Welcome back Wren!
Chewie: As always, you gave wonderful advice. I think it's important to be just a little bit lenient with yourself every now and then. Otherwise you really do feel restricted and too many restrictions make you feel small. Declaring an official cheat day doesn't sound bad to me at all. In fact, I was reading on another post that this may help weight loss! It sort of shakes your body up!
But it's also important psychologically: You prove to yourself that you are in control and can go back to the right way of eating the next day. Very very important! It's so hard to stay in control with carbs. I used to polish off half of a 20 oz bag of pretzels like it was nothing! Since I was doing WW, I would figure out that 24=2 pts, and I'd count them out, except I'd count out 24 of them 5 times! My sister and I were just discussing this the other day: We used to have a parade of snacks at night in front of the TV on weekends. What a horrible habit! I still like that little sweet on weekends but it's my desert from dinner, and that's it! I can stop because I'm not starving for more food!
Wren: About the sweet tooth: Man, that sounds familiar!!!
We just got some new tenants in our office, or rather, they're sharing our offices with us, and as a welcome gift someone bought them a box of chocolates and of course they passed it around. It was tempting, especially since I haven't had chocolate in months! But I took a deep breath and said, "No thanks, I'm trying to stay away from the sugar." I have two reasons for this, one because of the insulin effect, the other for the good of my teeth! According to my dentist I am super-sensitive to cavities. I won't go into how much sugar I would eat before switching to SP, but I expect my next checkup to be much improved from my last!!!
After all that rambling, my suggestion is, have you tried fruit? My theory is if you need that sweetness, how about getting it from the lesser of all evils?
Even if you go over your carbs a bit for the day, it's worth it to stay away from the candy. Berries are cool because they give you that "pieces" effect. If you whip up some cream the night before (add cream cheese and a little bit of vanilla if you like, like I do), then it'll be a real treat. You can pop your co-workers' eyes out with all that real cream!
HTH,
Tal