How I'm handling the Holidays...

I love love love this time of year.  Not for the crappy weather, not for the gifts, not even for the liquor laced eggnog....no, I love it for the food.

     Nothing says "Happy Birthday Jesus!" like gorging yourself with the people you love.  This Christmas marks one full year since I knew it was time to take off my baby weight.  You can see the picture that got me motivated from last Christmas here.    So here we are again Christmas, I've been waiting for you so you can see the new me.  I am not to my initial goal weight, but I am down to pre-baby weight.  I'm actually down to my high school weight, but I gained 20 lbs senior year so I don't really think it counts.  I know that Christmas is waaaay more important than some weight loss, but the way I see it, I've just added who knows how much more time to my life to praise Jesus.
     My baby brother-in-law graduated from college this past week.  We drove up for it (despite a blizzard!) and ate wonderful food, stayed in a hotel, swam, talked, and had a blast.  It was such a great reason for us to all get together and I know my husband could not have been more proud of his little brother.  My mom sent along a pack of Joe-Joe's.  These are Trader Joe's version of an Oreo, filled with bits of candy cane.  I'm pretty sure I ate 3/4 of the box.  So that was obviously a mistake.
     Right before we left for the graduation, my mama, son and I had gone to visit relatives in Kentucky for about  a week.  I really was mildly impressed with myself.  We ate in a lot and cooked for my beloved 92 year old relatives.  I can't even pick out something that was totally outrageous that I may have eaten or gorged on.  The only thing that comes to mind is that on the 13-16 hours we were on the road (one way) I would buy RockStar Energy Drinks at some of our stops...

Now take everything on that label and times it by two, since there are two servings in every can.  I'm not a big label person, but even I know this is just too much of everything to be in something I'm drinking.  I also may or may not have had 2 or 3 Dunkin Doughnuts and some sugar with coffee and cream at a gas station at 5:30am on our drive home.

Despite all this, I weighed myself when I was at the Y yesterday morning and I'm only up something like a pound and a half.  I did crunches every night when we were in Kentucky and it felt so good to get back into the gym yesterday.  I got into such a groove running, I went past my usual one mile before I looked down to realize I was almost to a mile and a half.

Things are going well and maybe by Christmas 2011 I'll be to my goal weight...hopefully sooner though!!!