Wednwsday, December 16th

     Wow !  Did I have a lot to think about and process last night !  As Kairk said, we are all learning who we are with food. Different strategies work at different points on the process, for different people or for the same person as they evolve in that food relationship. I am so grateful that I have found a safe place where people can honestly explore, process mew ideas, and get feedback. That feedback has been heartfelt and reflective of people's personal truth. It doesn't get better than that.

     Spencerella.. your playground metaphor really resonated with me... in maintenance the fence is just pushed back for more complex games. Thinking about how different words can activate powerful emotions in each of us on any given day/situation, I brainstormed a  list of harsh through gentle synonyms:

White       v.       Black

Good        v.       Bad

Recovery   v.      RelapseCompliant  v.      Non-compliant

Deliberate  v.      Unintentional

On Plan      v.      Off plan

     I am working toward a place where I would like to be deliberate/intentional about a healthy lifestyle. When I find myself in a new/unanticipated situation, that's when I find myself getting rigid.

I've downloaded Intuitive Eating to my Kindle. The journey continues !

Down .4 this morning. I seem to be hovering in the same 2-3 lb. range.....it is starting to look like I may have found my maintenance calorie range (at least when I'm not very active). Speaking of which, I did get on the treadmill at a reduced workload yesterday - 3 mph@2% incline for 45 minutes. The exercise itself felt easy but I swelled up pretty bad during/after, had a horrible night sleeping, needed to take Tylenol this morning which I have not done since the day of surgery and the swelling is still pretty significant this morning. Looks like I will need to take some more time off from exercise...grrrrrrrr.

Work all day today then our bible study potluck dinner tonight. Should be fun and my intentions are to make good choices overall but if calories allow I might allow myself a "treat" if I find one there particularly interesting!

Have a good Wednesday everyone!

Sorry about those legs!  Nighttime pain is the worst!

Good morning!  The sun is finally out after days of gloominess.  Rain is expected again tomorrow, so I'm going to enjoy the brightness today.

The scale was the same this morning.  I am trying to be more deliberate in my actions with food.  I brought several things from home to stock my little fridge at work with.  If I don't have things available, I more easily make poor choices.

Diane, I too have had a lot to ponder on.  I relish how much wisdom and honesty people here have and feel safe to share.  I've learned a great deal.

Paula, sorry that your legs were painful last night.  I'm sure with a bit more rest, you'll be back to exercising soon.  Take care of yourself!

Had fun at the Christmas party last night with my dance class.  We went to a local restaurant for dinner.  I did eat a couple of forkfuls too much of the peanut noodles that came with the meal, but listened to my body and my need to not have so many carbs, and stopped.

My kids have both had the creeping crud that's around, and I've been flirting with it - trying to ward it off!

Have a great Wednesday!

Mary

Yes, great tips from yesterday!  I also now have Intuitive Eating on Kindle and am thinking about my future Spencerella playground :)

My weight has been stable for a couple of days.  My challenge this week is that I am mostly off so I lack my usual workplace structure.   My very biggest trigger is having a project that I really want to get done.  It doesn't even pretend to be head hunger, it is full on a desire to eat to procrastinate.  I tell myself that eating won't finish the project up any sooner and move on.  At work, I have been able to do that with some measure of satisfaction.  At home it is always a much bigger nuisance, maybe because it seems like there is always something to do.  To combat this, I have returned to drinking a constant flow of zero calorie flavored drinks.   I still get some hand to mouth action but no caloric damage.  

Oh, an observation about society poisoning us.  My daughter had her braces taken off yesterday.  During the appointment, I chit chatted with office staff and the entire time we talked about working out/eating.  There is someone in the office that had VSG 14 months ago who has done great so they are familiar with that.  We talked about how there are WAY to many temptations available and wished that 95% of it would just go away.  

After the appointment, I realize that my daughter has a small gift bag.  I thought it was the usual dental gifts (toothbrush etc) but NO it was a bag full of full sized candies.  Too many for me to count at a glance but the bag was full.  WTH? I am sure it was the office staff that stocked those goody bags.

I can understand a bit of orthodontist humor in giving stuff that would have gotten stuck in the braces.  But what is with the VOLUME of candy?  (There wasn't even any popcorn which would have been fine.)  They happened to send me a customer comment email request.  I shall comment!

Hope you all have a great day!  I appreciate everyone's insights!

