Getting Ready for New Year's Parties

I jinxed myself with my last post, because my hunger really spiked yesterday. There was some major grazing happening.

This morning I woke up and it was like I'd had a fill - biiiiig difference in how much I can eat, really uncomfortable if I'm not following the Rules o' the Band. That's a good thing.

Things are busy here, we have two couples and their assorted six kids coming for New Year's Eve, and one of the families is staying overnight with us. Then we're having an open house on New Year's day for friends. I don't actually know how many to expect, because people are so bad about responding to invitations. How hard is it to click yes or no on an evite? Grr. I'm making wild guesses about how much food we'll need. I'm not really cooking for Saturday, just ordering sandwiches and bagels, but I'll be making lists and checking things off to make sure we have everything we need.

I'm grateful that we've had such a nice time this year with the holidays. My parents came and stayed with us, my mom and I cooked together, my dad horsed around with the kids, Hubs and my dad watched football together, we iChatted with my siblings and their kids. It was the perfect combination of busy and relaxing.

It's Christmas, So Of Course I Should Be Losing Weight

Well, color me confused. I feel like I've been eating like a fiend, but the scale is moving down every day. So much so that I replaced the batteries in my scale this morning. Still showed a loss. I guess that means my band is doing its job.

I'm now lower than I've been in a few months, just a few precious pounds away from leaving the 200s behind. YAYYYY for that.

We're snowed in here, almost two feet I think, so we hunkered down and we're enjoying the new Christmas toys (thank goodness for those).

I Blame Christmakkuh

It's December 20 and I've already eaten my weight in Christmas/Hanukkah cookies. I froze the leftover Hanukkah ones for Christmas, and I've been raiding the freezer. Forget the religious issues, celebrating both holidays is wreaking havoc on my waistline.

I have four big meals coming up, and I'm responsible for all of them: Christmas Eve, Christmas dinner, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day open house. There will be a lot of ordering.

I have a raging chest cold, and that does seem to be helping with the appetite suppressant side of things - I haven't gone near the freezer today. So that's good.

I went to a minute clinic about the coughing this afternoon, and the nurse practitioner used a regular blood pressure cuff on me. Because my arms, while not small, are regular-sized now. That was a nice NSV.

Back to holiday news: I haven't wrapped a single gift, I just ordered our Christmas cards the other day and I need to put together the grocery shopping list for the big dinners. Nothing like a looming deadline to get a procrastinator to focus.

Water, Water, Water

I've never been a rock-star water drinker like a lot of you, but I've fallen wayyy off lately. As in, I drink tea in the mornings and a large diet Coke through the day (which I often don't finish) and a glass of wine at dinner. And that's it for fluids. Not good.

The last couple of days I've filled up my awesome Camelbak water bottle and started drinking. This is slightly complicated by my 18-month-old, who goes batshit and shrieks at unbelievable decibal levels because she wants to drink from my bottle. (I don't want her to right now because I have a cold.) So I'm hiding in the pantry drinking as fast as I can, slipping the bottle into my purse to drink in the car, etc.

The Perfect Band Food

Actually, the perfect food, period.

I'm talking about bay scallops, those sweet, tiny little gems that are in season from November to March. Four ounces of bay scallops have 70 calories, half a gram of fat and 23 grams of protein. By comparison, three ounces of beef tenderloin adds up to 179 calories, 8.8 g fat and 23.6 grams of protein.

I just finished some delicious Nantucket Bay scallops for dinner. Yummmm.

However. The effects of latkes and assorted desserts from the Hubs's family's Hanukkah party has registered on my scale. Blech.

The race continues toward Christmas and New Year's...

I Am Officially Powerless

... Over Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

Cannot have them in the house.

Still a Learning Process

I got cocky. I've been able to eat a lot of things, in very limited quantities, and I pushed things too far last night with some pork tenderloin. Oh, how I paid for that. It was the first time in a long time I spent an evening sitting next to the toilet, flipping through catalogs.

What a bummer, because pork tenderloin is lean and packed with protein. (Also, I spent all day preparing it, along with roasted potatoes, fennel, carrots and parsnips.)

On the positive side, we had my in-laws over for dinner, but I didn't get sick until after they had left and we'd put the kids to bed. Thank goodness for small blessings.

The scale isn't exactly rocketing down, even though I'm focusing on solid protein and I've noticed a real reduction in the amount I can eat. I'm still 4-5 pounds away from being under 200, which I've been for about three months now. Sigh.

Patience, Padawan.

Hunger? What's That?

Life is busy and I'm in the thick of the holiday whirlwind, but my band totally has my back right now. I am rarely hungry, and I've been eating mostly when my stomach starts to growl or I feel light-headed.

You might think I've lost a lot of weight, but let's not lose our heads here. I'm on the s-l-o-w boat to China plan.

But 204.4 this morning isn't bad. As long as it keeps going in the right direction.

In the meantime, I'm waiting until the last possible moment to bake Christmas cookies, and trying to dodge the cakes/pies/candies that try to sneak into my house this time of year.

S C O R E ! ! ! (Sort of.)

The good news is, I made it through Thanksgiving with a weight loss, according to my doctor's chart. (I've now lost 6.5 pounds since Saturday night's weigh-in, which obviously was almost all fluid.)

The bad news is, these pounds have been lost before, so no new territory yet. But I do feel like I'm getting on a roll, and that's a good feeling.

I saw a how-to-lose-weight thing on a friend's Facebook page. It's written by a guy blogger, so there's some bad words and whatnot, but I think it has some good reminders for us banded folk. Take a look.

Performance Anxiety

I have a regular checking-in appointment tomorrow with my surgeon. The three pounds I gained over Thanksgiving are gone (and thanks for your comforting words during my freak-out).

But I'm at the same weight I was at the last appointment. Ugh, what was I thinking, making a weigh-in appointment less than a week after Thanksgiving? What was I thinking???

I won't be asking for a fill or an unfill at this appointment. I think I'm at a good place with restriction, and my food intake isn't bad if we're not talking about the day before, day of and day after Thanksgiving. So I'm going to stay the course.

I also think I probably won't be running the NYC Half marathon. The Team in Training director told me the event is oversold and there's a strict three-hour time limit on the course, which means once they hit three hours everyone has to get off the course (quit) no matter how close to the finish line you are. That's a 13-14 minute mile, which is incredibly slow but I'm pretty sure I'm not even that fast. So I'm looking at the San Diego Rock 'n' Roll in June, but only doing the half. I don't have a full marathon in me right now.