I like my cakes. I have cut down on my consumption of sweet things significantly since being diagnosed with breast cancer but haven’t cut it out completely.
What I found a useful exercise is simply reducing the amount of sugar I put into a cake. First time I left out 20%, and I hardly noticed the difference. A few weeks later, I reduced the amount of sugar by another 10%. I kept trying until I found the lowest level acceptable to me. I was surprised how little sugar I needed for the pastry still to be tasty. Occasionally I add dried fruit to replace the sugar. But I have to keep telling myself that dried fruit has concentrated, if natural, sugars, so even these “healthier” sugars have to be used sparingly.