Confessions of a chocolate bunny...

I know we are a couple of days past Easter but I have been doing a lot of eating thinking over the past 2 days and have decided that if I am going to do this blog I need to lay it ALL out there. Good, bad or indifferent it all makes the cut. I started this blog to help hold myself accountable and it won't work if I hide the bad parts.

I found out on Easter (well, had an a-ha moment at least) that this is gonna be hard.
What?!? Hard?
Yes HARD.
Not the surgery... not the fills and the appointments and the adjusting... No the Lap-Band is going to be the easy part.
The hard part is going to be changing the way I think, or rather the way I feel about food.  The way I train my brain and my body to eat for survival not for happiness, or sadness, or celebration.

I have been doing soooo good the past few weeks with my diet and getting my exercise going. Making healthy food choices, staying within my calories, starting Zumba.

Then along came the Easter bunny.... Apparently an irresistible, diet sabotaging creature that uses some kind of voodoo to make you forget about everything you've been working so hard for.
At least this is what I thought as I was stuffing my face full of deviled eggs, baked beans, potato salad, ham, jello-salad, cupcakes and delicious chocolate bunnies.
Did I mention this was just lunch? Oh yeah, just lunch.. I don't even want to begin thinking about how many calories that was.

The beauty of having family close is that there are always 2 dinners for every holiday. So we hop on over to my grandma's house for dinner. I think I forgot I ate that day (or just erased it from my memory) because I ate like it was my last meal on death row. Again with the ham, the deviled eggs, the Hawaiian sweet rolls, the cheesy-gooey-fatty-delicious taters, the fried green beans.
PHEW! Glad that's over!
Wait.... I forgot... MORE cupcakes... strawberry shortcake...  and another egg hunt complete with delicious candy.

Wow, did I really just eat all that? I couldn't have... I must have been counting what my husband or my kids were eating too.. There's no way that this little ole girl ate ALL that food.

*gulp*

That was not a dream... that is really what I ate. And as I sit and think about it I start going back through the memories of past holidays.

Halloween?.... feast like a beast
Thanksgiving?...coma inducing feasting
Christmas?.... Can you say fudge?
Easter?.... Damn you chocolate bunny!
Memorial day? ... grillin' out baby
July 4th?... Feasting then fireworks
Birthdays? ... Don't get me started

I see  a theme here... and I realize now how easy it is to have a toxic relationship with food. I'm realizing that to be successful with the band I need to reevaluate my celebration habits.

This band is not going to make everyone around me eat better.
It's not going to make all the aforementioned holidays and celebrations disappear.
It's not going to make the casseroles and candies and fudge and desserts less appealing nor prevent me from partaking in them.

You know what the band is doing for me? It's giving me hope. I don't even have it yet but I know it's right around the corner. And I know it will help make that list a little easier to cope with.

Making better food choices is still going to be up to me... just like it always has been. This weekend was rough and I'm still recovering from it and convincing myself it's not the end of the world rather just a bad day.

At first I was really bummed out because I couldn't get my surgery back in september when I first started this process. I was so angry, and had lost hope that this would be an option for me. I wanted kick my insurance company in the face for making me do this 6 month diet.

But you know what? I've been learning soooo much in these 6 months... Not just about banded life, but about myself. I've been having a lot of "A-ha!" moments... A lot of light bulbs going off... about myself and why I am the way I am and the relationship I have with food. I have realized the lap-band is not going to change the way I feel about food. I have to change that. It's not going to take away the bad days, or the stress in my life or change the fact that I eat when I have any severe emotion on either end of the spectrum.  But for the first time in my life I have taken responsibility for the situation I am in and have accepted the fact that I'm the one who got into this mess and I'm the only one who can get me out of it.

The lap-band will help me... it will be alongside me the whole way cheering me on. But changing my life will be up to me and me alone.

I am so ready for this I can taste it.