One year ago!

Good morning 12/06 peeps!  For the next 13 blissful days I am on vacation and get to come here and play with you good people.  (Quit groaning!)  Last night our weatherman said we'd be having a rain/snow mix but so far I only see rain out there.  :(  My brain must be totally work-fried if I'm actually looking forward to seeing snowflakes.

So...one year ago we were all anxiously looking forward to our one year surgiversaries.  Things have changed for all of us as we are now approaching the two-year mark, haven't they?  I mentioned to Melissa in an e-mail that I wanted to see if I could find my online food journals from a year ago and try to eat that way to see if it would help me get back on track.  And thanks to Sparkpeople, I was able to find them and saw a much better eatiing pattern than I've got going now.  I may not actually follow those days to the 't' but I'm going to try to get back to my older, better patterns. 

Here's how my days usually went a year ago:

On the way to work....a soy latte and no food. (difference now...I'm eating something at home AND having the latte)
Mid morning: a homemade protein bar or muffin (difference now...a store-bought bar or a COUPLE of muffins)
Morning breaktime: usually yogurt and cereal (difference now, very often I'm eating my old 'weekend' treat breakfast of cc pancakes and syrup....,more calories)
Lunch: a protein entree and a small veggie (now, a protein entree and something 'sweet' like a sf pudding or homemade sf cookies, etc...more CALORIES) 

See the pattern here.... 

I've let the sweets and carbs (albeit sf and healthy) get to me and am not disciplining myself to keep them from racking up and then consequently...the pounds have racked up on my body!  And to be brutally honest, this eating isn't because I'm hungry all the time now.  It is because I WANT to eat.  I've been behaving like a spoiled brat food-wise and that needs to stop.  Remember that blissful point post-op where our bodies and our reduced food intakes came into synch and we all were at that stage where we were just eating to live and not living to eat?  I have to try to get back that feeling.   

So, while I'm on vaca I'm gonna dig up those old recipes and get my freezer stocked.  Gonna quit buying protein bars and go back to relying on homemade.  The pantry is pretty clean except for the chocolate chips I've bought for holiday baking for family and co-workers.  Maybe I'll just package those up in a brown bag and throw them to the bottom of the freezer so they don't look at me and make me want something sweet for a substitute.  Just seeing them is a trigger so they need to hide.

Very wordy, sorry....I think I'll go have my latte now and contemplate if I want to have some egg beaters this morning.  Maybe I'll put on some arctic gear and excavate my freezers to see what is waiting in there for me.  There should be some good healthy stuff like pumpkin protein muffins and such. 

Love you guys...I am so excited to have time to hang out here with you!!!!

Molly

I went back and looked at mine too Molly after I read your email...

It is eye opening isn't it?

I was eating much less carbs and really structured eating pattern. 

I was doing 3 meals, 1 snack and a 110 cal shake.  That was it. 

I am going back to that.  I am gonna try to get in my 1200 calories till I am back at my goal weight.  I am up needless to say after Halloween again.  Tired of the yo yo effect. 

I am glad you are able to hang out with us too Molly, enjoy your vacation!!!! :)

Getting back into a structured eating plan is going to help me too.  I don't know why I thought living with so many free choices would be a good thing, it never was in the past.  It is time for me to quit trying new recipes and just stick with what works.

Especially since we are rolling into the holidays now!!  Yikes....

That is  a great idea!  My problem is...I have always been horrible at tracking my food.  Would do it a day and then not again for months.  So I have nothing to revert back to.

This last few weeks have been much better for me in that I plan in advance what I am eating and then it is a no-brainer throughout the day.  No muss, no fuss.  Course some days still manage to get in an extra nibble or two of something but I am a constant work in progress.

I am also at the point now where I don't want this to become difficult.  For me, so far, it has been fairly easy.  But, now that things have pretty much stopped moving in that downward direction I am trying to decide if I want to really crunch down and lose 20 more or am I happy where I am.  Do I really want to make my daily regime so strict to lose those 20 pounds that it becomes impossible to keep it off and then I keep struggling.  I don't want to struggle any more.  Is it just me that feels this way?

How about here on OH, Elaine?  Did you do any pre-planning last year and post your eats and moves?  You could go back through the archives and see what you ate that way too. 

You raised some really good questions...some of those have been in my mind too.  Do I really want to be strict just to get the last 10# off (AND will I keep it off or just yo-yo right back to this weight?) or can I just accept the weight I am now and deal with it?  Like you, I don't want to struggle anymore but logically I know that I HAVE to and will have to the rest of my life. 

I guess fighting this fight just gets tiring sometimes. 

AMEN   Tough choice, I know I want the clothes I have for now to fit me as I can't afford any more so more fighting for me.  But I had my bounce back of 7 lbs to get back to 140 and I am over that even so my goal is just to get back to original goal weight 140 and maintain there as that is also what the PS said I should do as well.  Stay at 140 in his words.