Hopefully everyone had a great Thanksgiving.  I'm looking forward to the upcoming holidays.  This is the time of year when neighbors, family, friends and co-workers make sweet goodies and try to steer us away from our goals.  Remember why you had WLS!  What were you goals?  Did you write them down?  Were they measurable like... get to a size __ dress size or tangible things like fit in an airplane seat without an extender, see my toes again or something similar?

Don't wait until January 1st to make a resolution to stick to a healthy lifestyle over the holiday season!  Eating a bunch of empty calories and trying to convince yourself that you can get back on track in January may work or it may not.  Some people get very frustrated when they realize how much weight they gained over a relatively short timeframe.

So my challenge to you is to write down your Wellness Goals for 2009.  Remind yourself why you had surgery, what you had hoped to achieve and hold those goals in the forefront of your thought process.  Of course, ONE little serving of dessert at Christmas dinner won't ruin all the progress you've made since surgery.  The real challenge in that thought process is sticking to one serving of dessert.  I have a very hard to regulating sweets once I start.  It's best if I just avoid them.

So far, my holiday season has been a pretty healthy one.  I am sticking to healthy meals, exercising daily and keeping myself busy so I don't focus on negative things that don't help me continue making progress on my journey.  Sometimes we have to be selfish about our health, hapiness and general well-being.  We have to remind others how important it is to reach our goals and how their efforts at "pushing food" doesn't help us reach those goals.  By reminding people, we make our goals their goals.  In a sense, we are asking them to join the fight and help us instead of just complaining about it.

So why did you have WLS?  Were you sick of the roller coaster weight associated with eating what you wanted and then dieting to lose it?  Isn't that what this post is really about?  Eating what we want over the holiday season and then dieting later?  A healthy lifestyle should include some of the foods we enjoy in moderation.  Again, the key is being able to adhere to "moderation" and being honest with outselves about the foods we can't moderate effectively and avoiding them. 

Have a happy and healthy holiday season!


Mick

The Lawrenceville-WINGS group is celebrating their 1 year anniversary on Saturday, July 26th at 1pm.  They are doing a "WLS Friendly Potluck" and ask people to bring a dish that they enjoy post-op that they can share (please bring copies of the recipe to share with others). 

Not only are they having a support group meeting and potluck, but they are doing free bowling!  It should be alot of fun.  Not sure if it'll be RNY versus Lap Band or pre-op versus post-op.  Maybe just bowling for fun.  But bring your shoes, your balls and your game!  Of course, they have shoes and balls at the bowling alley too.

Brunswick Bowling Center (click for map)
3835 Lawrenceville Highway
Lawrenceville, GA  30044
(770) 925-2000

I am scheduled to attend the training sessions for OH meeting leaders this Saturday.  It consists of several courses and I'm lucky enough to be able to attend them all on the same day.  It's going to make for a pretty long day but... I am up for it!  This will allow me to help my friend Lauren facilitate her group: Lawrenceville WINGS and it'll also prepare me for leading my own group.

Once I take this class, my next task is scouting out a facility.  I am not a fan of meeting at restaurants.  It's distracting and can put people in the awkward situation of smelling foods they might really want to eat but wouldn't help them reach their goals.

So I have some searching to do in the Tucker / Northlake area.  If anyone has ideas, please send me a message!

Mick

Looks like the group is growing.  Maybe a little slowly but we are working to make it's content relevant to the Atlanta Metro Area.  Check out the Message Board for some new titles including: Recipes and Around Atlanta.  We'll try to add some healthy recipes that are band & gastric bypass friendly.  

Feel free to post your favorite receipes and/or restaurants for others to enjoy!

I have journaled almost everyday on OH for quite a while but this group blogging will be different.  I have to think about the kinds of things I want to journal/blog about instead of on my personal journal.

I welcome everyone to the group and encourage you to submit suggestions to me on ways to make this group even better! 

I am hoping we can schedule "chats" where we can all interact online and maybe even schedule events where we meet somewhere to discuss WLS related topics.

Welcome again.