Well hello there, 2012.

How was everyone’s Chrismakwanzakkuh?  Mine was a little TOO good.  I’m so in love with my Christmas tree, I’ve promised it I won’t take it down until this weekend (hey, leaving your tree up til Epiphany is a thing, right?).

O Christmas Tree

Between hosting a cookie swap of my own…

Cookie Swap

…and baking my annual cookies for the neighbors

Christmas Cookies

…and enjoying plenty of holiday dinners with many loved ones…

Friends' Christmas Dinner

…and attending the wedding festivities of my cousin

Wedding Cake

…I’m ready to say goodbye to the 10-15 lbs I’ve picked up since October.  An embarrassingly high amount, yes.  It’s definitely easy to let one pound creep by at a time until all of a sudden you’re in over your head.  I never want to get back to where I was three years ago.

 Fat Kat - December 2008

I’m ready to be back where I was two months ago and to keep on going.

Lower-Fat Kat - October 2011Lower-Fat Kat - October 2011

And to lighten the mood…here’s a picture of my parents’ cat, Murray, wearing antlers.

Murray the Pissed-Off Reindeer

So what am I doing to fix my predicament besides bitching on teh interwebs? 

  • I’m logging my food (and exercise, if I ever do any!) on loseit.com – does anyone else use it?  I got my mom a FitBit for Christmas, so she and I are using LoseIt since it syncs with the FitBit. 
  • I’m making sure to drink enough water during the day – I was pretty slack about it over the holidays.
  • I’ve gone gluten-free.  Now, I’m not doing it to lose weight – I’ve been diagnosed with gluten intolerance but haven’t done much about it.  Over Christmas I was pretty much eating whatever I felt like – cookies, pasta, breads – and I am paying dearly for it.  GI issues, inflammation and achiness, depression and mood swings, congestion – my major symptoms have gotten so much worse over the past month, and I’m ready to scrap it all if it means not feeling like a slug anymore.  And, admittedly, it has the added benefit of me cutting out a lot of carbs and really paying attention to labels for a change.
  • I got an iPad for Christmas and have actually been reading some health and fitness blogs on it lately – something I haven’t done in awhile!  I tend to leave Tweetdeck open but have a hard time jumping into conversations like I used to.  Bottom line, I’m trying to surround myself with positive healthy influences
  • I still work for the weight loss clinic, and I’m trying to spin my weight gain around in a positive way.  I need to get healthy for me, of course, but I also want to set a good example for the patients.  Trying out new recipes and keeping in touch on social media sites is not only helping me help the patients, it’s helping me help myself [cue sappy after school special music].  So, yeah…the Twittering and the blogging and the Facebooking…that’s as much as I’ll say, since I tend to say “I’m baaaack” then disappear.

So, as trite as it sounds, I’m developing a list of resolutions for 2012 that I’d like to make public for accountability’s sake.  They’re not ready yet – I want to really put some thought into this and make sure I’m setting the right goals. 

Did you set any resolutions this year?  Did you effectively “reign it in” over the holidays, or are you suffering from overeaters’ remorse like I am?