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Eileen - Day #283 - Wednesday
 Daily intake goals::  < 35g carbs / < 1700 calories / > 64+ oz. water
Exercise yesterday::  30 min. elliptical + 30 min. ex. bike
Net carb grams yesterday:  31.6      Calories:  1342
Weight today:  237.6     Change:  -1.6    Total weight loss:  -47.6
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My blog entry today is dedicated to:  Goodlife

Ohhhhhh, no ya don’t!  Your comment to my last blog entry sure did get my attention.  “I’ve been so bad food wise this month. Have put on 4 lbs already. So I need to do a reality chk right now. I think I’m going to give the April challenge a miss. I’ll still update and all. But May will be my month…”

Girlfriend, you are halfway through this month - that does NOT mean that the month is a total loss!  You have 16.5 stars right now.  I’m only FIVE stars ahead of you at 21.5 - which means that you and I are COMPETING against each other - and frankly - I NEED YOU THERE!!!  I need you to go ahead and TRY to BEAT ME in stars like you did last month!

C’mon.  You know you wanna.  All the cool kids are doing it.

Are you recognizing this?  It’s peer pressure!  =D  Is it working?  Heheheh.

Seriously, though, if you’ve been bad at food and gained some weight this month well that’s already in the past and you can’t undo it but you CAN change the REST of the month, yes you can!  Please please pretty please come kick my butt?

Well… you know… give it your best shot anyway.  ;o)

LOL edited to add:  I just went and read your (Goodlife’s) blog entry from yesterday - HA!!  You’re already up against THREE challenges and I just challenged you to yet another!!  I tell ya what that peer pressure is a powerful thing!!!  =D

Also - did anyone else watch The Biggest Loser last night?  OMG I bawled like a baby when Mike’s brother was crying because “Now I’m the only big one.”  I know just how he feels and THANK GOD we can ALL do something about it!!!

I’m really hoping Mike wins because I just love that boy.  Er… young man.  <3  <3

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Oh, one more thing! 
Here’s the recipe for the twice-baked cauliflower / mock-potatoes:
http://www.genaw.com/lowcarb/mock_twice_baked_potatoes.html

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Eileen - Day #281 - Monday
 Daily intake goals::  < 35g carbs / < 1700 calories / > 64+ oz. water
Exercise yesterday::  1 1/2 hours playing outside!
Net carb grams yesterday:  19.6      Calories:  1311
Weight today:  239.2     Change:  +0.8    Total weight loss:  -46.0
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Easter was not difficult to manage, food-wise!

I made twice-baked-cauliflower (my low-carb potatoes!) to bring along with us to my Mom’s.  She had bought a ham and rolls and had made mashed potatoes (the real kind, hehe) and fruit salad.  I brought corn and green beans, a big salad, and my cauliflower stuff.  Lunch was delicious and everyone got what they wanted.

I had also brought a cake - a yellow one since my hubby likes yellow cake - which I cut and served about an hour after lunch.  I didn’t have any - I was still really full from lunch so it wasn’t hard to resist.  I promised myself some macadamia nuts later when I finally wasn’t so full.

We (my three men and I) left my Mom’s around 4:30.  We were in a good mood, riding in the Mustang with the top down and the weather was beautiful - so I suggested we go find a store that’s open on Easter and buy a ball.  “We’ll find a park, it’ll be fun.”  Well, the only store nearby that was open was a grocery store.  So the four of us went inside in search of something to play catch with.

The store had a big display of bouncy-balls, but no footballs or baseballs or softballs.  The boys really wanted a football, so we walked around the store while they made suggestions for replacements.  I had to take several items away from them in the produce department before they could demonstrate how each could be used as a football. 

Suddenly we see “Dad” coming toward us with something in his hand.  I said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”  My three men laughed as my husband demonstrated how this item could easily replace a football.  It was a chicken.  A stuffed chicken.  More accurately, it was a dog-toy, which resembled a cartoon-hero-chicken but it was rigged to work like a slingshot.  Pull back on this stretchy part and the chicken sails through the air.  Oh, and it makes a noise.  A cock-a-doodle-doo noise.  OMG.

