Goodbye...

...25 pounds! I don't miss you at all.

I don't remember the last time I have been this excited about stepping on the scale. I am the one who usually argues with the nurse at the doctors office about getting weighed. I would say "Really? You need my weight again? Dang, you just weighed me a year ago".

When I started this weight-loss journey, we bought a new scale. The one we had was about 15 years old, had about an inch of dust on it, and wasn't very accurate. I had purchased that one when I went on Fen-Phen. We upgraded to a nice digital scale that tracks up to four people's weight. You program it when you first purchase it with each person's age, height, and your starting weight. It tells you what your body fat percentage is and how much you have lost (or in my son's case, gained) since you last weighed yourself.  It is also spot on accurate with my doctors office. Not bad for a $40 scale from Wal-Mart.

I do have to confess that I have become a bit obsessive with this scale. I need to stop stepping on it every hour to see if the number has changed (like maybe the scale was lying and snickering behind my back). 

In addition to the 25 pounds I have lost, I also said "goodbye" to a few other things this past month; some harder to give up than others:

• Bread (only hard when I smell it fresh baked or the Hubs is making toast)
• Chocolate (except for sugar-free Jell-O pudding)
• Candy (not hard at all)
• Beef (at least for one year)
• Coffee (gasp! but this is only temporary)
• ALL carbonated beverages (they expand the stomach)
• Pasta (haven't cried over it yet)
• Ice cream (can live without it)

Surprisingly, making these changes hasn't been nearly as difficult as I thought. I figured I would be curled up in the corner with my whoobie sobbing because I missed them so much but that hasn't been the case. This is how I know that I was (and am) mentally prepared for this adventure.

So, what do I get to eat to replace all of these things? Until I move to more solid foods, I can eat:

• Non-fat Greek Yogurt
• Low-fat Cottage Cheese
• Oatmeal
• Scrambled Eggs with a sprinkle of Mozzarella Cheese)
• Light Babybel Cheese chunks
• Mashed Potatoes
• Protein Shakes (Optimum Nutrition has the BEST flavors)
• Sugar-Free Jell-O Pudding (never knew it was so darn good)

I can only eat about 1/2 a cup of food at a time and it can take me up to an hour to eat it depending on how thick it is. If I eat to fast, my stomach gets crampy and I get the hiccups. I try to get in 90 grams of protein per day and try to keep my caloric intake around 900 but it can be difficult to get that many calories in right now.

As I write this, it amazes me that I actually just said it is difficult to get in 900 calories a day right now. Considering we used to eat at fast food restuarants quite often, my favorite meal at Jack-in-the-Box totaled 1,880 calories with 109 grams of fat (and that was just for ONE meal for the day). So, what was in that meal? It was a grilled sourdough jack, medium fry, medium coke, and a big cheeseburger. Sometimes, I wouldn't eat the big cheeseburger but I was still consuming 1,240 calories and 71 grams of fat in one sitting. That is crazy to me now. Funny how I couldn't have grasped this concept earlier...

...Goodbye to bad eating habits and bad decisions. Hello to a new life and new way of thinking.