Merry Christmas and Happy Happy Hannukkah!

How is everyone doing with their eating??? I had one emotional eating episode that made me sooo sick.......It doesnt take much in the way of sweets to "do me in". My weight is steady. The challenge will be tomorrow.
A huge family meal for both breakfast and dinner....dinner should be fine...my ddil has provided wonderful carb friendly items.....I can pick out stuff for breakfast. My strategy is water water water....which helps amazingly.I will take the grandbabies out in the afternoon to run and play while the cooking is being done......

I will also remind myself how bad it feels to be "stuffed"and how I crash with too many carbs..

What are your plans??

Your plans sound great.

I am the cook, so everything I make for Christmas is low-carb friendly. My son is not a low carber, but he likes what I fix, so he eats low carb by default.

Avoiding that 'stuffed' feeling is something that I really enjoy about low-carb eating. I can eat until full and not have to worry about not being able to move around afterwards.

I've got a 22 pound turkey that will be roasted tomorrow. I will have leftovers through the new year.

Being the cook has its advantages..LOL
Have a blessed Christmas!

I am perhaps a unique maintainer because in addition to controlling obesity I am also dealing with overcoming having been to "extreme" in my eating and weight control.

Last year (when I was still "super strict") I found holidays a breeze; I was not comfortable but objectively, in my behavior, I was not excessive.

This year, because I have had to let go of excessive control, I cannot say the same. It has been more difficult and my behavior was excessive with binging episodes. Thanksgiving I binged ridiculously and found it hard to get on track the next days. Eventually I got it together again. On christmas I binged again but emotionally and behaviorally I did not fall apart like thanksgiving. I didn't feel the same "I have to eat EVERYTHING' bottomless pit desires to just gorge I did thanksgiving; I imagine this is because my relationship with food is getting better and I am getting used to the idea of eating "forbidden things", learning how to work that in my life. It's kind of liberating and empowering.

For christmas I got fitday pc and a super high tech food scale - these items have helped me stay on track and not give in to the urge to eat when not hungry. Ironically enough focusing on my intake a bit helps me deal with the urge to eat everything. I find it a lot easier to make choices and ENJOY what I can eat. When I have no structure I feel only remorse that I cannot eat more and as a result I never really enjoy anything. This is how I binge and gain weight, by eating and eating but mentally registering nothing because i am preoccupied with everything I won't be able to consume.

All in all I struggled and gained, for sure, but I'm still on top of things and getting there.

Food wise my strategy was to make friendly treats, focus on those, and eat forbidden things sparing and moderately. I planned I would over eat, and compensate later. This was reasonably successful but at the end of the night I had a binging episode on cookies and lost control but all in all it was pretty good considering how bad it's been in the past.
Today I am back on track and ran a mild deficit; I will slowly taper down as the holidays cease.

My best friend, my business partner and I have a challenge going. We weighed in right before Thanksgiving and will weigh in again the day after New Years. My goal is to maintain...theirs is to maintain or lose...we have made this fun...and are talking thru our challenges and discussing our own relationships with food. Very powerful time no matter what the result.

Maintenance through the holidays has gone pretty well for me, and is over with Christmas dinner out of the way. New Years is usually BBQ with carne asada -- easily done LC style.

I cooked the same dishes I always have, and indulged in one carby meal for Thanksgiving, one meal for Christmas day, with a small slice of fully loaded blueberry cheesecake for dessert.

On Thanksgiving, I had some stomach cramps and bathroom woes as a result, Christmas -- with the same dishes -- didn't do anything to me at all. Only thing I noticed was that I got really hungry just a couple hours after eating my holiday meal both times....after dessert, I just snacked on protein for my hunger.

Had no problems going right back to LC the next day, no cravings for any carby foods or sugary desserts.

MeB...you did very well!!!

Thanks! I started LCing back in Jan. 2005, and even back then I worried like crazy how I was going to handle the holiday season....knowing I would be close to or in maintenance, feared it would send me back into my old eating habits.

It didn't at all. For 2006, I'll definitely do the same thing I did this year :-). Hee, I only ate dressing and yams for the holidays pre LC, not a big deal to do the same now.

I just thank God that McDonalds isn't a holiday tradition. THEN, I would be in trouble ;-)

re;mcdonald's lolol