I love the 3-pound rule. My big worry was that I was going to be away for 2 1/2 weeks over the Christmas and New Year's holidays with no access to a scale! I feel so helpless without a scale - like being a trapeze artist without a net. I really rely on my daily weighing to keep me focused.

Only thing I was able to do was bring a pair of jeans that fit, but without much wiggle room, and hope that being able to wear those jeans would keep me on track - as there was FOOD everywhere. I did try to avoid the worst of the stuff - bread, candy...but I sure had my share of corn tortillas with salsa and guacamole. And my DiL begged me to make my Awesome Coconut Cake for Christmas dinner's dessert. It's is Awesome indeed, but a total white flour and sugar bomb, but I couldn't resist having some. Most carby sweet treats taste pretty horrible to me now when I try a bite. But I'm afraid the cake still tasted Awesome to me.

But the jeans still fit. They fit me the day I left for vacation, and they fit me the day I left to head home, so I hoped the damage was not too great. But even so, I had to *force* myself to get on that scale my first morning home. I could hear my brain saying "Not yet, wait until you have a good LC day under your belt first" - but that was always the slippery slope to disaster in the past. I would have a not-so-great LC day and would decide to wait *one more day* before weighing myself, and then I would end up having a cheat of some sort, and deciding to wait one more day. And before I knew it a month would have gone by, and I can easily gain 40+ pounds in a month, and it would be so dang much I'd say "the hell with it" and give up.

So this time, sort of like holding your breath and jumping into an icy cold swimming pool, I forced myself on to the scale. Sure enough, despite the jeans test, I had gained 11 pounds in those 2 1/2 scaleless weeks.

Of course I had to hope and assume that much was water weight, and I have been strictly back on track since I got home Tuesday night, and have already dropped 7.5 of the pounds. So I'm back on track again for the new year, and still have hopes of dropping my last 90 pounds or so.