Any Bakers/Chefs Who Had WLS?!

[RTL1234 99]

Okay...I’m sure there are other amateur bakers/chefs and professionals out there too, who have had WLS.

I am one month post op and have began to bake again. I’m just a home baker that makes sweet treats for friends, family...nothing too fancy. I have been making Cookies for an upcoming fundraiser and for a friend. I’ve recently changed my sugar cookie recipe, so it required tasting. Same with my icing, it’s how I know it’s at the right place. So with that said, it’s been little dips to taste, and I did pinch off one piece of a baked to taste how the texture came out.

All that to say....I didn’t count any of it in my daily, just acknowledging that I did taste those things. However, I did notice a blood sugar spike (on an insulin pump), so I must have consumed enough for the spike.

How as a baker/cook/chef do you manage tasting but maintaining a weight loss strategy? Sweets aren’t a trigger for me, Cereal is, so even though my plan allows unsweetened cereal, I avoid cereal all together both to eat and bake with.

[GreenTealael 25,352]

I’m also a home cook but I have been baking for a long time. I don’t know if it happens for everyone but I lost interest in making things I couldn’t/wouldn’t eat, so that helped me to stay on track.

When I first had WLS, I made everything with a sugar substitute. Everyone around me adjusted or found their full sugar goodies elsewhere.

Even now that I’m a few years out, I can periodically indulge in regular baked goods, anything I make is still with a sugar substitute. The only exception is when I’m making a dough with yeast. I add the appropriate amount of sugar.

[BigSue 1,373]

I'm an amateur baker, too. I haven't done much baking since I started losing weight, largely because of the pandemic (not many occasions for baked goods, plus prohibitions on shared food at work), but I always bake a lot of Christmas Cookies. I'm kind of known for my Christmas cookies -- I bring them to work, neighbors, family gatherings, and I even mail them to long-distance relatives -- so I didn't feel that I could skip them this year.

Let me tell you, it was a challenge. I was 5 months out from surgery and I had literally hundreds of cookies in my house (which smelled freaking amazing), and I am very proud of myself that I didn't eat a single one. Not even a bite. Not even a crumb. There was a moment when a tiny piece broke off of one of the cookies and I contemplated eating it, thinking, "This tiny bit won't hurt," but then I slapped it out of my own hand and asked myself, "Is it worth it, Sue? IS IT?!" I went back and forth on that one crumb probably a dozen times before I finally threw it away.

Normally, I taste my baked goods -- you know, for quality control. I know that just sounds like an excuse to eat cookies, but I do take great pride in what I bake and I want to make sure it's delicious before I feed it to family and friends. The Christmas cookies were tried and true recipes that I make every year, so I just had to trust that they tasted as good as always. I always have a few rejects that aren't up to my standards for serving to other people, and the rejects normally go in my belly. Not this year. I almost cried, but I threw some perfectly good but not pretty enough cookies in the trash can. One kind of Christmas cookies I make is a bar cookie, and I normally cut off the edges before I slice them so they look more uniform. Those edges (which are actually the tastiest part) normally go -- you guessed it -- in my belly. Not this year. I left the edges alone and some of the slices just had to be edge/corner pieces.

I made the decision not to eat any cookies because they do not fit into my plan and I am strict about not eating Snacks. I don't know if I get dumping syndrome because I haven't eaten anything since surgery that I'm not supposed to, so I was also concerned that even one cookie could be enough to cause it. But I think maybe I don't need to go that far, and maybe next year there is room to taste, say, half a cookie (which shouldn't have enough sugar or fat to cause any problems) after a high-protein, low-carb meal. But I would still account for it in MyFitnessPal. I don't know, maybe it's easier to just say no. Maybe if I eat half a cookie and feel fine, it will be a slippery slope to a whole cookie and then multiple cookies.

[RTL1234 99]

Thank you both for your responses!

@GreenTealael - That is the hard part, I feel like what they pay for is the traditional goodies, so substitutes would be good for home, but not for what I give away. I get though just not making as much, or certain things like you used to.

@BigSue - Wow!!! I’m very proud of your self control! That is awesome! Everything you said made so much sense. I think now that I’ve gotten my cookie recipe and icing where I really like it, I’ll write down the exact measurements and just follow my recipe perfectly every time. That way, I don’t I’ll know without tasting, that it’s good. Finished products are usually easy to avoid because I’ll always have one (or more lol) that’s not pretty, and my kids or husband will taste and report back how it is.

Last night I made cake balls, and I just had a bite of the baked cake and chewed for texture but spit it out. I just feel like while I know a sweet treat is fine here and there, I don’t want a slippery slope to happen like you said.

[ms.sss 15,588]

I liked to cook/bake well enough before WLS, but AFTER it, I developed a LOVE/ OBSESSION / ALL-CONSUMING DESIRE to cook/bake (as well as all the planning, shopping, researching that goes along with it. not to mention sharing the goods with fam and friends and watching them eat it!)

I'm not sure this was totally because of wls (but i'm sure it had a big part of it), but also because circumstances allowed me more time to indulge in my interests (change in work, and then pandemic, and then stopped working altogether).

I am the family cook/food provider, to 3 thin, fit, active people who eat truckloads of food.

During weight loss phase, I got whomever was around to taste the food; if there was no one around, then I would just take my chances and hope it was ok. If I REALLY needed to taste it, I would, but spit it out.

Towards the end of weight loss phase and into maintenance I no longer required the help of the fam tasters, and would taste it myself AND sometimes swallow, lol.

Now, 2+ years out, I taste and swallow everything, AND will often times actually eat the final product as well! I will eat (beyond tasting) maybe 20% of the savoury stuff I make for fam meals, but I eat (beyond tasting) 100% of the Desserts.

I recently became a lover of bread baking, and even started eating bread because of it (which was weird because I didnt have any legitimate (fluffy) bread for like two years...i did have crackers and other small hard type bread products though)

I sometimes make sugar-substitute no/low carb stuff, but I will almost always make an larger-portioned, "normal" version for the fam as well.

Of course, its not like I eat even close to the amounts that I did pre-wls. While before I would have eaten 10 Cookies in one sitting , now I'll eat like 1/2 of one. Instead of 4 slices of sour dough, I'll eat like 1/4 slice, instead of 1/2 an entire fruit pie, I'll have 1/2 a slice, instead of 3 butter tarts, I'd take a bite off someones, and so on, and so on....

(ooooh now i want to bake something...lol)

.......soooo so long as i don't stuff myself with huge amounts and keep within my maintenance calories (i track EVERYTHING), then its all good (which is basically what I've been doing for the past 1.5+ years of maintenance)

Edited January 23, 2021 by ms.sss