Mmmmmm-kay

Well, I went to the meeting today with a heavy heart. Confession time: I did not track in December. Oh sure, a day here and there, but mostly I just kind of ate and made best guesses in my head. Not good, but I figured, "Well, it's the holidays."

By and large, my weigh-ins were pretty good. For the month of December, I lost a total of 3.6 pounds. But this week, I even gave up on the guessing. I just wanted to eat me some food. It probably had a lot to do with everyone leaving, the holidays being essentially over, a release of stress, and maybe just a little bit of not giving a damn.

We had tons of Chinese food on New Year's Eve. I made a huge ham and scalloped potatoes for New Year's Day, topped off with a Pepperidge Farm coconut cake--the height of celebrating as far as I'm concerned. I made veggie dip, which Jacalyn helped eat, and though I used FF sour cream and light mayo, I still felt like "eh, whatever" and just ate it. I mean, white and creamy is white and creamy, so it's probably not that great for you regardless. I ate candy. I baked scones and ate them with clotted cream. We had pizza for dinner the last two nights--and at Jacalyn's, I ate a piece of deep dish supreme from Papa John's and I used the garlic butter on the crust. The week was a veritable orgy of good eats.

And I only formally exercised twice.

So this morning I trudged into WW with a heavy heart. Oh, I didn't regret what I'd done, but I had a bad feeling. My main goal on WW has always been not to have to repeat an award. For every five pounds you lose, you get a 5 pound star. And I've never had to re-win the stars before. I just got my 55 pound star a few weeks ago.

Well, guess what? The trend holds. By some miracle, I only re-gained 0.2 pounds, giving me a 2008 total of 56.2 pounds gone. (I am resetting the group total for 2009--so we're all back to square one! Let's see what we can lose in 2009!) I came through the holidays with a total loss of 3.4 pounds. This is nothing short of miraculous. The world did not end because I didn't bake cookies. My world did not end when I didn't bake for work.

But to be honest, my daily points allowance is 34 and I couldn't tell you what 34 points worth of food looks like. So this week, I get back to tracking. Back to daily activity. The people at the meeting rave about what a good walk does for you on a bad day, so if I get into a dark mood--which is almost sure to happen on Monday when I return to work from 2 weeks away--I'm going to take a walk. It's so freakin' freezing that I might have to do it at the mall or something, but I'll do it.

At our meeting, we were encouraged to set a goal for Valentine's Day week, which is 6 weeks away. I think I will set a goal of TRACKING and trying to lose 10 pounds. That's less than two pounds per week, so hopefully I'll be able to get it done. I will go back to guesstimating what we have at book club, and being pretty on target for everything else. The big hurdle will be our Three Kings dinner on the 10th, but I am usually so busy I don't get to eat until dinner, so I'm thinking that might not be an issue either. Plus it's on a Saturday after I weigh in, so I'll have the whole week to work it off. And if that doesn't work, I'll head down to the Mediterranean market on the corner where Eyup takes great delight in telling me how much weight I could lose if I ate there regularly and let him take my self esteem down a few pegs.

All in all, a very satisfactory result after a week of prolonged naughtiness. Back on track, onwards!