Ok... I have lost about 50 lbs since my december surgery. I have worked very hard for that number. Eating better, and excersising more than I ever have in my life. I go to the gym 3-4 times a week faithfully and feel guilty and awful when I miss a day.

I have been on a plataeu for a couple weeks now. You would think that this would get me working harder... but I have actually been doing worse. I am snacking like crazy. chocolate, Cookies, chips, and this is all new. I haven't really touched these things till this month. Now I am doing it more and more often.

It seems like when I ruin a day with eating a bad food, I consider it a failure and then eat all Snacks in sight. Thinking I'll be good starting the next day... Why is my food addiction coming back???

I have done so well. I feel so good. I am looking great.

It seems like any other time I have lost weight. I do great for the first few months and then bam! I hope this is not the end of my journey. I don't want it to be. I want to get the strength back that I had in month two after surgery.

I hope this ends. It must. I wish I never came back to this awful place. I know its because I am pmsing...but I can't let that be an excuse. I have to have control but seem to have none!:crying:

I'm not a Dec. Bandster, but I thought I could help! First of all...do some spring cleaning. Throw it all out. If you have kids or family that still wants them, tell them to put them somewhere you can't find them. If you have to go out and purposefully buy them, you are more likely to have a moment of sanity and put it back. I am going to copy and paste a post that I wrote for someone else. Maybe there is something in there that will help you.

Are you ready for some tough love? If you are not ready at this time, that if fine. Put it away in your mind that someone has given you some and come back here when you are ready. By the time I get to post this you will probably have 100 other replies, but I want to take my time and post what I really want to say.

Okay...here goes the tough love. And this will be a long post!

Nope the Cookies were not a good choice, but you ate them and now you need to move on and NOT do it again. You can't change what you have done but you can make better choices in the future. So the question is HOW IN THE WORLD DO I DO THAT? Well I will tell you that the answer is NOT going to come to you when you have a "cookie" (will now stand for anything that is not healthy for us for the remainder of this conversation) staring at you in the face. You have to have the tools and the mindset BEFORE that temptation ever comes up. We have to be ready to turn around at any particular moment and have a piece of cookie shoved in our face and realize that we are stronger than the calories, fat, sugar and peice of inanimate object that we are looking at. It gets harder as we have lost the weight and become a little more comfortable with our bodies. At first we were hell bent on getting losing, losing, losing. Well the newness has worn off and now we are just stuck with the realization that we will always have to fight the "cookies".

Alright I am all about being practical so here are some suggestions that I have.

1. Take a piece of paper (one that you can fold up into your wallet/purse/pocket ) and divide it into sections. You may have to write down everything and then rewrite it to get it to all fit.

a. Write down all the reasons that you had MAJOR, LIFE THREATENING SURGERY. Not the reasons that you wanted to just lose weight, but what caused you to make this drastic change in your life.

b. Write down where you think you would be health wise in 10 years. What disesases, illness would you have? What meds would you be on. Look at your family for "inspiration". For me my mom died at 53 weighing 350+ pounds and had heart disease, diabetes, sleep apnea and a whole host of other disorders. Within 10 years, I was going to be there.

c. Write down why you are more powerful than a cookie (this one is tough!)

d. Find some typical foods that you would love to eat (your cookies) and look up the calories and then find out how much time you would have to spend working them off in the gym.

e. Write down what about you makes you important enough to overcome your demons.

f. Now you are going to want to fit all of this on a piece of paper in bullet form so when you are faced with you cookies you can look at it and allow you to mentally fight the war that has just come up. If you can justify eating that cookie after looking at your paper, then eat it, but have no regrets, and do not dwell on it. Instead you have faced the problem UP FRONT and not looked back on it.

