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Found this good article- the section in pink titled reality check is especially good:

http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/wellness_articles.asp?id =596

De-Stress in 3 Minutes or Less

Stop Emotional Eating Before It Starts

What is the single, most common problem that most dieters face when trying to lose weight? Will power? Nah. Temptation? Sometimes. Emotional eating? Bingo! That’s why it takes so much more than good intentions and information about nutrition and exercise to be successful. The ability to manage difficult situations and feelings effectively—without turning to food and eating—is a necessary foundation for a successful weight loss plan and healthy lifestyle.

Fortunately, there are many proactive steps you can take to keep functioning on all your mental cylinders during tough times. These steps range widely from basic relaxation techniques to the development of a reliable support network. Other options include:

• Keeping a food journal to help you identify your emotional eating triggers
• Cultivating mental and emotional well-being through practices like meditation, mindfulness, massage, and yoga
• Developing good problem solving skills
• Turning to the Message Boards for help and support when you need it; offering help to others as a way to get your mind off your own troubles and gain a little perspective on things

But all of these things take time, and there are many instances when you need something you can do right now, to keep yourself grounded, focused and able to make good decisions. After all, you don’t always have time to take a walk, relax in a hot bath or call a friend to talk things over. That’s what we’ll be talking about here—a 3-minute trick for handling stressful situations in the moment.

Minute 1: Stay Grounded
Emotional eating happens when you lose your connection to your grounded self. Stress itself is not what makes you reach for something to eat. In fact, stress is often a good thing and your grounded self knows this! We need the physical stress of exercise to keep our bodies in good shape just as we need the stress of intellectual and emotional challenges to keep our minds healthy.

Nine times out of ten, what really leads to emotional eating is getting caught in a "mind storm" of worst-case scenarios, projections, misinterpretations, and all the emotional overreactions that come with these thoughts. This "storm" turns a manageable challenge into something that makes you feel helpless, overwhelmed, ashamed or afraid—and sends you to the kitchen to find something to stuff those extreme feelings. When you can stay grounded in the moment of stress, you have many more options.

Here are some simple ideas to keep you grounded when something (or someone) pushes your buttons and your feelings start to spiral out of control:

• Take a few deep breaths. (You can also count to 10, if that helps.) If the stressful situation involves someone else, take a timeout and agree to continue the discussion in a few minutes.
• Remind yourself where you are. Take a look around, noticing and naming the colors and shapes in the space around you.
• Notice the physical sensations you are experiencing. Whether it's a sinking feeling, turmoil in your stomach, tension in your hands or jaw, restricted breathing, or heat on the back of your neck, try to name the feelings that go with the sensation. Is that sinking feeling fear, or dread? Is the heat a symptom of anger?

The idea here is to stay in your body and in the moment—with what’s real—instead of going inside your mind where all those unreal scenarios are just waiting to get spun out-of-control.

Minute 2: Reality Check
Once you’re calm enough to start thinking productively, put all those thoughts that are clamoring for attention inside your head through a quick reality check. Here are several very common thought patterns that have no place in reality. Do any of these apply to you?

• All or nothing thinking
  Example: You go over your calorie limit or eat something on your “forbidden” list, and then decide to keep eating because you’ve already “blown it” for today. Reality: Weight loss is not a one-day event. If you stop overeating now, you’ll gain less and have less to re-lose later. That’s something to feel good about!
  
• Reading your own thoughts into someone else’s words
  Example: Someone made a mildly critical or unsupportive remark to you, and you feel completely devastated. Reality: The more bothered you are by such remarks, the more likely it is that you are being overly critical of yourself. When you treat yourself with respect, what others say won’t matter nearly so much.
  
• Either-Or thinking
  Example: You make a mistake or have a bad day and feel like a complete and hopeless failure. Reality: No one does well all the time. Mistakes are a necessary and valuable opportunity to learn—if you don’t waste them by getting down on yourself.
  
• Taking care of other people’s business
  Example: Something is going badly for someone you care about, and you feel responsible, or pressured to fix it. Reality: People need to learn from their own problems. You aren’t doing anyone a favor by trying to fix things just to make yourself feel better.

