Bariatric Tips for Holiday Sweets
Bariatric Tips for Holiday Sweets
Sweets and treats are all around! Alternatives and tips for Gastric Sleeve, Bypass, Band and DS patients
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I recently surveyed my Bariatric Food Coach Members and asked “What food hang ups are most common for you around Christmas?”
Every single answer was about sweets, treats, homemade breads, cookies and desserts.
I can tell you this much: you are not alone!
Holiday treats and sweets are everywhere. After a holiday live call with members I logged off and went downstairs to find a massive tin of cookies left for me by our house cleaners. It was SO sweet and my kids were elated. I had to laugh.
One thing that make me laugh is how much people like the idea of holiday treats and sweets yet they want to give it away. They take treats to the office or the neighbors to get rid of t hem! Often times people wish they didn’t have so many sweets!
In these bariatric tips for holiday sweets we’ll cover alternatives to keep on hand, addressing the environment (work or home), staying consistent with bariatric habits and understanding the powerful role of dopamine.
Bariatric Tip #1 for Holiday Sweets: Understand Dopamine
The time of year is very intense for sugar temptations. High sugar foods releases a lot of dopamine, a powerful neurotransmitter known as the “gas pedal of pleasure.” Dopamine is a wonderful thing for us to feel joy in our life but it is also linked with addiction.
Understanding dopamine can be really helpful to making food decisions and for not being so hard on yourself that it’s because you have no willpower. That is why I am listing it as tip number one.
As we turn the corner into the Winter months, it is probably be getting dark, cold and dreary. It may be harder to get outside for fresh air and movement. There may be less events to look forward to compared to the Summer months. This is what makes Winter holidays so festive and allows us to get excited about something!
Knowledge is power and understanding that high sugar foods cause a powerful dopamine release can help you feel empowered that this is what is going on. Not that you have no willpower but that biology is very much at play.
The good news is dopamine is released in many natural ways! We’ll talk more about the Bariatric Pillars on tip #4 which includes sleep but it’s worth mentioning here that good sleep helps natural dopamine release.
So does music, movement, meditation and being outdoors.
We need all of these things especially during the dark dreary months of winter.
Turn up the Christmas tunes, dance along, bundle up to head outside and take a warm relaxing bath counting your blessings when you’re done!
(Also, if you have the cookie be at peace. Instead of feeling badly about it, think about how it served you and what you enjoyed about it. Then release that moment and move on to something else that brings you joy and peace. It’s a hard time of year for temptations and we are not perfect!)
Bariatric Tip #2 for Holiday Sweets: Bulk up your tool box with treat alternatives
My next big tip for handling this time of year filled with sweets and treats is to increase your options.
This is a little different for all of us. For some, we do better abstaining from high sugar foods because once we have a little it’s hard to find the pause button. For others, having a couple bites of something helps to satisfy that craving and not feel deprived. It can be helpful to know which approach feels best for you.
This time of year is a bit of a battlefield for foods that don’t serve our health goals. Whether you’re more of an abstainer or a few bites to satisfy person, it can be helpful to have options ready for you.
Especially if you’re someone that tends to not keep anything in the house but find yourself struggling with sweets, go ahead and increase your stash of alternatives until the Season passes.
I tend to categorize alternatives in two camps.
Back Up Ready Made Sweet Alternatives
One is the easy grab items like a package of protein hot chocolate or half a protein bar you love. I often look for deals on Bariatricfoodsource.com for protein hot chocolate. My favorite protein bar is PowerCrunch and I keep them in the freezer for a cold, crunchy wafer bar treat. When it comes to protein bars I like the protein and the carbohydrate to be as close to each other as possible.
Another great option is to place an order with BariBox for their desserts. Patients rave about their protein brownies!
These are the quick little sweet fixes for the moments when sweets are around. Or if you’ve been eating plenty of treats and trying to scale back, these things will help manage cravings as you transition back off desserts.
Recipes for Bariatric Friendly Treats
Second is the recipe options for more of the make ahead situations. If you’re going to a work potluck or a family holiday dinner these are the things you can make ahead so you have an option when it comes time for the dessert table.
Examples:
This Chocolate Mousse is very rich and creamy. It helps when you’re craving rich chocolate flavors so if you’ve been thinking of fudge or decadent chocolate sweets put this on your list of alternatives!
Many members used this Pumpkin Whip recipe for their Thanksgiving meal and raved about how much it helped! It makes quite a bit and doesn’t take much to satisfy the pumpkin spice sweet flavor that goes well after a holiday meal.
This isn’t really one for the dessert table but I still wanted to share this recipe. Protein Hot Chocolate is a HUGE help in my personal toolbox. It’s warm and sweet and hits the spot on a cold dark night. I use Unjury unflavored protein which does well if it’s not warmer than 140 F. A dollop of light Cool Whip does the trick for me. (I do this when I don’t have the packets of protein hot chocolate on hand!)
