Santa Claus is Coming to Town....

Can you believe its almost that time for the jolly man to ride into town on his trusted sleigh pulled by those amazing little reindeer?? This year has passed so very quickly and it's hard to believe it is almost over already. It's been a good year though full of wonderful memories and many successes. There have also been the normal family tragedies that all families must endure, but those unfortunately are to be expected. So far I am handling the holidays well. I do partake of the seasonal goodies but within reason! I think I have a handle on the whole weight maintenance and feel more secure in that thought with each passing day. I went to our company Christmas party on Friday night and most of the employee spouses hadn't seen me since last Christmas, about 45 pounds ago. And it felt wonderful to hear all the compliments (I'm not conceited by no means but a girl does enjoy being complimented lol) about how amazing I look. It's great to finally be at a place where I can hear a compliment and mentally agree rather than think to myself "does he/she need glasses" or "are they simply crazy or trying to humor the fat girl". I am still the person who gets on the scale AT LEAST twice a day but I no longer freak out at the number staring back at me. I simply take it for what it is and go about my day. The scale is now a tool to help me stay focused on the end picture, and that is to continue to maintain my weight loss and never find myself overweight and miserable again. In short, the scale is my friend. Never thought I'd say that! lol I hope each of you has a wonderful Christmas full of memories that will last a lifetime. The family and I will be heading out on Christmas afternoon to drive 15 hours north to Michigan for a week with hubby's family. They haven't seen me since I was in the low 200s on my journey to lose weight so I am excited. Let's all remember to enjoy the Christmas goodies without depriving ourselves but at the same time, remember to eat sensibly and make the decisions that you won't regret once the holidays are over. Merry Christmas!!

New Family Pics

Hubby and I recently had a new photo shoot with our lovely girls. I thought that I would share a few of the pics we had taken. This is the whole family and the pic we used for our Christmas card this year.




This one is my dear husband and I. Since I've lost weight I absolutely LOVE to sit on his lap!!

And here is one of my favs of me and my beautiful daughters!

It still feels strange to me to look at all these pics we had taken (nearly 300) and be PROUD of them and to think I look good in them rather than to cringe with embarrassment when I'm forced to look at my size in a picture.

Losing Weight vs. Maintaining Weight Loss

I was really good over the last week and am thrilled to say that I have gotten rid of all those Thanksgiving pounds and am safely back within the lower half of the maintenance range I set for myself months ago. Whereas my range is 125 to 135, I feel more comfortable within the lower half of that range...I guess because I feel that it gives me more of a cushion to fluctuate without going out of it. I have now been officially "maintaning" my weight loss for 6 months and it feels great. I have always heard that losing is hard work but the real test comes with keeping the weight off. I can so easily see how that could be the case. Once you achieve your goal, you feel like you can finally relax and splurge more often on the foods that you tried to stay away from during your weight loss journey. I can definitely see that I have a bit of a different mindset now than I did while actively trying to reach my goal. Back then if I had dessert at a restaurant, it was only the smallest piece, more often I would concentrate on fresh fruit as my dessert. I don't know if I ate more than 4 or 5 chips during my entire 18 month losing process, but now I feel more comfy to partake of a serving with dip at a cookout. And don't get me wrong, I love being able to have that different mindset now and to be able to relax a little bit, but I can see where the same thing could get a person in trouble if they are not careful. I have mentioned before that I am a scale junkie and weigh every single day, truth be known, I weigh more than once each day (I know, I know...but its just me). Where this behavior could sabatoge some people, it helps keep me on track. After Thanksgiving when the scale wasn't so nice to me, I didn't beat myself up over the fact. I just thought, yep, enjoyed the goodies for Thanksgiving and now its time to get back on target. So for the last week I tried to watch closely what I ate and track all of my calories and go to the gym as I was supposed to, even when I didn't WANT to. My thanks is that here I am back to my desired weight and I was able to splurge for the holiday and not worry about calories. 6 months into weight maintenance I see that this will easily be something that I can live the rest of my life doing. You simply HAVE to have that accountability to yourself and realize if you splurge and gain a couple of pounds or so, you are going to work extra hard and eat extra well in order to return to the desired weight. When I lost weight years ago before my life fell apart after the hurricane, my problems started when I no longer had a scale and I couldn't weigh and physically SEE that number, physically SEE that I was gaining weight. Of course as clothes got tighter and I had to buy larger ones I KNEW I was gaining, but because I didn't have to really see the "number", I was in denial. If I'd been forced to put a number to my enlarging size, I don't think I would have gained as much weight back as I did (try ALL of it) and had to start back from scratch. This time around, maintenance is all about the motto: Enjoy the occasional splurge (be that one meal or a couple of days or even an entire vacation) but understand that you have to immediately get back on track when its over and lose any weight that you gained. So far its working!

