Finally, the holiday season is over — and none too soon, for me. I confess: I have been a bad girl. The good news is that I’m back on track.

I haven’t posted to this blog in the last two weeks. I’m sure some of you have likely noticed. The first week, I posted a notice; the second, I didn’t.

The weekend before Christmas, we went out of town and spent an early holiday with my husband’s family. Among the gifts, I received a lovely Christmas virus of some sort — and it stuck with me through Christmas. I felt pretty horrible, but unfortunately, my appetite was unaffected, and when I’m sick, I don’t really care much about putting out an effort for food. I eat what’s easy and available, and around Christmas, none of it is good news for my thighs.

By the time I felt better, I was halfway to New Year’s Eve, and my brain convinced me I might as well do what the rest of the world does; wait until after New Year’s to get back on the wagon, which is exactly what I did.

Mind you, I think long term dieters need the occasional break — but this was the wrong way to do things. There was entirely too much risk involved; just saying “screw it, I’ll wait until next week” is a precarious path for me, because “next week” may turn into “next month” and then become totally fictional. Breaks should be planned, for exactly this reason. I’m glad that I got back on the wagon.

The bad side: I started the week off 17 pounds above my low, and I’m going to have to fight to get that weight back off. 5.6 pounds are already gone.

The good side: I felt *awful*.

Now, I know how that sounds — stupid! But it’s true.

One of the issues with being morbidly obese is that it’s insanely easy to ignore the scales and convince yourself that your weight really hasn’t changed all that much. (Nope, I didn’t step on the scale during my two week spree.) It’s one of the games morbidly obese people play with themselves; but we have to remember that we are NOT like people of normal weight.

Someone who is 20 pounds overweight, and doesn’t step on a scale, will notice weight gain a lot quicker than someone who is 100 or more pounds overweight. In larger sizes, the weight span between sizes is much larger, so as I put on weight over the holiday, my clothes didn’t suddenly grow tighter. I didn’t have to worry about a binding waistband or a tattling camel toe. At nearly 60 pounds down, I’m still wearing most of the same clothes I wore when I started dieting. So, really, I could have kept my eyes closed for a very long time and done a lot of destruction.

Except… I felt awful. I had immediate feedback to eating poorly.

It wasn’t just sickness, although that certainly contributed early on to feeling bad. No — it was water retention in my joints, blood sugar spikes and drops, the feeling of insatiable hunger that haunts me when I eat too many carbs, the inevitable IBS symptoms that start to return.

Plainly put, when I am on plan, even if I am not in an active weight loss phase, I feel better. My body can tell the difference, and it’s quick. It’s like the difference of running a car engine that’s been newly tuned and on good high grade gasoline, to one that’s been ignored and has a tank full of gas with water in it. On carbs, my body sputters, smokes, backfires, and runs horribly. 😉

So, although it’s only been a couple weeks, I’m glad to be back, and I feel stronger every day.