Its weigh in day.................and the results are......................I've lost 2 more pounds!!! That's 7 pounds since surgery and 13 pounds overall! That's so mind blowing to me!

This has been a crazy busy week. Mom is home from her surgery and doing great! We are super excited to be in the same place now on this journey.

Last night was my first support group post-op. It was really great, we had a psychologist, Dr. Rose Smith, come and speak about the behaviors that we all have that need to change after surgery. She talked a lot about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy which is a tool I remember talking about in college in psychology and even in pharmacy school in several of my classes. Basically its another tool (just like the band itself) that helps you change emotional responses and ways of thinking that are influencing behaviors in a bad way. Specifically, CBT is used to help make you better able to handle situations which in turn makes you better able to control your eating. The example Dr. Smith gave was if I ate a piece of cake at work, I could think something like I've totally blown my diet and that I should just stop trying today and start fresh tomorrow. Maybe I would feel sad/guilty/ashamed/depressed/angry and if you're like me, with all those negative thoughts, you'd go back for a second piece of cake and probably overeat for the rest of the day. This example could be totally different with CBT, let's say I ate the piece of cake. I can train myself to think (quoting from Dr. Smith) "Okay, I shouldn't have eaten that, but I am not going to let this one mistake ruin my diet. I'm going back to my eating plan right now for the rest of the day; it makes no sense to wait until tomorrow." These thoughts probably would make me feel proud and good, leading to good behaviors like continuing to follow my diet the rest of the day and actually exercising that day. Dr. Smith also recommended a good book written by a psychologist who applied CBT to eating/weight issues called The Beck Diet Solution Weight Loss Workbook by Judith S. Beck. Just some food for thought!

Support group is so nice; I really love listening to all the folks at their different stages of their journeys. I also love listening to all the tips and advice from those further along. I encourage anyone embarking on this new lifestyle to get involved with a support group; most bariatric programs have one and its just so wonderful to have a group of people doing and going through the same things you are to interact with.

Thanks so much for all your support, comments, and for reading my silly ramblings! Y'all have a wonderful weekend.