Progress...

Hello, world!

Happy December! This is absolutely my favorite time of the year. I love the holidays. This year they are even sweeter for me than they have been in recent years. Last week was my first Thanksgiving with any of my family in FIVE years. In a few weeks I will get to spend Christmas with my family for the first time in THREE years. This year there are new people in my life and I'm excited to get to share this season with them, too.

Here's what I'm leery about though...the food. Anybody else?

I feel like I've finally gotten into a place where I am consistently losing again and it feels amazing. It's been three months exactly since I really started to embrace juicing, smoothies and eating mostly Primal/Paleo. I haven't even gone gung ho about it yet. I decided that at this point for me the only way to make it about wellness and not just losing weight is to focus on myself as a whole. That being said, in three months I have lost 35 of 37 pounds I had gained back. Yay!

Monday morning when I stepped on the scale after being away for the better part of the week for Thanksgiving, I found myself thinking "Well, it could have been worse!" I gained a pound and a half which isn't a big deal and as of today that is gone. But I found myself thinking this morning how different this holiday season is. I love to cook and I love to bake. I'm good at it and it's a stress reliever. I love baking yummy things for Christmas and spending far too long obsessing over decorating cookies with frosting that isn't so easy to make. I know, I know...I'm a little OCD and tend to want everything to be perfect (we'll get into that one in the next post!). I'm thinking that even though I'm "home" now and will be spending Christmas with family, maybe I should skip the baking this year or at least not do what I would normally do. I don't want New Years to hit and see that instead of losing or maintaining through Christmas that I gained back however much. Maybe it's silly but it's a mental thing for me. Deprivation doesn't work for me. Setting limits for myself does though.

I really tried to limit myself with what I ate last week while I was at home and feel like I did a relatively good job. I tried to limit the grains and the sugar as much as possible. I had no juice, no smoothies and I can always tell a difference when there is none included in my diet through the week. I'm more tired, more irritable. I've also seen the difference in my mood and how I physically feel when I eat grains and dairy. Those have to go. It's just not worth it.

For those of you trying to lose weight right now, how are you dealing with avoiding certain things you might normally eat during the holidays?

I finally get that there is a drive and a desire inside of me to be better. Period. To feel better. To do better. To be the very best me that I can be and not for anyone else other than myself because it's what I deserve. Progress.