Minute 3: Putting Things in Perspective
Most common problems that you face in everyday life are much easier to handle when you keep them in perspective and avoid making mountains out of molehills. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to make sure you aren’t in the mountain-making business:

• How big a deal is this, anyway? If I knew I was going to die in a week, would this be something I would want to spend this minute of my remaining time on?
• Will any bad things happen if I postpone thinking about this until I have more time to figure things out?
• Do I have all the information I need to decide how to respond to this? Do I really know what’s going on here, or am I making assumptions? Am I worrying about things that might not even happen? What do I need to check out before taking action?
• Is there anything I can do right now that will change or help this situation?
• Am I trying to control something I can't, like what other people think, say, or do?
• Have I really thought through this problem, and broken it down into manageable pieces I can handle one-at-a-time?

Use this approach whenever your thoughts or situations begin to feel overwhelming, and you'll quickly find that the mountains that seem impossible at first can quickly morph into what they really are—manageable hills that you DO have the ability to climb. All it takes is three little minutes of your time.

Let's look at some more questions we can ask the food as we take a bite.     Are you going to bless my body? \  Do you fit into my healthy way of eating?    Is your taste worthy enough to go into my body?    Why do I want to eat you?   With the first question; Are you going to bless my body? We are looking for good nutrition; vitamins, minerals, fibre.

Do you fit into my healthy way of eating? This one is a simple yes or no.

Is your taste worthy enough to go into my body? This is just like going to a yard sale and buying anything just because it is a quarter. If something has no taste why would you want to put it in your body. Hey I am telling you this, because in the past I have pigged out on rice cakes. Why? And that is our next question?

Why do I want to eat you? Am I really hungry or just need a drink of water. Am I angry and wanting to eat to stuff my feelings. Am I lonely and feeling sorry for myself or am I just tired and really need to go to bed. Is this mindless eating? HALT and think about it for a second. That is all I am going to ask myself. Sometimes I use little mottos, words of wisdom and so forth to keep me on track.  Flylady gave this list of questions to ask yourself before eating food:

I am just 5 days out of what I pray will be my final surgery.
My 'tuck shop lady' arms are now slim.  Scarred, sore, bruised.... but slim.
It took a very long time to reconsile the scars I have versus the flappy skin.  But in the end I realised that as I age my arm skin would naturally sag- so my already saggy arms would end up ridiculously saggy.  Then I would be too old for the surgery, besides... if the scar go well I will have years of sleeveless fashion ahead of me. So worth the risks and scars.

My boobs were a long discussion.  The PS wanted me to get a breast lift then augment the bust after they heal.  I did some soul searching and decided that even if it meant a slightly bigger implant I didn't actually want a lift if I could avoid it.  The idea of losing sensation and having scars didn't seem worth the gain for me since the sag was empty tribal boobs but not belly button boobs.  The PS reluctantly agreed to implant on the proviso that IF (((if)))) the results still indicate a lift is unavoidable I will undergo a B-lift. Which can be done post implant.  Not his ideal preference, but my medical history is such that I have had 5 surgeries in 14 months and I am DONE with surgery.  To be honest, I was done BEFORE this last surgery.  But calmed myself and took the final leap.

The results:
Arms look good so far.  Praying hard that the scar will fall into the small and fine type category.
Size is unreal, pain basically close to zero.  I feel like a really girly girl in a way I hadn't realised I missed from my past.
I have learnt to be patient, but finsly await the purchase of new bra and pants sets... dresses that need cleavage... sleeveless tops... short sleeved blouses... T-shirts... oh... the fashion of it all.

With my new slimmed figure... thanks to my Bodylift... I am in the process of reinventing myself.

