It's a Christmas Miracle!!!

I got back from visiting my brother's family in South Carolina last night . . . after a 3 hour flight delay and a 30 minute cab line wait. Was very happy to be home after all of that!

So. . . how did I do over the holidays?? Well, I wasn't perfect -- but I did pay attention to what I was eating and the fill in my band forced me to keep my portion sizes small. However, (Confession Time. . . ) I just couldn't (OK, didn't want to) resist the home made cookies entirely. . . One of my uncles made these AMAZING home made chocolate chip cookies with pecans. . . and my sister-in-law made her famous neapolitan cookies (a row of pink dough, a row of brownie-like dough and a row of normal cookie-colored dough. That said, over the entire holiday, I probably had 8 cookies, whereas in years past, I probably would have had more like 4-5 per day -- plus wine every night . . and plus larger serving sizes at most meals.

One thing I should say is that I haven't told my brother about my surgery yet. I don't have any worries about whether he'd be supportive -- I know he would be. It's just that I don't feel like telling my sister-in-law about it at this point (or possibly ever), and I don't think it's something that I could reasonably expect him not to ever tell her. I just told them both that I've been watching my weight, let them know I'm down more than 15 lbs, and mentioned that taking time to properly chew my food is part of my weight-loss strategy. That actually worked out well, since it let me be careful when I wanted, but also didn't open my food choices up to extra scrutiny.

So, at meal times, I focused on chewing my food carefully before swallowing, which let my one reasonable serving last the whole meal every time. I wound up being the last person to finish at pretty much every meal. Now that I have a decent fill, I tend to get a little bit stuck at the beginning of every meal. It's not terrible -- and I can sit there and look normal while this is going on, but it's just really uncomfortable. I generally just found an excuse to get up from the table and get something for one of the kids when this happened, so that the stuck feeling could pass without me having to sit in front of my plate, not-eating. After that, I'm generally fine (and possibly more careful) for the rest of the meal.

Also, I noticed that by the time I got hungry, I was generally really hungry -- and even got into the "Danger Zone" twice. (The "Danger Zone" is the point when I'm so hungry that I get really, really grouchy. . . not a good look!) When I'm at home, I would have been less self-conscious about just getting a bite or two of cottage cheese or something to keep me from getting that hungry.

This morning I got on the scale to see how I'd fared. I really didn't know what to expect from the scale today -- on the one hand, I was very good (small portions, generally good food choices, largely avoided liquid calories) -- but on the other, I wasn't perfect (cookies. . . and having to have pizza one night when the restaurant choice wasn't in my hands -- I just ate the topping and left the crust). Want to know how it went??

I'm down another 1.8 lbs!!! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY, CHRISTMAS!!!

This is definitely a first!! I don't think I've ever actually LOST weight during Christmas vacation! I am totally giving my band a big hug right now . . well, in my mind, anyway! :)