A Mix of Things

I know my American friends won't be celebrating for a while yet, but I hope all my Canadian friends had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday.  Mine was great and went on without any problems.  I was a little worried about it, but not because of gorging, self control or anything like that.  I was worried about the comments on the small, very small, plate that I ate off of in comparison to everyone else's.  As I have mentioned before, not everyone in my family knows and there are reasons for that.  I don't trust all in my family not to say anything and I sure as hell didn't went Thanksgiving to be the day where I sat at the table and explained myself to everyone.  Anyhow, thankfully, it was ok.  I eyeballed my portions and one family member raised her eyebrows about my plate but I simply said to her, "it's all I need", and she shrugged her shoulders.  That was the end of that.  I guess she figured I was on "another diet".

I have this really neat App for my iPhone, Target Weight, which I have been using to keep track of my weight loss. When I entered in my new weight a few days ago, it calculated that if I continue to lose weight at the same rate, I should be at my goal by 28 Feb 2012 (my goal is 120 pounds).  That got me really excited because I was giving myself 16 months to get to my goal weight.  With that being said, do I think I will be at my goal weight at the end of February?  No, I do not.  I spent some time earlier this evening looking over my numbers and I have noticed that over the past 32 days, I have only lost an average of 2.5 pounds per week.  Before it was an average of 5 pounds per week.  That realization was like someone gave me a good punch to the face.  Deep down inside, I have doubts that I will fail too at this, that somehow I will screw things up.  To see the numbers on paper makes me feel sick.  I think I am heading for a plateau soon and that really sucks.  I am only 6 pounds away from ONEderland and now I'm gonna hit a plateau?!  *sigh*  I knew it was coming, but I was really hoping and thinking that it wouldn't occur until after ONEderland.  Anyhow, after this disturbing discovery and my initial intense thoughts of failure (it's hard to get out of this mindset when it is all you have known) I had to do research online and on my stomping grounds, gastricsleeve.com, to realize that this is a normal, expected part of the journey.  It just sucks.  Big time.  BIG TIME.

I decided to prowl through another app, Lose It!, where I have recorded what I've been eating and drinking since the end of July to see if there was anything in there that could otherwise explain this apparent decrease in weight loss besides a plateau.  I noticed that I have been drinking increasing amounts of coffee over the same period of time and I do, unfortunately, add sugar and cream to my coffee (old habits die hard!).  As of tomorrow, that's going to stop.  I bought 1% milk, sugar twin and stocked up on my favorite herbal tea today. We'll see if this helps anything.  I am determined to hit ONEderland before I start plateauing dammit!!!!  My goal is to get to 200 pounds by friday, a 5 pound loss.