Lots of early birds today!  I'm back down to 114.  Another good day calorie wise but that included more than a sensible share of crap :-(  Also still jonesin' for Quest Bars, which I haven't had in the house for several weeks now.  I sure do love those puppies.  No other protein bar will do, so I guess I will eventually suck it up and put out the incredible amount of ca**** takes to buy them.  

Interesting convo here about being in recovery or in relapse and all the other words listed above.  I don't totally buy into that premise either, but with that said I certainly know when I'm in relapse.  I think my truth is somewhere in between - yes likely a bit schizophrenic.  

I prefer the on plan / off plan language, but utilizing it in a way that means that if I choose to be off plan, I'm actually on plan, so to speak.  I think that's the root of my use of words such as being deliberate or intentional about my actions, which I define as something I try to do on a daily basis (so 'one day at a time' applies).  So if I get up and decide that dinner is off plan, I'm actually on plan.  Crazy, right? But somehow that works for me.  In other words, if I spend my day doing what I intended when I woke that morning, I'm good. If I spend many days not following through on my intention, I'm in trouble. That's relapse.  And if I get up and make a decision to not be on plan many mornings in a row, that's also relapse.  Either way, relapse is about a pattern of behaviour - sometimes unintentionally destructive, and sometimes intentionally destructive. 

Fortunately, this just has to make sense to me!  

I'm with you on the on plan-off plan point of view. On plan for me means eating anything for which I have planned and that could be an ice cream sundae or pizza or some other food that does not promote weight loss. On plan also includes flexibility for days during which things might pop up where food is involved (like today we're having a Baby Shower during a staff meeting). Having flexibility built in, or really, the permission, to eat something not planned for without guilt has become an essential part of my continued success. Eating "off plan" still needs to be a deliberate choice to be okay. I have to thoughtfully decide if I want to eat something and what the ramifications of eating that thing will be -Will I go into craving mode? Will I be okay with the extra calories at the end of the day? Is eating just one/a little going to satisfy or instead trigger the faulty leptin response? After working through those questions whatever decision I make is "on plan" for me.  Going off the rails and bingeing in no way fits into the planned flexibility. Make sense? 

Yup makes complete sense to me. Very similar thinking and application of principles that keep us sane. 

I totally agree with this.  Glad that I am not alone!

The California boy is cold today. 30-32 degree weather is not my cup of tea. Luckily, the sun is out and it's expected to get up into the low 50s, so I shouldn't whine, but ever since VSG I have issues with being cold. It's not nearly as bad as it was the first two years, now, but I still get colder than I ever did before. 

Ha! I did a lot of thinking last night, too! After much reflection, I do want to say that I completely accept the idea of "recovery" in the sense that I am continually striving to better understand how and why I eat, what triggers can set up a binge cycle, etc... So yes, I do believe that "recovery" is a valid part of MY thinking process. Every day that I deliberately think about my eating and the types of food I eat and why I am eating them are days that I am working on recovering the basic instincts for eating that I was born with. Each day I do that I am honoring my body and my "soul" and gaining a sense of peace about food. The more I practice, the better I get. The most important thing for me has been finding that sense of peace and shedding the all or nothing thinking. 

Food is not like alcohol. One can never drink a drop of liquor again and be a-okay. Abstinence works for the alcoholic in recovery. Food is different.

I must eat to live. However, and this is the big however, I can choose to eat to honor my body and my well being. That means my choices must be conscious and deliberate because I do have problems with eating. I am focusing on retraining my physical and mental responses to eating and my food choices. I am able to "control" what and how I eat. It's just that I have had so little practice doing so. Also, being obese screwed up my metabolic response and hormonal response to eating - especially sugar. It is very hard work to retrain myself and my responses. Since this is my quest, I can not look upon eating calorie or sugar laden foods as relapse - even if my practice is not perfect. 

Eating is more like singing and dancing to me now. I need the practice to get it right. When I sing I learn the lead line first. Then I focus on the lyric and create a sub plot in my mind so I know what I'm singing about. Then I sing the song to reflect the meaning behind the lyric. That means putting in subtle nuances to infer meanings and feelings behind the words. This is how I feel about eating now. Eating for me is a complex, multi layered work that when done well seems effortless, but as witha song, a body of work is behind that eating to make it that "effortless" final product. 

Scale: down 1 pound. Calories yesterday: just under 1300.