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Could a Tiny Mint Kick My Sugar Cravings?
An ‘addict’ seeks help from a new 14-day system
I used to see personal trainer Harley Pasternak at a coffee shop in Los Angeles, where he always performed a magic trick. He bought a chocolate chip cookie, ate half, and threw the rest away. It was a feat of willpower I could only aspire to. One day, I thought, I will traipse the globe rationing a perfect amount of pleasure with a half of a croissant in Paris, a half of a slice of Linzer torte in Vienna, a half of a churro in Mexico City.
“You were seeing a snapshot of my day. Not the whole picture,” says Pasternak, who is the trainer on Khloé Kardashian’s E! show, Revenge Body, and has trained Gwyneth Paltrow, Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian, and Ariana Grande. “I was getting three or four cookies a day. It was the greatest denial of all time. I would get coffee. I’m sure they make good coffee. But they made the best chocolate chip cookies in town. It gave me this happiness. This childlike I-have-a-fresh-baked-cookie happiness.” This is a guy who would never put a sugar packet in his coffee. Who cautions against eating types of fruit in which you can’t eat the skin.
Pasternak got to work on creating a way to help people like him, and me, combat our sugar cravings. His first product is the Sweetkick 14-Day Sugar Reset Kit, which costs $46 and comes in a brightly covered box that says “Not today, sugar.” My wife, who craves salt and doesn’t care about desserts, shakes her head when she sees it. “Ah, the battles we fight every day,” she says. “This is why Republicans think we’re snowflakes.” When she says this, I remember that we have a snow cone machine in the closet.
Inside the kit are 14 packets of “body balance powder” you can pour into your coffee or smoothie in the morning, a bunch of packets of mints you pop after every meal, and a booklet outlining the meal plan Pasternak promotes in all his diet books: three meals and two snacks per day, each a combination of fiber, low-fat protein, and healthy fat.
The powder is a mix of fiber and chromium “to help support balanced blood sugar levels,” according to the product literature. But the magical part of the kit is the mints, which contain extracts from a leaf called gymnema sylvestre. These extracts have a similar molecular…