We each tried it, laughing hysterically there in the grocery store.  At one point, Kevin said, “We’re gonna get kicked out of the store.”  I think that was right around the time the chicken landed on top of the freezer section.  Lucky that hubby is so tall.

We bought the chicken - and a bouncy ball.  We ended up in a church-yard, playing throw and fetch and catch and fetch and kick and fetch.  There was a lot of fetching going on.  And a lot of laughing. I got a nice workout out there - I actually ran a couple times.  I know I felt more energetic and more mobile - able to move - than I have in years.  It was good.

We stopped for a drink and I suggested we play four-square.  I haven’t played the game since I was about twelve, and my husband doesn’t remember ever playing it.  It, too, was a good workout for me.  We played for over an hour and I was sweating the whole time.  I have no idea who won, it was more about the laughter than anything else. 

It was a good day.  A very good day!

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Eileen - Day #279 - Saturday
 Daily intake goals::  < 35g carbs / < 1700 calories / > 64+ oz. water
Exercise yesterday::  nada.  zip.  none.
Net carb grams yesterday:  29.3      Calories:  1187
Weight today:  238.4     Change:  +1.0    Total weight loss:  -46.8
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Delita, you were exactly right.

We finished the federal report on time - it had to be submitted electronically by 4:30 pm yesterday - and then as soon as I had something to eat, I took a long nap.  Like really long.  Like an on-and-off-all-evening-long-kinda-long.  I needed the rest though, because the night before (Thursday night) I was up working on the report until past 5:00 in the morning and then got a couple hours of sleep on my office floor!  I didn’t want to go home to my bed because I was afraid I’d sleep in past noon or something, LOL.  I’ve been known to do that - I’m a pretty heavy sleeper.

Anyway, I was up and back at my desk by 10 am and ended up clicking on “Submit” at about 3:50 pm.  Ahhhhhh what a relief to have that done!

In between working on this report, this week I’ve been having email conversations with a nice young man in England.  Ha!  I put a job out there on rent-a-coder, a place where you can request bids on computer-programming-related tasks.  I really really want that stars table on the W8C site to work automatically!!!  Some folks seem to have no trouble at all updating and uploading their stars but others have nothing but trouble with it - and the thing is - it should be able to be automatic!  Everyone enters their daily stars on their personal page and then on the group page it should just *poof!* show everyone’s totals and display the proper graphic to go with it!  It should!  I just have no idea HOW to make that happen!! 

ARRRGGGHHH it’s so frustrating for me to not be able to figure something out!!  I have gone through a couple PHP tutorials and hit I-don’t-know-how-many PHP message boards looking for the answer to “how the hell do I do this?!?” and no matter what I try, it doesn’t come out right.  One of our 3FC chickies here, whitters, had offered to help me with the site but she came down with the flu and hasn’t been feeling well so I didn’t want to impose on her right now.  So I finally conceded defeat - and put a job out there on the rent-a-coder site.

I got nine bids for the job, and interestingly, some were from the U.S. but some were also from other places; Romania, Australia, and Somalia.  And the first bid I got was from this guy in England.  He asked for more details and so I gave him the url for the site and he actually went there and tested it out and tried the uploading stars thing for himself.  (If anyone noticed “testlukas” on there, that was him.)  I was impressed that he went to so much trouble to understand exactly what I wanted and so I told him, okay, I’m gonna accept your bid if you’re good with these terms, blah blah blah - and before he even agrees formally to the terms, he sends me a link to a “fake” site he set up - with a table that pulls the totals and loads the graphics automatically!!  Woohooo!!

He wasn’t supposed to do that, actually.  The coders are not supposed to offer a solution until a contract is in place.  And actually I don’t have the solution yet - I just saw it.  Or at least an example of it.  But I’m really excited that he - so quickly! - could have success!  Of course, he does this kinda stuff for a living, I don’t.  I’m just fumbling around in the dark, trying to find the light switch!

We still haven’t firmed up an agreement yet - he was all apologetic that he couldn’t do it over the weekend for me but he’s having friends in from London and won’t be able to actually work on this until Tuesday.  I wasn’t expecting him to do the work over the weekend anyway.

