Great point about all the holidays RockinRobin, i forgot most of those. being a overnight worker, I miss most of the "one day" holidays. Though I do sneak into the Halloween candy bag once or twice.
But it always seems as though Christmas lasts from the day after thanksgiving all the way to Christmas day. close to like 30 days of cookies and pies everywhere. And it's hard to resist those cute little gingerbread men.

Now that I think about it, I haven't been to a birthday with cake and ice cream in a very long time. feels like it's been 2 or 3 years. Which is good for me i guess. My family is older now, we're all grown up and not many of us have kids yet so most birthdays are a gift and maybe a really good dinner. @_@ This year I'll make everyone a healthy yet yummy birthday dinner. lol

Status: one pound down. 7 more to go.

I am going to be cooking a lot of dishes and bringing them to other people's houses. I don't care if they don't eat them .. and i have vowed to stick to my plan. But I also won't deprive myself .. if there is something I really want I will have a SMALL portion

YES I feel your pain! LOL @ "April 19th Cupcakes" midwife

My yearly downslide starts w/ Thanksgiving, then my b-day, then Christmas season. No reason except lack of self-control and planning; however I must allow myself a little pity party that I am in retail foodservice, and do not get sanctioned time to eat during work.

I have been deluding myself about portions and treats and am already up some I worked out for all but 3 days of November and every day of December so far. Since I weighed myself yesterday and saw the gain I now see the truth and that helps.

good luck to all of us, and kudos to those that are seeing this season as just another month, say April

I was thinking about this thread today and I did NOT have the huge daily cookie that I've been having lately!

Woot! Way to go Vermontmom!

Kudos to those of you who have the self-control to say no to the cookies, holiday meals, etc. and stay on plan during the holiday season. For the rest of us who either don't have the self-control or choose to allow ourselves to enjoy the treats during this time of year, I think it is still important to plan and set limits and goals for this time so it doesn't become a free for all.

For one, I am simply trying to maintain my weight. I am willing to forgo any weight loss for this entire month in exchange for allowing myself the treats I desire. This includes Christmas cookies and eating more at the special dinners around the holidays. That being said, I am also trying to balance it out with some light eating days to compensate for some of the calories I am eating on the splurges. These are usually weekdays when no special events are planned. Also, if there is a special dinner on a certain day, I will try to eat a light breakfast and lunch to again allow more calories for dinner. Eating out more during Christmas shopping, meeting friends for a holiday lunch, there are more and more of these days coming up so I know I am either going to dread each meal or just enjoy myself and pay the price later. I know once January hits I will be back to my normal routine and will spend the first few weeks taking of the couple pounds gained during this season. And that's OK, for me.

At the moment my father has a huge plate of christmas cookies sitting on the kitchen table right now. They were a gift and has at least 6 or 7 different kinds of cookies on it. But I'm fighting the urge to snatch one. Thankfully I go to work in a hour so I'll be away from the temptation...at least till morning.

BUT!...I got recruited by a friend at work (who's much, much older) to come to her house with my bf to help her decorate all her chistmas cookies on saturday...

Get this....she makes 3 batches of cookies....each batch is...8 dozen cookies.

Her rule is... if you break the cookies... you get to eat them...I know my bf will help us out until he's full. I won't refuse to come because she's a older woman with arthritis in her hands and it's difficult for her to do so many on her own. I figure I have enough self control to not eat any...I'll just try really, really hard not to break any lol

Hi everyone!
I just wanted to give a update.
the other day my weight was 242.5 which means that I've made it back to my "Before Thanksgiving" weight
However today (and last night) my scale seems stuck at 244- 245.5 and it's driving me nuts. I know we're suppose to make room for fluctuations and to expect it but it still doesn't make it any easier. I'm trying not to get discouraged by two days weight gain even though I've kept on my diet.

In other news....there was a Christmas party at work today. I think I did pretty good. I walked past all the sweets and the mash potatoes and gravy and the roast beef. I instead got a roasted chicken leg/thigh and steamed broccoli and cauliflower. I ate only the leg and shreaded up about half the chicken thigh for my salad and added the steamed veggie combo to it. I didn't even have a free soda or the rolls or anything. My only cheat was the chicken. I'm proud of myself.

Way to go Sakai!! That's incredible determination. I've been going up and down too, but no worries you'll see a decrease soon enough.

you know what if someone gives me goodies to take home, I disperse them...or if there was a plate of cookies on my table in plain sight..they would go in a container on top of the fridge....I would let everyone know where they are, but I would definitely want them away from anything associated with my day-to-day eating.

I bought this pack of archway gingerbread cookies. And it is so nice to have them with my tea. I know the cs per cookie, 45 cs. So I feel in control. those homemade things, i do not know...so I would feel overwhelmed and out of control eating just one.

Omg, sakai, that chicken salad you made sounds delicious. I would have taken a spoonful of the other goodies, and focused on larger portions of the healthy stuff!

I bombed on Thanksgiving, but even that wasn't so bad. I'm proud of myself for being disciplined and motivated this holiday season. I'm trying to adopt healthy, balanced, long-term lifestyle changes instead of going on a strict spartan diet and binging later, and inevitably going back to my old habits and gaining weight. I want long-term changes not short-term. The holidays are just one small struggle for me, in the bigger picture.

I fill myself up with good, healthy low calorie food and I take a few bites from things that I want to taste. I'm also slowly changing my palate. I know this holiday season would be WAY harder for me if I still loved sweets as much as I used to. I started reducing my sugar intake several months ago, and I've gotten to a point now where I don't crave sweets, even when they are in front of me. I used to put 5-6 tablespoons of sugar in my coffee/tea, now I put only 1 tablespoon in my tea/coffee. It took more than half a year for me to tame my sweet tooth. I also don't want my food as creamy and rich as I used to. Sweet, creamy, rich foods are everywhere during the holidays, and they are very hard to resist if that is the kind of food you love. Of course I still love rich foods (who doesn't?) but not so much that I need to eat a lot of it in order to be satisfied. In the past I just wouldn't be satisfied with a few bites here and there.

I've lost about 7 lbs since Thanksgiving, but the holiday season isn't over yet. I'm planning on continuing my habits, and not giving up.

Update:

Okay.. you know how the scale was stuck at 244-245 for a few days and was driving me nuts? well I lost 4 pounds because....

I got food poisoning

In fact. 75% of the associates at my job (day, evening and night shifts) got food poisoning from the christmas dinner. it was a catered dinner. We (the night shift) just thought that they gave us a meal that was left out all day long...but we found out that those in the morning shift who ate the moment the food got there got sick.

My BF was so sick he was living in the bathroom and couldn't keep anything down. So he was too tired and weak to work last night. Though I was a bit queasy and sore in the ab area from all the cramps, I went to work.

-_- i didn't want to lose the weight by food poisoning....We should get a complimentary bottle of pepto.

^ ^ The hardest way!

I hope you feel better soon! Gosh, that's terrible. The company should ask for their money back.

Jay

Food poisoning? Well that's one way to drop some pounds. Yuck.

I hope you're feeling better and get back to losing in a more pleasant manner.

Feeling much better now. ^.^ Was able to eat normally yesterday so I think i'm back on track.

yeah it was pretty terrible. Even some managers were out of commission. But I think it's pretty much blown over now.

So now I'm shifting gears to Christmas dinner. I don't want a repeat of Thanksgiving. Lots of fresh ingredients, veggies and such to help offset the fact we're having duck for Christmas. And I think I'm going to send all the leftovers home with our guests so that they arn't laying about the house tempting me for a week like thanksgiving leftovers were.

Anyone else have Christmas dinner plans?