Sugar Free?

Hi Jennifer,

I'm only 10 days post op, but I can tell you that so far I have no desire at all for sugar or anything that has fake sugar to taste sugary.  So it's not been an issue at all.  Having said that, I'm still on liquids.  I've been "out to eat" twice now.  Once for dinner and today for fathers day breakfast.  Normally I would have ordered something like french toast, or pancakes, and everbody around me did order those things.  It didn't bother me at all, I just have decaf coffee and enjoyed the company.  Didn't feel deprived at all.  I guess my point is that you probably won't need a whole lot of fake sugars if you don't have the desire for sweets.  I worry about the same thing though.  Everything says they are so bad for you.  I also know that there are SO many recipes out there that have reduced sugar or substitutes like apple sauce- and they really do taste good.  Good luck to you-I think you'll do just fine without the substitutes though. :) 

If you can handle the aftertaste of stevia, there are many protein shakes available that use this as the sweetener. You can also mix unflavored into other things. I avoid aspartame, but will use splenda sparingly. I also ordered some powdered sugar alcohol, I think it's called swerve for some holiday recipes. If I must have something sweet, I tend to add berries to Greek yogurt, make ice cream out of my protein shake, add French vanilla SF coffee flavoring syrup to ricotta cheese and use it as a strawberry dip, (check out the world according to egg face), or add ice to my shake and blend it to be more shake like. However, I did not, and would not eat these "treats" to early.

The biggest thing you need to worry about is getting your protein in, even if you have to use fake sugar for a while. Hopefully a stevia sweetened one will work for you. Oh, big word of caution, just because you like something now, doesn't mean you will like it post-op. You will be surprised by how much your tastes will change.

I do a mixture but I am not one to eat a lot of "fake" food in general.

I started to in WL. It's how most of us are taught to diet, right? You eat SF popsicles during the WL phase and switch back to regular when it's over. You eat Yoplait "Lite" yogurt because it's only 100 calories. But a funny thing started happening and it happened early out. 

First, my taste changed. I don't need to eat so much sweet stuff any more.

Second, when you can only eat a bite or two of something and then you are full for the next two hours, well, that bite better be the best damn thing you put in your mouth. And not just in taste either. I want it to be high quality in the ingredients as well. Which means I started reading labels. And suddenly that SF fudgicle looked way less attractive to me.

Third, since I was tracking my food, I realized if you can only eat 2 bites of something, sometimes it's totally worth it to eat the full sugar or full fat version. Because you are often talking about a difference of 10 calories with those kinds of quantiies.

My advice is that in the first couple of months when everything tastes funny and you can hardly eat anything and you are struggling to get in your fluids and your protein, don't be too picky about it. If eating a SF popsicle or slurpping some SF jello means the difference between getting in all your fluids or not getting them in, it's better to consume them and avoid ending up in the ER due to dehydration than not consume them because you want to avoid a bit of aspartame. (Assuming you aren't allergic, of course.)

But once you can eat more, start thinking about what healthy eating means to you and start trying to eat that way. Experiment with what you can and can't eat to make your nutritional goals and learn what works for you. Don't eat crap because you're "on a diet" and "that's what dieters eat". A lot of the so-called diet food isn't all that low in calories or sugar compared to some other non-diet choices anyway.

Not all fake sugars are created equally. Do your research. Stevia is a pretty good alternative. I bought some pure sucralose because Splenda, the commercial brand has an addetive that gives it carbs. But it's hard to work with because a little goes a long way. You got a lot of good and valuable feedback here but I think the short answer is no, don't try to avoid the sugar free thing. 

So many great tips!! Thanks guys! I will take all of these into consideration. I was curious to your thoughts and I love all the responses!