It is the end of week 12 and I am happy to report I lost 2 lbs this week! AND... are you ready for this!! NO constipation!! WOO!!!! I am sooo happy! I have lost 31 lbs post plication, 46 lbs total with pre-procedure weight loss, I have lost a staggering 21% of my body weight! and now have a BMI of 27.4. Just 26 lbs to go until GOOOOAL! And NO Constipation!! It's worth saying twice

The solution was so simple it totally escaped me for the longest time. PRUNES! Wonderful beautiful sexy hard working Prunes! I decided to try them out. I mean haven't our grandmothers said all our lives if you need to go have prunes??

Well the synthetic constipation remedies weren't working for me, especially met a mucil which bloated me and wasn't productive, so I decided to go a-naturale.

When I went grocery shopping Monday I bought a bag of prunes. On Monday night I had a 1 oz serving size which is 4 small dried pitted prunes, in 20 minutes it was productive. Wow. I thought, oh please let that not be a fluke! So the next day, Tuesday I decided to have 1 serving of prunes first thing in the morning and 1 serving last thing at night. That was a trial because I didn't want to take too much too fast and knew if it made me gassy I would cut it back to 1 serving a day for a week then slowly increase.

Beautiful. I have had the 2 servings a day since Tuesday and it is going soooo well. I feel really good and the fiber intake is perfect. I was looking online for naturally fibrous foods and read this good article that said if you eat too much fiber too fast you'll be gassy and bloated and I definitely did NOT want that. So I was a little apprehensive about taking 2 servings a day but I am so glad I did, it worked for me. The intake of fibrous prunes along with not having cheese for 2 weeks (the regular 2x's a day of laughing cow was doing me in) really helped my digestive tract to function again. Whew.

This week was very much about re-regulating my routine. Getting sick while going on vacation last week really threw me off. As it turns out I ate way below my recommended calories because I was worried I would go over and restaurants and other places don't post their nutritional information as prevalently in the UK. In one restaurant when I asked for the nutritional caloric value of the food I considered ordering the chef came out and glared at me. I also didn't drink my 64 ozs of water everyday or have my daily protein. This was all due to being sick as a dog. I didn't find it easy to work up an appetite or feel thirsty, so some days 16-32 ozs of water was all I could force without consequence.

So, this week has been much about saying, Ok, your flu is ALMOST gone... and you're feeling better every day so drink, eat, and reintegrate those daily vitamins which were also only taken sporadically while on vacation. I think there were only 2 days I took my vitamins, so 6 days without it. Again, all due to flu on vacation. I can honestly not remember that last time I got THIS sick! It was severe and the deep puncture throat coughing and mountains of mucus were the pits.

But I'm back and that is the lesson for me in this all. If I go abnormal for some reason for 5 days or so, get right back up and on track. I feel good that it was a severe flu that threw me off, not the vacation and that I erred on the side of caution when eating out and bought my groceries instead of eating out the entire time, AND this week a particular man in my life has begun to say, "you're looking really sexy", yes, he said sexy, not 'good' or 'slimmer'. Those are all tangible victories! All in all I think I did pretty good. (I didn't let the flu keep me away from shopping on Oxford Street in London. A gal's gotta do what a gal's gotta do come flu or high water)

Have a great week. On to 13!

Happy Losing!