Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a wonderful new year. I've been quite busy the last two weeks, we started our celebration on Christmas Eve and were back and forth visiting family every day until the Sunday after New Years. Jeff is back and work and everyone is back home and now that the dust has settled I can finally update my blog.

Nothing fantastic to report in the way of weight loss. I have hit my first stall and it has lasted several weeks. I have lost a few pounds in the last three and a half weeks but not many. In the first 6 weeks I lost 66lbs and in the last three I have lost 8. In total I am down 74 lbs. It is frustrating to get on the scale and see it continue to hover in the same place, but I know this is normal and will pass. I upped my calories at the request of my doctor who felt I was losing too quickly and I think that might be what has trigged the stall, my body needs to adjust to the new number of calories. The good news is that now that the weight loss has slowed I can get started with exercise.

I seem to have come down with an after Christmas cold and I am still experiencing problems with pain in my tailbone. I go to the orthopedic doctor on Tuesday so hopefully after that I will have a plan to manage the pain so I can start exercising.

Even though the scale isn't moving I am noticing other changes. My wedding rings are very loose, in another few weeks I am going to have to come up with some way to keep them on my finger or stop wearing them until I have them resized. My feet are smaller, I have gone down an entire shoe size. On one hand this makes me sad because I have quite the shoe collection, but on the other hand gives me an excuse to get all new shoes. I no longer get winded going up and down the stairs, I'm not quite sure when this happened but i've been noticing lately that it doesn't bother me at all.

I am enjoying and being home and stress free while I work on deciding what I want to do with my life now. I am taking better care of myself now than I ever have.

My nieces came to visit for Christmas and I had so much energy, no more getting wiped out in the middle of the day and suggesting we watch a movie. As a matter of fact, I think they gave up and wanted quiet time before I did. I can't wait to see them this summer when I will truly be a different person.

Before the surgery my hormones were not normal and it caused all kinds of crazy symptoms, it seems that only nine weeks out, these problems are resolving themselves. I'm am cautiously hopeful that it will put Jeff and I well on the path to being able to have children (In nine months and two weeks of course).

What I'm eating

I cheated a little over the holidays and ate some things that were not recommended with my diet. Tostitos and guacamole and bread with butter, though it is hard to cheat very much when your stomach is the size of a walnut. I am back on the plan now and hope that my weight loss starts up again soon. I think it will slow to a more reasonable rate at this point and won't I won't continue to lose a pound a day. The first two months gave me a big boost though.

Chicken and cheese are still a daily staple. I was getting bored with eating the same old thing and I starting making some kind of flavored chicken dish and then eating it for every meal until its gone, it certainly adds variety.

I was eating a lot of La Creme yogurt but it started to disagree with my stomach and so now I have switched to Yoplait light.

Beverages are still the bane of my existence and I struggle with what I can drink. Right now I am making it work with Special K tea flavored protein water, V8 Fusion Light, decaf coffee, milk and hot cocoa. All of those things seem to sit well with me. We currently have a very large stockpile of V8 in our garage.

I was never a cereal eater before surgery but after surgery I have found myself wanting it. I was pleased to discover that Special K has six grams of protein, when I eat it with milk it actually makes a pretty healthy snack.

My next endeavor is going to be meringue cookies, since they are made with egg whites and I can use Splenda instead of sugar they might be a perfect low calorie, high protein snack and I love meringue cookies.