Wow, I feel great tonight. I had another perfectly on plan day. Today, however, was not as "easy" as I thought yesterday was. I knew last night that yesterday was a false "high" if you will. That I still the last dregs of some doritos in my blood stream. Today, I was hungry mid-morning and mid-afternoon. My snacks yesterday seemed unnecessary, I mean, I ate them but I didn't feel like I really needed them at the time. Today, I was glad to have them. I also drank a lot more water today than I have in a while so I was running to the loo a lot (yay, cardio at work!). Anyway, after today, I know that all the crap residue is out of my system and I'm feeling better for it. I also worked out again this morning, which was awesome. By the way, did any of you know that Rita Rudner has a program called "Ask Rita"? TBS has been showing it at 5:30 a.m. the past couple of days. I just wondered because I'd never heard of it before. I guess the premise is that folks write her letters asking questions (duh!?) and then she and 4 "guest comedians" answer the letters. It looks syndicated, but that's neither here nor there, is it?

The lovely Taylore left me a comment about yesterday's post and wanted to know how I had was able to get back into the mode of knowing that I can succeed. I know that I can do it because I've done it before. At the weight I started at last year, many folks would have thought that going for WLS would be a better option than trying to lose weight the way I've been doing it. But I lost 70 pounds last year. I was doing really well until a bunch of stuff starting happening at work in the fall that threw me for a loop and slightly off my program. During that off period, I learned that I could maintain my weight loss. For the first time in my entire life, I lost a bunch of weight, and kept it off. Now, over the holidays I did gain back a little of what I lost but not too much.

I let myself get really down about it though. This past weekend, I felt incredibly guilty about the gain. On Saturday, I felt as fat as I ever did. I looked at myself in the mirror and could only see myself as I looked 70 pounds ago. I even went so far as to pull out my fattest fat ass jeans (I know I should get rid of them but they are the one "big" item I've kept, so I can show myself how far I've come when I get to goal) and put them on. I wore them out for dinner (yeah, one last hurrah! before restarting on Monday). All evening, I kept having to hike them up. When I finally got home and went upstairs to change, they were falling down me. When I got to the top of the stairs, I had to step out of them or I'd have tripped myself up. This was a huge wake-up call for me, another light-bulb moment if you will... I realized that I wasn't that girl anymore, that I was fully 4 jeans sizes smaller now and that those stupid pants were never going to fit me again. Despite the small gain, I'd still maintained a fairly substantial loss and I was going to keep going.

This year, I'm not going to allow shit at work to mess with my program (because it was the one thing that really did interfere with it last year). I'm going to focus on my health and my family's health and our needs will come first, ahead of work. My job has been adversely affecting my health but I'm not going to let it get to me anymore. I'm not going to get stressed out over stuff that I can't control. I'm going to go to work, do the job that I love to do, do it well, and go home at the end of the day. I'm going to leave work, at work. I'm going to try to keep the political shit out of my head when I'm not there. This too will be tough but I am confident that I can do it. If I can sort my work shit out, I will be able to keep on my program and do what I want to do. I mean, I was able to maintain during the worst of it, when I was letting it totally bug my ass. This year, I'm not going to let that happen, hell, I'm never going to let that happen again. I will not let anything get between me and my health!

I started reading Dr. Phil's book last night and there is a quote on the first page of Chapter one that says, "Change can come in either of two important ways: Start behaving positively or stop behaving negatively." He's absolutely right and I'm going to work really hard in 2004 to replace my negative thoughts and actions with positive ones. I now understand what everyone has been saying about his book, it's good stuff. I'm only just starting it but I'm getting what he's saying and I know that I can combine what he's talking about with what I've been doing already and I'll get to my goal.