You can tell I enjoy finding alternatives to sweet drinks! It doesn’t take much time or ingredients for this less fat and sugar egg nog. It’s not as rich as the traditional cup but saves an estimated 19 grams of sugar per serving.
Sometimes I look at the almond milk alternatives to egg nog in the grocery store and see which one has the least amount of sugar or fat and have a small glass over ice to help sweet cravings during the holidays.
Before we move to the next tips let’s talk quickly about healthier cookie alternatives. You might wonder why I haven’t listed any here. The truth is I haven’t found them helpful in my toolbox. That doesn’t mean it won’t be helpful to you! Some recipes will use almond flour or other lower sugar ways to make a cookie. They do still have a higher amount of carbohydrate so I found they don’t help control my hunger.
Some patients might find them helpful when baking other cookies to have a lower sugar option. Other patients might find it’s not worth extra effort and money and would rather have one of the “real”cookies and send the rest away. Whatever you decide is up to you! Consider if it’s helping you during the Season or not as much as you’d hoped.
You might also watch for holiday deals on the new hot item from Ninja® the Creami 7-in-1 ice cream maker. Many post-op patients have been making ice cream concoctions with their protein shakes! I use my Cuisinart® ice cream maker for protein ice cream recipes like this Cinnamon one.
Bariatric Tip #3 for Holiday Sweets: Evaluate your Bariatric Pillars
One of the sections in my free Holiday Planner is about the Bariatric Pillars. (You can get that here if you haven’t already!)
The Pillars are the foundation that everything else is built upon. If one of your foundations is weak, a lot of things start to crumble. This can make staying in control of sweets VERY challenging.
The four pillars include:
Water
Meal Planning and Quality
Movement
Sleep
If you aren’t getting in enough water, your grazing on meals or they are not protein focused, not getting much physical movement or not sleeping well, focus on that pillar!
Building up the pillars will set you up to better manage the sweets of the Season and this website is all about supporting you to do so!
Here is a blog about water (you can read or listen to it) including why it’s so helpful and tips to increase how much you’re drinking.
Bariatric Food Coach has tons of recipes and meal planning resources. Members unlock everything including dietitian written menus, custom meal planning, a meal planning cheat sheet, quick meals for the Season and more!
Here is a blog series on Meal Planning which covers everything from picky eating to batch cooking to cooking for one. Oh and this blog talks about why Meal Structure matters after surgery!
Bariatric Tip #4 for Holiday Sweets: Change up the environment
I left this for tip number four because it can be easier said than done but important nonetheless.
When it comes to our food environment, there are some things we can control and some things we cannot. I would encourage you to not give up and assume you don’t control any of it!
At Home
If you live in a home with family members that love all the holiday treats it is worth setting some boundaries on where the treats are kept and how many is the limit.
For example, you might allow one single tin of holiday treats. Let family members know if it’s in the tin it is safe but any extra treats will be tossed. They may end up tossing some things out of the tin to make room for something they liked more.
Setting a limit is helpful for everyone instead of letting it take over the countertops. The other benefit of a tin or a container is a lid. Even better if it’s not a clear container. Placing the container high or in a cabinet will also help. All of these things slow down the mindless eating of walking by and grabbing a treat.
If you feel it would be benefit you to not know where the tin is, let the family know you’d like them to take the tin and put it in a place you don’t need to know about. You aren’t telling them no but you are putting boundaries with how much and where it is located.
At Work
The next tricky spot to discuss is work food environment. Many people give up on this one because it feels too difficult to control any of it.
Sometimes it takes going for a long walk and thinking through what feels reasonable to set you up for better success.
You might opt for skipping the break room and keeping your lunch in a bag with ice packs. You could also do everyone the benefit of cleaning up the work room a bit and making an area for treats that isn’t in the table that everyone eats at.
If you’re really feeling bold you could take a quiet poll and put a piece of paper in the break room to ask people to vote if they like when people bring extra sweets to work or if they would rather they didn’t. It might surprise people to see it’s not really helpful to bring your extra unwanted desserts to work.
Sometimes we need to give ourselves grace to go ahead and throw away unwanted food. You might consider if work really wants your own unwanted sweets!
Certainly at work build up your tool box of what you pack. It may be worth overpacking healthy alternatives to under packing and struggling at 3pm with the work snacks.
Save the Date! Pantry Clean Out Challenge starts December 27th!
The annual Bariatric Food Coach Pantry Challenge will start after Christmas!
Members love our community activities to get focused and excited together on building up those bariatric pillars! This four part series will include scheduling a pantry clean out, preparing the family, doing the pantry purge and re-stocking for the best bariatric pantry!
We’ll share before and after pictures and I will pick winners for gift cards to the Container Store for more organizing help!
Become a member and you’ll be ready come December 27th! (And bonus! If you have a HSA/FSA account you can use that tax free money for the affordable membership fee!)
