Sugar-Free Yogurt

Hello.  My insurance co approved me on 3-29-07 for WLS, but they have a 6-month waiting period before your surgery date, so it won't be until after 10-1-07.  My caseworker's given me ideas on things I'll be able to eat post-op and friends who have had WLS have been giving me ideas.  I'm so darned excited, I need to do something or I'll explode before my surgery date, so I'm trying to find these things ahead of time. I've got a ton of protein powder samples I've sent for and some of my friends have bought for me.  We figured since everyone says my tastes will change once I have the surgery, we'd get me lots to try out post-op so I can hopefully find some I like.   But I haven't been able to find sugar-free yogurt so far.  I've been looking in all the local stores (Olympia area and south) to find it, but haven't found any yet.  Has anyone else found it.  If so, where and what brand(s) did you find? 

Probably the closest would be the Wal*mart Blue Bunny, with about 5g per serving and then Danon has a few models with less than 6g per serving.

The problem is that milk, by it's very nature IS sugar (12g in a cup), so you can't really get it ALL out.

Thanks for the info. No wonder I couldn't find 0 gm of sugar. How many grams of sugar can most people tolerate? I haven't even had the surgery and I'm already terrified of dumping - from what I've read on the boards, it's nothing to mess with and would probably completely freak my husband and family out!

The amount of sugar you can have depends on your surgeon . I believe I was told I could have 6 or seven grams per serving . But , sugar alcohols will also make people sick . Sometimes more so . I can't remember how many sugar alcohols per serving is okay . Things with too many sugar alcohols tend to make me gassy & sick to my stomach , so I avoid as many as possible . I don't really dump per se , & a lot of people don't . But I don't abuse that , because I still have icky side effects if i'm not careful & it's not worth it . By the way , we can dump on too much fat , too . Congratulations on your approval . Kathy

I try to limit my intake to no more than 9g per meal. PER MEAL, so that's all factors considered. My official rule was the 6g mentioned. But at 13 yrs, if I can still keep in the single digits, I don't gain.

Although originally, even hitting 10g would make me dump, sadly, it takes more most of the time. RIGHT NOW, when I've reset my dump-o-meter, I'm guessing it's pretty sensitive and might go off again in the single digits.

But there are two issues here. How much ill make you dump? (individual) and how much will mess up your loss and/ormake to regain?

Have you read about how wonderful Fage yogurt is? (a Greek yogurt)  I've seen so many posts raving about it that I've tried hard to find it here in Spokane but with no luck.  Someone on another board here on OH said that you can recreate it by doing that old yogurt-draining trick.  I haven't eaten much yogurt because I don't like the taste of the sugar free yogurts but know that some extra calcium foods would be good for my diet.  So I found some plain low-fat yogurt that said it was supposed to be very creamy but not with much fat and placed it in a cone-shaped coffee filter inside a strainer and put that in a container in the fridge to drain overnight.  If you cover and let it drain for several days you end up with yogurt 'cheese' which a lot of us will remember from old WW days as the substitute for cream cheese.  After a night in the fridge I scraped out the very thick yogurt and put it in a new container and was really surprised that it wasn't horrible!  For a serving I had half a cup plus 1 tablespoon of a fruit-only jam and it was tasty.   I won't be eating this very often since I'm far enough out that I shouldn't be eating really soft foods that empty through the pouch too fast but this was a nice change and I plan to do it every so often just to help keep my diet varied.  I also have used this same yogurt with a quarter cup of my Kashi Go Lean cereal for some crunch and it helps sweeten it up without having to use artificial sweeteners.  I'm trying hard to deal successfully with hunger issues so I'm trying to limit my use of sweeteners as they just make me hungrier and do nothing to help tame my sweet tooth. Molly

That sounds great - I'd never heard of draining it, I'll try that.  Yep, I had heard of the Greek yogurt and that it's supposed to be really good, but I haven't been able to find it either.  Thanks for the ideas, I'll try draining and I love fruit-only raspberry jam, so I'll add a little of that and try it out.

It's great that you already love the fruit-only jam, that is one less hurdle to face when you are post-op.  I was such a terrible sweets eater that it was hard going without sugars for so long and then getting accustomed to the real, natural sweetness in foods.  The unsweetened yogurt may taste nasty to you now but later when you haven't been eating refined sugars it won't be so bad and being extra thick really does make it more palatable, for some reason.   Wow...yesterday I was baking a carrot cake for my husband's birthday and I ate a pecan while chopping them.  Was totally blown away by how sweet it is...I never knew that before!  Who knew there was so much natural sugary flavor in a nut???? Molly

Hmmm, I love pecans, guess I better check out sugars in nuts - wouldn't have ever thought they had sugar.  I've never really craved sweets, I'm more of a crunchy-salty craver - I'll pass up a terrific looking dessert anytime for some nachos, tortilla chips with salsa, salted nuts, peanuts in the shell.  The soft food period should be an experience for me - no crunches or salts.  But then as my Dr. keeps telling me with my out of control bp, I shouldn't be eating salts anyway!

Hey girlfriend...you and me both on the bp and salt!  Good news though...I am down to only two bp meds now and may be able to go to just one, I have to make an appt. with my primary to discuss it.  Yeah!!!  My bps have been excellent at all my last surgical checks.  Bet your bp will be much, much better after your surgery.  Molly