I have been lurking around this site for weeks now and i've noticed that everyone is on sugar free everything, i have my pre-op tomarrow( banded on 10/9/07) and as of yet i have not been told i could not consume sugar, until i read it on this site. Can anyone give me info on this please? Sugar for me is like a cigarette for a smoker( hmmm, probably the reason i need to be banded in the first place...lol,lol) :faint:

Some people use sugar-free products because of the calories found in sugar. Other people use limited amounts of real sugar, or don't even worry about the amount of sugar they consume. It just depends on what works best for you, what your nutritionist wants you to do, etc. I personally just limit my use of real sugar. I don't like the taste of artificial sweeteners, so I just eat or drink things with real sugar and factor it into my calories for the day or I eat/drink unsweetened things.

I used to use sweetners, and then I thought, "Are the few carbs/calories I'm saving better for me than this teaspoon of chemical?"

I'm trying to make the switch back to sugar. I just wish it would dissolve as well.

In a situation where I want to eat something sweet, I eat limited amounts of real sugar. I'm a bit phobic about artificial sweeteners and I think they're a bit like low fat products, they lull people into eating too many of those sorts of foods instead of good healthy natural food.

Its just a matter of taste really though. I do have a bit of a sweet tooth when it comes to chocolate, lol, but I dont have sugar in coffee or tea, dont drink sweet drinks or eat ice cream or sweet yogurt ever so I dont worry about the small amounts of sugar that I do eat.

I don't consume much in the way of white carbs, I lose a LOT faster that way.

There are lots of changes you need to make in your food habits when you want to lose weight. If sugar got you heavy to begin with, continuing to eat it isn't going to help you lose.

There's nothing about being banded that inherently requires you to moderate your sugar intake (unlike, for some bypass patients, who experience "dumping" when ingesting sugar).

As others have said, it's an issue of how you want to use your band to maximize weight loss. Once you're banded, you may find that you don't want to consume much sugar because weight loss is easier with the band and it's even easier with calorie (or, for some, carb) control.

I don't cut them out completely, but I certainly limit them. I go by calories, not sugar content. But I cut sugars out of drinks that are mixed- kool aid, tea, coffee.. because it's just a waste of calories. And in pudding, I get the SF version because it's 1/2 the calories.