Dear WW: I'm baaaaaaack!

So Saturday was the day!

I finally got to rejoin WW! The stars had aligned, and I was finally able to get back to my weekly meetings.

I was SO excited Friday night that I had the hardest time sleeping. I was just like a kid on Christmas eve, I tell ya.

Getting up to a 7am alarm after barely getting four hours of sleep kind of sucked - but it was for ME, and well, I'm learning to remember that I'm worth the effort :)

Such a bright red tree!!

The walk to the meeting was beautiful and cool and crunchy! (yay Fall leaves!). When I got there, I was SO happy to see Leslie, my regular leader - and she was happy to see me too! It was such a nice welcome back!

And get this - in my 3 month absence, I lost 9.5lbs (bringing my total loss to an official 59lbs!!)!! This is a HUGE victory for me. Normally if I knew I wouldn't be attending meetings for a while, I'd totally fall off the wagon. Or fly out a rocket ship - it was that bad. Cheezies for an after-breakfast snack?! Why not?! Pizza after dinner, two nights in a row?! Sure! I had that mindset, "Once I go back, I'll commit myself to it again. Until then ..."

Not this time.

I'd worked so hard to lose my first fifty pounds and I did not under ANY circumstances want to see even one pound come back on!

But it wasn't just about the weight loss maintenance this time. There was more to it, as I've come to learn along my joirney that the numbers on the scale are so minimal in the grand scheme of things. I'd worked very hard to train my mind to where it happily is now (healthy vs skinny, how I feel body-wise vs what the scale says), and to develop my good habits vs my old bad habits (apple slices after dinner instead of panzerotti, ground turkey vs ground beef, yoga vs couch-potato'ing). Did I really want to risk having to go through that again? To have to detox my body of all the garbage I was putting into it, suffer for days on end through the sluggishness and the enormous cravings?

Not even a tiny, Cheezie-sized little bit.

I'm so committed to my healthy lifestyle. I feel so good both physically and mentally. I have SO much energy!

I'm not going to lie - I did indulge along the way, maybe even sometimes more than I should have. Maybe I could have lost more than the 9.5lbs had I not treated myself as much as I had.

But y'know what? I'm totally thrilled with how my three months away went. I LOST 9.5 lbs instead of GAINING thirty. Total win.

I was able to prove to myself that I can be and will be successful on my new path, for good! I was able to keep at it on my own, even while I was away, and being able to prove that to ME, my harshest critic? A total confidence booster. I can't tell you how happy I am! As long as we make that commitment to ourselves - anything is possible! We can all do this!!

I'll tell you more about the meeting in another post. It was a great one!!

Have an amazing Sunday, everyone!

Our leader passed out Halloween goodie bags and this paper was in it - Good to know for the trick-or-Eaters!!