2. Another possible tactic. I know that you are having a tough time getting your calories down. One thing that I have found that helps me is by eating the same foods that I like but with some simple substitutions and by finding ways to remove some unneccessary ingredients. For example. I make this dessert that had 1/2 cup of frozen berries, 2 TBSP of Cream cheese and 1/2 cup of granola. The cream cheese had 60 calories and I thought..."I wonder how this would taste if I didn't put the cream cheese in it". I tried it and guess what, I couldn't even tell that it was missing. Same thing with meatloaf. Instead of eating it with ground beef now I substitute grond chicken. As long as I keep all of my veggies and other healthy fillers in, I can't tell the difference. I really learned this from Subway. I found that if I went in and ordered a foot long sandwich (obviously pre-band) and got all this deli meat and cheese and then pilled it with my favorite veggies that I all I could really taste were the veggies anyways. So first I got rid of the meat and then the cheese, and the taste of the sandwich hardly varied at all. This is what I do all the time now. I will always fix something first and then think what can I do to lower or eliminate the calories without harming the integretity of the dish.

3. This is the one that everyone is going to hate. WE JUST HAVE TO HAVE WILL POWER SOMETIMES. Yep the age ol' dieting nightmare. (And believe me, I REFUSED to diet in my entire journey, so I use that word loosely) Our will power will not always be perfect, but we have to be able to stand up to ourselves and tell ourselves no. Before this surgery I couldn't tell anyone NO, including myself. So when my stupid head told me that I needed to go to Carl's Jr and get 2 big hamburgers and eat them in the 4 minutes it took me to get home so that I could look famished for dinner that was going to be served in 30 minutes...I never said no. NOW, I am comfortable saying no. It has helped me professionally, personally, and mentally. I thought that everyone would hate me if I said no, but now they no longer just expect things out of me. And I don't just give in to all of my brain's wishes. That is making me a better person.

4. Talk about your surgery. I have to honestly say that one of the greatest factors to my success is the fact that I have been open and honest about the surgery. I don't care what other people think about me. Go to 1A of this email and that should show you why there is nothing to be ashamed of. The more you talk about the struggles and successes of your surgery the less likely people are to shove food at you. We have one lady in our science department that brings in treats every week. After the 2nd week of school I told her about my surgery and not ONCE has she come in and offered me the food. She told me, if you ever want it, you may have some, but I don't want to push something on you that you obviously don't want. Yesterday at the staff meeting, the administration gave little food baskets to everyone for all there hard work during scheduling. However instead of a food basket I got a nice card signed by all the administrators, because the know that a food basket is pointless to me. I don't feel singled out, I feel very blessed that these people care enough about me to know what I need. Some people can't make these connections on their own and they need you to school them. Iknow this is tough, but I had to do it with my dad, my BF, and my brother. I asked them if they would offer a beer to a recovering alcholoic. All of them said no, and then I said then why in the hell would you offer me a cookie!

If there is any advice in here you don't like. Think about why you don't like it. Is it because it is hard...well guess what CHANGING is hard, but maybe just try part of it. If you don't like it because it goes against all of your moral beliefs, then ignore it. I will never know and it will not hurt my feelings. Even if you came back and said "Salsa you are full of crap and are an idiot" I would think " her loss!" and keep on lovin' ya. This is what friends are for. We have to be here during the good times and the bad. We have to be able to look (or type) at the other person and say "stop being an idiot" If we don't do that as friends, really we are no better than an enemy.

Salsa...

Very well said and very inspiring!! I am starting today on the right foot! Back to business. I am saving this post in my email for when I need to hear it again. Thanks for your time!

I've taken a copy of this as well Salsa because I certainly need a kick up the you know what. I can't seem to get out of these bad habits and it is stopping me getting any more weight off.

I hope things get better for you mrskrzyz, you've done amazingly well so far ! :rolleyes2:

Great answers Karri!! I was going to come looking for you last night to answer this because the minute I read it, I thought, Karri would do this so much better than me! And you did. Thanks for the time you took. And you found it without me even going to ask you. How is that for ESP!!!

You always give the best advice and you are definitely proof positive that this can be done! Whenever I am feeling like I can't do this, I look at your example and see "at goal" in only about 8 months. Absolutely amazing. If anyone doubts your wisdom, they just need to look at that.

I hope I'm half as successful! Thanks