Today is my nine month surgiversary. I weigh 154.2 lbs. I am down just over 73 lbs. from my surgery date -- an average of a little over 8 lbs. a month weight loss since surgery. My weight loss has really slowed down but the pounds are still coming off -- in fact, this week I had one of my best weeks of weight loss since having surgery.

I haven't blogged for a couple of weeks because I have been upset with myself over my slow weight loss the past 3 months. Last month I only lost 3 lbs. TOTAL. Very disappointing because I am still over 20 lbs. to my goal weight. I had stepped up my exercising (walking-running 4-5 days a week) but my eating was not good. I was a grazer before surgery and gradually I have become a grazer again -- NOT GOOD.

I had a couple of big breakthroughs this week. First of all, I realized that my innocent little afternoon snacks had turned into all-afternoon-long grazing, and I knew it wasn't really hunger-based -- I mostly snacked at work, and I have a fairly stressful job, so it was pretty obvious my snacking at work was emotional eating. At the encouragement of a friend, a few months ago I had bought Geneen Roth's book, Women, Food & God. However, I had never read it (for whatever reason, I was not open to whatever message was in the book). So, last weekend, I decided to read it and see if there was any help in there for me.

Let me just say, if you have issues with emotional eating that you are still struggling with (no matter where you are in your weight loss journey), this book may be a real help to you. I had several insights into why I was doing what I was doing with food. In a nutshell, to me food has been (for most of my life) the equivalent of a toddler's "blankie" -- it has been my security blanket, the thing that brings me comfort in the midst of chaos, stress, boredom, happiness, sadness, anger -- pretty much ANY emotion. I am by nature an introvert and a sensitive, "feeling" person (if you are familiar with Myers-Briggs, I am an INFP). This combo is, I think, probably one of the worst possible combos when it comes to emotional eating, because 1) as an introvert I don't often say what's on my mind -- I keep it to myself, but therefore don't release emotions through words like extraverts do; 2) I am intuitive, which means I can pick up on other people's energy and emotions; and 3) I am a very feeling person, which means when someone I care about is having a tough time, I really do feel their angst, I absorb that energy. So .... with that combo, I have all these powerful emotions swirling around inside me all the time, and never found a good way to release them, so turned to my security blankie -- food -- to help me deal with them.

I learned a couple of very powerful (and some would say obvious -- but to me they weren't obvious) techniques for dealing with my emotional eating. First of all, at work whenever I wanted to eat a snack I would stop and ask myself if I was really hungry. Mostly I wasn't hungry. My snacking dropped dramatically. I still do have one afternoon snack, but that's different from grazing. The second technique I tried that worked well is, when I was really having a mental battle (asking myself, "Kris, are you really hungry," and getting the answer back, "F-YOU, I don't care if I am hungry or not, I just want the FOOD! Hand over the pretzel crisps RIGHT NOW!!!") I got myself up away from my desk and walked somewhere to talk to someone (no shortage of people to talk to at my office) and that works too. It would break the pattern. That is what I really need to do -- break my grazing pattern.

The other thing I did this week was to try some new exercise routines. Now that the weather is turning to the rainy season (which here in Seattle lasts oh about 9 months), and the days are getting dramatically shorter (we are far north), it's no longer fun to go outside to exercise. I have a couple of Leslie Sansone Walk at Home DVDs (from pre-surgery) and started doing them again. I like her a lot. I also started going to a zumba class at the fitness center at work (class is held one day a week). The zumba class is a lot of fun, but frankly, I am very uncoordinated so I spend most of the class getting the steps wrong and feeling like a fool (fortunately, it is a small class and I am friends with several gals, and we just laugh at ourselves and don't take it too seriously).

I also had heard that kettlebells are an awesome tool to help quickly tone and build muscle, so got on amazon.com and ordered "Kettlenetics" which is an exercise DVD that comes w/a 4 lb. kettlebell. I received the package 2 days ago and did the routines. WOW, that workout made me feel every muscle in my body! I just finished the cardio video and was drenched in sweat. I love that workout because it really made me push beyond what I thought I could do. Frankly, while I was pushing myself on my walk-run exercising, I wasn't exercising nearly as many muscles and I really do need to be toning now (got some bat wings, have a little pouch, have jiggly thighs, etc.).

Between the less snacking and new exercising, this week I lost 3.6 lbs -- more than I lost the ENTIRE MONTH of September! SWEET!!!! Even sweeter because Auntie Flo made a surprise visit yesterday (hadn't seen or heard from her in about 3 months, so it caught me off guard), and usually when I get visits from Flo it means slow weight loss.

I have set a Halloween goal to be 149 lbs. Until this week I was really despairing that I would even get to 155 before Halloween, so this week has been fantastic for me ... I only have 5 lbs. to lose to hit that goal, and hopefully this new kettlenetics workout will help me continue to have good weight loss, muscle toning, and hitting my progress goals.