I am not only reinventing the messages in my head, but I am reinventing my wardrobe. (At last).  Anyway, I started to wonder "what" do even buy? What do I need is a good place to start.  Some of those things are obvious- like winter pants! But the the "where" do start? Who am I now? who do I want to be? Now my body is different I no longer have to follow my past fashion choices.  Choices designed to hide hips, camouflage a generous bottom and hide the baggy tummy skin.  Not to mention the slimmer thighs. Now I can choose what I like.  Naturally I have limits. Like money! My age and my shorter height.  But really the fashion world is my oyster.  I have been 'googling' articles about basic wardrobe essentials... trying to rebuild a basic workable day to day range.  I do have some clothes... mainly tops.  What I need is pants/skirts.  At the moment I have 1 pair of work pants, 1 skirt and 2 pairs of track pants that fit.  Bit limited!  I found a great article which discusses what/how to build a basic wardrobe at ANY size. The website also has many other articles which I have enjoyed reading.  I liked the following quote so much I added it to my signature:

Style presumes that you are a person of interest, that the world is a place of interest, that life is worth making the effort for.

This is the article I started with....

http://wardrobeoxygen.com/2005/06/staples-for-every-womans-wardrobe.html

Hope you enjoy the website too.

Em

 

 

Still not happy with it... but am feeling 'blah' so can't take a current one. Plus my hair is desperate for a cut at the moment- so it's better to use an older photo so I can remember my hair when it was freshly cut isn't it?

Em

I know you can't see the photo as well as I would have liked, but I am riding a horse for the first time in my life.

When I was MO there is no way I would have put a horse through lugging my heavy self.  Now, I finally feel normal enough to try riding a horse.

Loved it!

Em

While I was in hospital recovering from my lower body lift I had this moment where everything became crystal clear to me.

I have always seen my weight loss journey as like a long car journey.  You can't expect to go from A to B without ever stopping.  You wear out if you try.  Instead short breaks to 'sightsee' are called for... these are the times when we skip our exercise that day.. or a few days. The times when we eat a little too much yummy Christmas dinner, or cake with a friend.  These times are OK.  But as with any journey, the more you stop along the way to 'sightsee' the longer the journey takes.  After a while you get into a rhythm that you can live with, a balance of making the journey and of sightseeing ....just long enough spent sightseeing that you don't wear yourself out from too much travelling.

Anyway, I still find this theory and analogy true but with an AMMENDED concept.  It is actually an uphill journey. Like you are going up a HUGE mountain.  Just like when you climb a mountain there are parts where things sort of level out for a while and it doesn't seem too bad.  Yet there are those other times when you feel like you are trying to scramble over giant boulders just to stay on path.  As we climb we get stronger. There are times when the trees are thick and all we can do is focus on staying on the path.  There are those other times when you glimpse a view.... a NEW view... a view where the world seems bigger, and the past is behind you.  For me, I reached the last view point the car could drive to.  I was at destination B.  It was then I realised, you know, this view is awesome.... I have MADE it... but in time I looked further and saw the peak of the mountain all cover in ice and snow.  To fix my saggy skin was the same as deciding to walk and then climb to the next peak.  In hospital when things seemed to go wrong it was like my hands and feet were slipping on the ice... I would fall backwards then have to get back up and keep climbing.  Because choosing to conquer the ice is a one way choice.  Now I am at a new view point... so very close to the top. Let me tell you the vew is spectacular!  I am tired, I am sore BUT I made it.  I found the strength from the rest of my journey.

The last frontier... the arms and boobs... and maybe the face.  With each choice to climb further up that iced peak the thinner the air gets, the harder the climb, but on the other hand it's closer to conquering the mountain.  The last final surgeries are a smaller climb than the body lift surgery.  But I am a little frightened of the risk.  Equally I know the view.

To all of you reading this, all of you somewhere out there on that giant mountain... I assure you.. it's worth the hike!

Em

My life did get better.  I made the decision to let go of my dreams, because they were killing me, and I stopped asking the impossible of myself.  I changed my attitude and decided to focus on what I had rather than on what I didn't have.  And most of all, I decided I wasn't going to be bitter.

I have been having an almighty battle with the last few lbs of weight.  While I have been in my healthy BMI range for over a year, I was determined to get to exactly 'half' my original weight.

Today was the day.  Knowing my weight patterns it'll probably bounce back up again tomorrow!  But it is a good buzz to know that I finally got there.  Especially with my LBL around the corner.  I want a bit of a weight buffer so I don't gain too much with all that post op sitting about recovering.

Yeah me!  

I have paid the deposit and have a date.

April 10.

8 weeks.

Finally, my time is here.

Em