Finally found something to sweeten my coffee!

I know all my friends were deeply worried about my coffee habit... Ok, not, but I was.  I've been on a mission to ditch Splenda from my diet.  I gave up sugar in my coffee and anything else you add sugar to a long time ago, but I switched the sugar to Splenda.  I was putting a TON of Splenda in my coffee. What I have been discovering is that by switching to Splenda I really haven't fixed my sugar problem.  I've really wanted to move towards more clean eating - less processed foods and healthier options.  I've been on a mission to clean up my diet more. Although I wasn't necessarily eating poorly I was doing a lot of dieter type things and I think it was not helping me in any way.  I have spent the past few weeks though struggling with what to do with my coffee.  You see I really like coffee! I have cut back to a reasonable amount of coffee a day so I feel no guilt about it. Coffee actually has health benefits if you don't abuse it. I'm down to 2 cups a day. Although occasionally I will have 3, but no more than that and most days just 2 or less.  I feel good about that too, but I've tried lots of things in the past few weeks trying to figure out what to put in my darn coffee if I don't use Splenda.  I just couldn't bring myself to go back to sugar. I switched to coconut milk creamer a while ago and I like that, but without sugar or Splenda my coffee just tasted blah.  I tried cinnamon. It helped some. I tried sugar again, but just couldn't do it.  It just seemed counter productive. I went back to Splenda again, but really don't want to use something processed so I tried honey.  Honey was "ok", but it's still got a lot of calories in it without a lot of nutritional value. I am using honey in my oatmeal now, raw local honey, but that is because one of the doctors I saw a while back for the chronic allergies/headaches I had when I was pregnant with Natalie suggested using local honey.  I've read up on it and it's supposed to help so figured what the heck I'd try it and  kill two birds with one stone.

Now, back to my coffee. I found something! Woohoo! All is right in my world now. Raw coconut crystals! Yay! It's still a kind of sugar and I sure as hell wouldn't call it health food, but at least it has some nutritional benefits.  It's a good source of minerals - potassium, magnesium, zinc, and iron as well as B vitamins. Because it's still sugar still not going to overdo it, but now I can have my 1-2 cups of coffee with something that doesn't taste like crap.  It's really a light sweetness so I don't feel like it's feeding sugar cravings, but it's just enough to make my coffee happy again.