Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas!

I stayed in California and FaceTimed with my family while they opened gifts.  :-)  I stuck to plan 100% and plan to continue through these last 4 weeks without a cheat!  Not much has changed.  I am not having any more issues with dizziness thank goodness.  We had the MD visit and labs this week and all was perfect!  I lost another 3.something.  So my total loss at the start of week 12 is 35.6lbs.  I'm really happy with that number. :-)  Technically I have been completed 10 weeks of full fast.  So I'm averaging 3.5lbs per week.  They say weeks 5-9 are the true predictors of ongoing loss and it looks like I lost about 3/wk during that time.  The last few weeks things have picked up.  I think I'm getting more steps in and more exercise minutes.  I'm getting at least 40min/day avg and about 6500 steps most days.  According to the MFP predictors I think I'll be just around 190 on transition week.  Yeah!  My short term goal is 164 which just puts me in the healthy weight range with no wiggle room.  My ultimate goal is to settle somewhere in the 150s.  But I'm also not trying to spend too much time thinking about where I'll end up right now.

I've been super emotional at work and I brought it up a little at group this week.  One lady blamed hormones, but I know I've been unhappy in this job for quite some time.  I know that it isn't the job I want to stay in for the next 20yrs and it's hard.  I have feelings of guilt about it and I suppose the way I have been dealing with it so far is by eating those feelings and burying them.  It's a huge relief to have told the doctors I work with and I hope that by doing so I can either make this job more fulfilling and interesting or I can move on.  I applied for a job in San Diego that may or may not be more interesting.  We shall see.  The best case scenario would be my current job becomes more interesting and I can stay put. :-)  We shall see what January brings!

I was going to write about something else, but it slipped my mind.  Ah well.  We briefly talked about transition again this week.  We confirmed it is measure out 2c of veggies and THEN cook.  Thank goodness!   I don't think I could have managed 2 cups of cooked veggies. :-)  I got my multi-cooker and it is unpacked and ready to be washed for my first meal.  I am intrigued by the programs where people do full fast until they reach goal.  I can't help but wonder if that is a good idea or a bad idea.  While it is certainly inspiring to see the scale go down quickly, I think it is also good to see the numbers go down while eating real food.  They did tell us that we could buy up to 3 products/day after week 20 (our last week of transition.)  I have a feeling I will be doing that.  I like having my shake at night and I think that it will help ease me back into things.  It's a much healthier night time snack then a bowl of ice cream and just as tasty (or that's how I remember it-ha!!)  Some people in group are talking about how bored they are, some are super excited for food, some have been through this before and assure us that it isn't all that exciting when we get food because it isn't much and I guess the rest of us are just hanging out. :-)  I am in that group for sure.  I am just trying to think of transition as more rule following.  I plan to mostly eat the same things every day to make it easy (or at least the few items every week.)  They say the people who are successful at losing weight and keeping it off log what they eat, monitor their weight, get 30-60min of exercise and pretty much eat the same foods all the time.  Eating other things will be saved for dinners out with friends.

Guess that's all I've got for tonight!

Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!  Until next week (or until I need to write!)