Soooo... How did your holiday food choices go for you?

I did great! I really wasn't hungry, so that is always a plus when trying to keep the eating in check. We had our Traditional Christmas dinner which consists of: Prime rib, Loaded baked potato, salad, garlic bread.
I had about a 1.5 oz serving of the prime rib, from the center where there is no marbling present, so it was pretty lean. I had about 3 bites of my baked potato with some cheddar and bacon on it, and a side salad, which was small too as I wasn't hungry enough to eat much. Then had one bite of my hubby;'s garlic bread. All in all, not too shabby I'd say. The worst part was that I had nothing else to eat yesterday, except my morning banana. Had to make myself eat that.

How did you do? Don't worry... no beating up here... just suggestions to help with future struggles, if needed and wanted.

Hi Patrece, I hope you had a very nice Christmas despite the problems. I think I did pretty good too, although I admit I began my day with "eat everything in sight" in my mind! LOL
I had prepared a stuffed turkey with plenty of trimmings (American Soutern style, I admit I'm crazy about your bread stuffing and I've been making it isince 1980 for X-mas every year). Yep. I had the turkey, the stuffing, baked sweet potatos, corn, peas, salad, mashed potatos, gravy, honey macaroons... everything.
I piled a dish for myself and had every intention of emptying it.
I got as far as the third bite. Couldn't eat more. Oh I tried. Everything was soooo delicious! But my tiny stomach was full to the brim and would NOT accept more no matter how much I begged it!

I put my still almost full plate in the fridge promising it that I would lighten its load later that day. But I just couldn't get hungry again!! Sometime late afternoon I tried to eat one of the honey macaroons with my coffee.... what a mistake! My stomach got so full and heavy I had to take an antacid to relieve the discomfort.

All I can say is: Thank goodness and my surgeon, I was GOOD this Christmas despite myself!!

Well, I hate to say it, but I am glad that your body would not cooperate with your mind! You are that much farther ahead for it. YEAYYYYY!!! 

My Christmas was nice, while family was here. Those awesome grandbabies and the kids being here helped keep my thoughts distracted for a while. When my Granddaughter mentioned missing Crystal, I teared up a bit, but slammed up a temporary wall and fought off the emotions and just hugged Cheyeene and told her I do too, but that we will always love her and she knows that. And that seemed to satisfy her.

Before the family got here, I took advantage of the quiet late morning and early afternoon with a good long nap. about 3 hours if I recall correctly.

Hugs to you my friend!

It was a good day for me, as far as the eating goes.  We had French toast made with the P28 bread and Veggie bacon for breakfast.

For Christmas dinner, I fixed a chicken casserole recipe that I got from my grandmother years ago and had green beans, sweet potato fries and cresent rolls (for my son -- I still have issues with bread).  I could only eat about 1/2 portion of everything I put on my plate before I had to pu**** back and quit for fear of losing what I had eaten.

Later -- when we went to my sister's house, she had turkey to make sandwiches with and a cheese ball and whole grain crackers.  She also had red velvet cookie sandwiches, buttermilk cake and pecan pie -- which I wouldn't touch.  But she had bought a container of Yoplait Light Red Velvet yogurt for me to enjoy.  LOL!!  Talk about support.    I ate some of the cheese ball on crackers, about an ounce of turkey meat and had the yogurt and was happy.  I had taken my Crystal Light Peach Tea with me to drink because I wasn't sure what she would have to drink there.

All in all, not a bad day for staying on program.

Woooo hooo! Good for you. I always love it when people can feel good about the choices they made.
You are looking awesome lady! AND WOWWWWWWW 13 lbs BELOW goal! Time to stop losing..lol

LOL!!  Yeah -- I'm trying to get it leveled out.  I though I had, but lost again last week.  I'm not feeling comfortable at this weight.  I can see all my bones now and am really trying to put a few pounds back on -- unsuccessfully so far.

I've upped my calories by adding a protein shake, switched from FF to LF cheese, skim milk to 2% milk, PB2 to regular peanut butter and added some fats back in.  But to no avail. . . I don't handle more than 15g of sugar well and can't handle simple carbs AT ALL.

