Have your cake and eat it, too

Sweets count as carbohydrates in your meal plan. The trick is substituting small portions of sweets for other carbohydrates — such as bread, tortillas, rice, crackers, cereal, fruit, juice, milk, yogurt or potatoes — in your meals. To allow room for sweets as part of a meal, you have two options:

• Replace some of the carbohydrates in your meal with a sweet.
• Swap a high-carb-containing food in your meal for something with fewer carbohydrates and replace the remaining carbohydrates in your meal plan with a sweet.

Let's say your dinner is a grilled chicken breast, a medium potato, a slice of whole-grain bread, a vegetable salad and fresh fruit. If you'd like a small frosted cupcake after your meal, look for ways to keep the total carbohydrate count in the meal the same.

Perhaps you trade your bread and fruit for the cupcake. Or replace the potato with a low-carbohydrate vegetable such as broccoli, which allows you to have the small cupcake.

To keep the total carbohydrate count the same when making trades, read food labels for the total carbohydrate count. This count includes starch, fiber, sugar and sugar alcohols — a type of reduced-calorie sweetener — and tells you how much carbohydrate is in one serving of the food. Consult your dietitian if you have questions.