip in an extra 30 calories.

The drink itself is still yummy and soothing. It's actually probably MORE soothing now that I know I'm not wasting 12 grams of fat!