Fancy diet fake foods are terrific, but the bet is they are not going to help you lose weight. Sugar-free ice cream, sugar-free pudding, and sugar-free desserts are good for maintenance, but in general, you can’t eat these foods when you are trying to lose weight. To be effective, weight loss is about starving. This is why 500 calories, every other day, works well for many patients. But if you truly want to lose weight, you basically can’t eat. And if you are on a low calorie, low carbohydrate diet – you probably can’t eat sugar-free ice cream and diet desserts, because these foods have way to many calories and carbohydrates for weight loss. But for maintenance, sugar-free desserts are terrific, because sugar-free foods in general don’t trigger feeding frenzy and binging, the way sugar-full foods do.