Any other suggestions?  Right now, I'm almost begging for that 10% "bounceback". 

The bounceback will come eventually, but not sure that it'll be 10% more like 5 to 10 lbs typically.
Add in an extra meal. If you can tolorate it, try some oatmeal with raisins and cinn in it. Whole grains (carbs) will help...not fats so much... Just be careful not to recreate bad eating habits or it will bite you in the behind eventually.

I'm still 7 days pre-op, but I will be honest and say that I began cheating on my liquid diet on Christmas Eve, and continued through yesterday.  I'm finished now, though, and will be strict with myself until surgery (at this point, I figure it's mostly about the safety of the surgery itself, and THAT I'm not willing to mess with).

I had 2 ravioli and 1/4 of a meatball on Christmas Eve.  Then, on Christmas morning,  I had 1 thin slice of homemade cinnamon toast with a tiny (dime-sized) amount of honey butter.  Later in the day I had a mini devil dog.  I *planned* to splurge on a meatball, but I wasn't hungry.... I'm actually proud of myself for deciding not to eat it because I wasn't hungry, rather than eating it just because I wanted it.  However, then on Sunday, I was disappointed because I'd promised myself that meatball LOL, so I had it (actually, two mini-meatballs), along with a 1/2" square piece of fudge.  

All was completely homemade, from scratch.  The cinnamon bread is out Christmas tradition... it'll be a hard one to give up if I can't tolerate bread a year from now.  SO completely worth it, even though I did gain a pound.... I checked again last night, and my weight was back to what it was on Dec. 24, so I'm good with that.  Each day, I ended up not being hungry, and only had 4 of my 5 allowable HMR shakes (actually, I think it was 3 on Christmas).

Now, I'll spend the rest of the week on-track, and focusing on getting my house clean and everything ready to go to the hospital!

Kudos to you for being able to share with the group even tho you did cheat a bit. lol. I will admit I cheated once right before my surgery...I just HASD to have a chili's beef fajita. I honestly thought I would never ever again be able to have one. Well I still can't have one, but I can have part of one now at 2.5 years out.

One bit of advise I'd like to offer you is to get in the mindset right away that nothing in the world tastes as good as being thinner and healthy feels. When there is that something you just have to have, try to limit it to a bite. Yes sugar is one thing you really want to avoid post-op, but that goes for all simple carbs too. Any carbs you take in should be complex, and they usually come in to the diet a bit later. I think after my WLS it was a full year before any carbs other than those coming from fruits and veggies entered my mouth. I was scared to death of them, as I knew they were one of my downfalls. I was being a bit extreme, but it worked for me.

Sugars and fats can cause dumping so be very watchful to avoid these for the mostpart for a very long time. I always tell people in my live support group, that they would do themselves a favor by believing they will always dump and never testing the waters there. LOL.

Let us know if you have questions we can help with. You did practice pretty good control at limiting how much you allowed yourself to have. Your surgical tool will help you with that more, and you will have several months early on to get all of the healthy changes into place in your life. Your pouch will make you most likely..

My wls was a wonderful gift that I will never regret nor take for granted. I only wish I had done it sooner.

For Christmas eve, I had a relaxing day, napped, shrimp for late supper before work.  I slept part of Christmas day, night shift worker.  We went to the inlaw's for dinner, thought meal was to be at 1 pm, had some crab salad and a couple of crackers as an appetizer.  Thought I would have no room for the main course.  Thankgoodness for undercooked potatoes and the need to put the meal back into the oven.  We got around to eating after 3 pm.  By that time, the crab salad was gone and I was able to have a few bites of prime rib, champaigne chicken and porketta(local seasoning for pork), I also took a slice of potato, 1 tablespoon of green bean caserole, 1 tablespoon of cranberry sauce and a small side salad.  I gave most of the prime rib to Dennis.  It was alright to leave food on my plate. 

Feeling the urge to get myself back to the gym for routine exercise again.  Needing help staying involved in the exercise.