Good morning 12/06 peeps!  For the next 13 blissful days I am on vacation and get to come here and play with you good people.  (Quit groaning!)  Last night our weatherman said we'd be having a rain/snow mix but so far I only see rain out there.  :(  My brain must be totally work-fried if I'm actually looking forward to seeing snowflakes.

So...one year ago we were all anxiously looking forward to our one year surgiversaries.  Things have changed for all of us as we are now approaching the two-year mark, haven't they?  I mentioned to Melissa in an e-mail that I wanted to see if I could find my online food journals from a year ago and try to eat that way to see if it would help me get back on track.  And thanks to Sparkpeople, I was able to find them and saw a much better eatiing pattern than I've got going now.  I may not actually follow those days to the 't' but I'm going to try to get back to my older, better patterns. 

Here's how my days usually went a year ago:

On the way to work....a soy latte and no food. (difference now...I'm eating something at home AND having the latte)
Mid morning: a homemade protein bar or muffin (difference now...a store-bought bar or a COUPLE of muffins)
Morning breaktime: usually yogurt and cereal (difference now, very often I'm eating my old 'weekend' treat breakfast of cc pancakes and syrup....,more calories)
Lunch: a protein entree and a small veggie (now, a protein entree and something 'sweet' like a sf pudding or homemade sf cookies, etc...more CALORIES) 

See the pattern here.... 

I've let the sweets and carbs (albeit sf and healthy) get to me and am not disciplining myself to keep them from racking up and then consequently...the pounds have racked up on my body!  And to be brutally honest, this eating isn't because I'm hungry all the time now.  It is because I WANT to eat.  I've been behaving like a spoiled brat food-wise and that needs to stop.  Remember that blissful point post-op where our bodies and our reduced food intakes came into synch and we all were at that stage where we were just eating to live and not living to eat?  I have to try to get back that feeling.   

So, while I'm on vaca I'm gonna dig up those old recipes and get my freezer stocked.  Gonna quit buying protein bars and go back to relying on homemade.  The pantry is pretty clean except for the chocolate chips I've bought for holiday baking for family and co-workers.  Maybe I'll just package those up in a brown bag and throw them to the bottom of the freezer so they don't look at me and make me want something sweet for a substitute.  Just seeing them is a trigger so they need to hide.

Very wordy, sorry....I think I'll go have my latte now and contemplate if I want to have some egg beaters this morning.  Maybe I'll put on some arctic gear and excavate my freezers to see what is waiting in there for me.  There should be some good healthy stuff like pumpkin protein muffins and such. 

Love you guys...I am so excited to have time to hang out here with you!!!!

Molly