2014 - whoot and where the H-E double toothpicks did 2013 go

Wow, I haven't been on here since October -- very very bad blogger. I have to say, I have not done well. It's been quite an adjustment working nights and trying to figure out my food with this new crazy work schedule. And of course there's the whole holiday season thing and it's a much different animal one and a half years from surgery than six months from surgery and that animal was a chunky-monkey-chocolate-loving-cheeto-chompin' critter who couldn't keep her digits out of the cookie jar.

I'm not going to lament over the damage I've done.
The damage is a total of 9 pounds from my absolute lowest and 6 pounds up from where I've been hovering.

I've done worse.

And all in all I'm still happy with the success I've accomplished with weight loss.

And I looked pretty good during various holiday celebrations

see

 This was at my husband's company Christmas party. I wore a sweater dress -- I never thought I'd be able to do the whole sweater dress thing so it was nice to be able to. I wore it with black tights and boots -- yay boots. Had to buy the wide calf ones, but still felt really good to be wearing a pretty trendy hip outfit and look halfway decent. It had been a year since I've seen a lot of his co-workers  and I got some nice compliments. For which I was embarrassed but enjoyed.

 Our at home Christmas eve party -- I was super tired, I worked five shifts in a row right before this party and then stayed up getting ready for this one. If you want to you can read about it on my family blog here

So this is what happens when you're married to someone with a wicked sense of humor who had a little too much egg-nog. I had no idea what he was doing (I too imbibed in spiked egg nog -- see nine pounds up above). What a rascal -- what can I say, I love him and since we're not going into politics, I'm good with posting this embarrassing picture on the internet (seriously, it's still 'cleaner' than a lot of selfies I've seen going around :D) -- we can safely assume, my husband is happy with the way I've been looking lately (snicker).

So what is 2014 to bring?
My ultimate goal -- is to get through it alive. I'll be in school until July -- I can't remember if I mentioned it before, but I'm going back for a post-master's educational certificate. That with working nights, playing chauffeur and managing the household (not to mention a date night or two) I think getting through 2014 alive is an appropriate goal....

As for weight loss goals. I'd really like to get to my goal weight of 180 (36 pounds). To do that I need to go back to the basics.
1. Eat every 3-4 hours -- this one is difficult to do while working because I get in at 7pm and am so busy, I don't even sit down to chart until midnight, which is when I usually grab something to eat. Then I'm back up and running around and all of the sudden it's 730 am and time to go home.

how to help this one -- 1. eat snack on way to work. 2. be okay with a 5 hour lag of time and don't make it an excuse to graze on the ridiculously amount of candy that's lying around the unit. 3. use a protein drink as 'creamer' for my coffee. 4. Bring easy to eat protein snack to eat around 3-4 am.

2. Drink more water -- I've been totally sucking at this (see above). Keep water bottle on my WOW (that wheel around computer gizmo). Drink a glass of water right before I jump into bed.

3.RECORD MY FOOD (nuf' said)

4. Blog more. This probably doesn't sound like something people would put on a list of things to do to be successful in weight loss, but sharing my feelings seems to help. I attribute a lot of my success at the beginning of this journey to blogging. This also means, reading all of your blogs. Truly all of you are such inspirations.

5. STEP AWAY FROM THE REFINED CRAPOLA -- I'm not going to go all gluten-free, no sugar, never 'treat' myself to comfort food again. BUT I can make it a goal to refrain from doing that every five seconds.  Having something 'off-plan' three or four times a week is doable.

6. exercise -- ugh. I gotta do it. We all gotta do it. I feel better when I do do it. Why oh why do I not
just do it!

These are my goals. I think they're pretty realistic

So - stats:
at the beginning of 2014 I am at:
216
highest 320
lowest (since the surgery) 207
goal 180

Kay -- I'm gonna go catch up on all your blogs and see what your plans are for the new year!