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Old 01-07-2014, 01:13 PM   #1  
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Hi, I wanted to ask for a bit of advice.

Ever since I was young, I've loved cooking and baking. Most of all, I love cake and cupcake decoration. When I was younger I used to do it all the time, but for the past couple of years with college and work I completely stopped. Now I'm thinking about starting it again (specifically baking cakes and cupcakes), but my foremost concern is that if I'm making them, I will end up eating a lot of random calories in the process of making them and I don't want to sabotage my weight loss efforts.

And here lies my dilemma. I love doing it as a hobby, but I'm scared that I won't be able to resist eating all of it.

Does anyone else have a food related hobby that they've managed to continue without messing up their weight loss efforts? Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.
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Old 01-07-2014, 01:26 PM   #2  
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I love cooking, but I especially love cooking for other people. When I'm in a mental mode that I'm only eating specific type of foods, I can still cook for others and enjoy it. Sure, I taste the food to check the flavor, but other than that, it seems to be really easy to skip eating it. I just have it ingrained in my mind at those moments that "this is not for me, this is for other people", and that overrides everything else.

So my advice would be to bake and give away what you've made. It'll make other people happy and you get to do what you love.
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Old 01-07-2014, 05:15 PM   #3  
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i would do what she suggested...baking and giving it away...if i had a way to do that, i would totally take up my baking hobby again...but i really dont have anyone i can feed it to and i stopped baking cupcakes etc when i started trying to lose weight
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Old 01-07-2014, 06:09 PM   #4  
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baking and giving it away doesn't solve the problem of nibbling during the making of it. I think it would be more sensible to give up the hobby and take up a new one that uses similar skills.

Have you ever tried working with clay or learning other artistic skills. I would think you must be quite naturally creative.

On the other hand, another idea is to stick something that tastes bad into the icing so you don't feel tempted to eat it. But i think its better to take up clay modelling. Make the cakes but not to be edible. Make them as art. Make them as permanent art objects. That would be a wonderful challenge. Then you could create a whole display in your house or have an exhibition. But then if you are going to go that far, you should push your designs beyond traditional too. Give them a meaning. Make a statement or just be really really creative and make unconventional designs. There's so much you could do with it.

Still i think clay sculpture is a better way to go.
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Old 01-11-2014, 05:29 PM   #5  
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My husband and I run a small baking business out of our home. We've been at it for about two years, and it's been pretty successful. So that means there's a cake, cupcakes, or cookies in my house 3 or 4 times per week. After a while the craving to eat it just goes away. Honestly I could go the rest of my life without eating a cupcake and never miss it!
Have you ever thought of turning your hobby into a small business? You can't eat it if you have to sell it, and you get that baking bug out of your system.
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Old 01-11-2014, 05:54 PM   #6  
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I love to cook! I have simply made my guidelines for cooking healthy ones. I only try recipes that are within the health needs of my (and hubbys) weigh loss. I get to be creative with taking well known fattening dishes and trying to "clean them up" to make them healthier. In the summer I try various salads, grill foods etc..fruit creations, many sweet treats just using fruit.

I do love to bake as well, but it has become over the years a tradition that my baking only goes from the start of cold weather (late Sept early Oct) until Christmas day. I bake more cakes in the fall, using a lot of apple recipes because we go apple picking...then pumpkin stuff as we get into Thanksgiving and of course the cookies start around then and continue until Christmas. I usually make garbage cookies near the end (usuing up all the nuts, fruit, chocolate candies I have. And the day after Christmas I am done.

We do gain a little weight at that time. Acutally this year, since I had just had a baby the very end of July, I was still trying to lose baby weight, and I did lose a few pounds and then maintained..I really didn't lose lose...anyway, I find that limiting the time makes it special for our family. My family knows fall is baking time for mom, but its done on Dec 26th...

I dont know if maybe only letting yourself bake for special occasions (like only Bdays for your family) or maybe set aside one weekend a month or everyother month to bake a small batch of something will help.

I want to lose this weight (again..see siggy) but I also want to be able to do something I love doing. I'm ok with staled weigh loss over that time or a few pounds gained IF I'm already at my normal weight like in previous years.

I find that i get burnt out by Xmas and I'm glad to hang up my baking stuff for the year lol...but by the following year I'm ready again.

Can you let yourself do this at times? I know for me baking just to give it away would not work. I do give away a lot during xmas, but I eat a lot of it as well...
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Old 01-11-2014, 09:43 PM   #7  
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Thanks, guys. All of this is really helpful. Unfortunately, making this a business is pretty out of the question right now for several reasons. First, I'm just out of college and looking for my first job, so I don't have much money for anything. Second (and I probably should have led with this), I'm not great at it. Just ok. I do it because I really enjoy it, but I'm certainly nothing special at it


I'm going to go ahead with the baking for maybe a month or so and see how it goes. If I don't go overboard with eating everything, I'll continue with it, but if I think the nibbling is getting out of hand, I may try to find another hobby that isn't quite so destructive to my weight loss efforts. I like the idea of clay modelling or something along those lines.
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Old 01-13-2014, 08:23 AM   #8  
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I'm going to start to bake cookies for the troops and send them to them, there are numerous sites where one can 'adopt a platoon or soldier' and they appreciate baked goods. I'm sure lots of homeless shelters would appreciate the baked goods too.

Take care.

Amy
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