Going in the Right Direction

The scale that is! I ate perfectly yesterday and was blessed on the scale this morning to be down 3.2 pounds. Knew a lot of it was water. I didn't go to the gym today as I never do on Wednesdays since I take off work early to take the kiddies to church. I have once again been perfectly on target with my meals and snacks today, although in the last hour or so I have definitely felt the munchies. I ate my banana and yogurt with granola for my 2pm snack and regardless of how hungry my body tries to TELL me it is between now and supper, we both know it really isn't hungry and it will be getting no food until meal time. Period! Until then, every time it makes the slightest little peep, I'm going to focus on drinking my water and floating to the bathroom as needed. lol This has been the TOM week so while I have never noticed it before, I am now wondering if the urge to munch on everything in sight happens right before I "start" and during this time. At 35 years old you'd think I'd have paid attention to notice that before, but I havne't. So I'm going to see if it happens again next month. I know that last week right before, I had a day at work where I wanted to eat everything in sight and then some. I could no sooner finish with eating one thing then I was thinking about what to eat next. Thank God those days are few and far between. I had planned to weigh-in at Curves tomorrow but considering my "visitor", I think I'm going to put it off until next week. Hope you all have had a great day as well.

The Scale is NOT My Friend....

I say that while I know completely well exactly WHY it isn't my friend. While my plan to eat as I chose on Thanksgiving Day without thought to calories was wonderful, the plan also included getting right back ON PLAN the following day. This is where I not only fell off the wagon, but the darn thing backed right up over the top of me. I did not eat myself into some sort of sugar coma on Thanksgiving, not even to the point of feeling horribly miserable. That was a success. We even went to see a movie that night and I avoided all candy and popcorn at the theater. Second success. I ate pretty well all day Friday, until we went to dinner with my parents that night and had a semi-healthy supper, but followed it with dessert AND then my dad, bless his sabotaging heart, bought us all a big milkshake afterwards. Saturday we ate out for breakfast and then had a huge lunch, followed by leftovers for supper (which included more of the desserts). Thankfully they were mostly gone by the time Sat. ended. Sunday I had a banana for breakfast and planned to be on task all day....then hubby stopped and got us doughnuts to have before decorating the tree. To add to the problem, he and I normally share a blueberry cake donut, but he bought us each our own this time. Need to beat him with my stick more often. (just kidding lol) He made burgers for lunch which wasn't too horribly bad, but then my parents took us out for Chinese for supper. I ate my normally healthy choices,,,but then the wagon knocked me down again and I had cherry cobbler with ice cream for dessert. And more dessert at home. Not good! Yesterday I decided I would be 100% on plan until Christmas so I could splurge that day and also enjoy vacation since we are leaving that afternoon to go north for 10 days. Did well all thru supper, then hubby came home from work early, put in a family movie for us to watch with the girls and then made way too much popcorn. After the popcorn, he cut some of my homemade pumpkin bread and I had some of that. Enough is enough! I have way more willpower than I have shown in the last week and its time I pull it out of my closet and dust it out and put it to use. I know its there, hiding, and just waiting to be used again. After all, I did NOT lose 150 pounds in 18 months without the ability to say no to those sweets that keep calling out to me! Time to own up to the evil truth...Thanksgiving set me back about 6 pounds! Ugh! But thats okay, I know it isn't all "real" weight. I say this because in spite of the popcorn and pumpkin bread last nght, I was still down 0.6 pounds this morning. Made me happy but then I wanted to kick myself because I thought "guess how much you'd have been down this morning if you hadn't had that crap last night....or at least had only had a small serving". Today I've been good all day and plan to stay away from sweets (which is my weakness) as much as possible. I went to the gym during lunch and burned 400 calories on the treadmill with some horribly steep inclines that nearly kicked my butt several times. My daughter finished the last piece of Mississippi Mud Cake yesterday which is good. Now to just keep away from the pumpkin bread and I'll be fine. I have weigh-in at Curves late this week or early next week and I already know I'm going to have my first gain since I started Curves 2 years ago. But thats okay...while I don't want to have that gain, I know its all part of a normal lifestyle which is going to be full of ups and downs. The key is to make sure I do what is necessary to go back DOWN which is what I always do. Hope you all are doing what you need to do as well to continue on this journey....