Right now I’m only paying for this one little change to my little newbie site.  I have lots of ideas for it (and whitters said that she had some ideas too) and so for those of you who are hanging with me I’m hoping that we see some cool improvements soon!  =D

I know y’all have noticed that the site has Google ads all over it.  I just want y’all to know that I don’t have any thoughts that I’m gonna get rich off this thing!  I just wanted to have the capability of perhaps the site paying for itself someday.  I don’t expect any of my 3FC chickie-friends to click on any of ‘em - just ignore the ads (just like we do here on 3FC LOL!)

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Eileen - Day #275 - Tuesday
 Daily intake goals::  20-35g carbs / 1200-1700 calories / 64+ oz. water
Exercise today::  35 minutes elliptical + 30 minutes exercise bike
Net carb grams yesterday:  34.6      Calories:  1438
Weight today:  237.4     Change:  -0.8    Total weight loss:  -47.8
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Tonight at 8pm I hopped onto the elliptical and watched the first 35 minutes of The Biggest Loser.  I took a short break and then at 9pm I hopped onto the exercise bike and watched the first 30 minutes of Dancing with the Stars and channel-hopped back and forth to The Biggest Loser.

Then I stopped to check my email and some other things and never got back to either show, meaning that I missed both eliminations!  Not a problem though, within minutes Google revealed brand-new recaps out there for me to read.  So I know who went home from both shows.  I can’t believe I actually watch not one but two reality shows now!  Okay, three, if you count The Amazing Race, which thankfully isn’t a typical elimination-vote-em-off-kinda-show but it totally rocks. 

The April Challenge is heating up!  Those stars are starting to fly!!!  It’s so exciting for me to watch everyone’s progress!!!

——- CAUTION !!! —– FOOD PORN AHEAD !!! ——–

Tomorrow is my daughter’s 19th birthday.  I’ll be taking her out to dinner.  I asked her where she wanted to go and she said, “Whatever the restaurant is that has that yummy dessert you know it’s like a brownie or a cookie that’s warm and has ice cream on it and then chocolate fudge sauce on the ice cream?  Yeah, that’s where I wanna go.”  I’m thinking she’s channeling Chili’s Chocolate Chip Paradise…

Or perhaps Carrabba’s Chocolate Dream…

Or maybe Applebee’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Sundae…

What really sucks about this is - regardless of where we go, she’s gonna order this thing and I’m gonna sit there and watch her eat it!!!  LOL, it’s okay though.  I won’t be tempted.  Because I looked ‘em up.

The Applebee’s Chocolate Chip Sundae is over 700 calories and over 100g carbs.
The Carrabba’s Chocolate dream is over 1500 calories and over 160g carbs!
The Chili’s Chocolate Chip Paradise Pie is also over 1500 calories and 220g carbs!

Holy Hot Chihauhau Batman!  No decadent flavor is worth going that far off my diet!!!  Nuh-uh!!!

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Eileen - Day #274 - Monday
 Daily intake goals::  20-35g carbs / 1200-1700 calories / 64+ oz. water
Exercise yesterday::  6 miles on the real bike (out there in the wind!)
Net carb grams yesterday:  34.6      Calories:  1591
Weight today:  238.2     Change:  +0.4    Total weight loss:  -47.0
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Okay before I get started blogging today, I have this to say:

STERLING WE MISS YOU!!!!!! 

Ahem.  I’m just really worried.  Okay, we can proceed now.

Hubby and I went out for a bike-ride yesterday, at my suggestion.  We got about two miles away, and I’m enjoying the scenery as we were riding silently side-by-side, and he looks over at me and says, “Did you bring the camera?”  I said, “No, and I didn’t bring my cell phone either,” thinking that maybe he wanted me to take a picture of something.  He gave me a stink-eye look (which is something like an eye-roll but nastier) and pedaled away.

So I got a little pissed.  I stood on my pedals and power-pumped a few times to catch up with him.  “What about you,” I asked him, “did you bring the camera?”  He said, “No, but if someone hadn’t given my camera - the one that I used to keep in the bag here on my bike - away to our daughter, I’d have a camera right now.”

“So,” I said, “because I did that, from now on, every time we’re caught without a camera, it’s automatically my fault?”

He laughed and nodded.  “Yes, exactly.”

I said, “You gave me a stink-eye back there.  Why??”  I asked because it really wasn’t like him to act like that.  And he said… (and thus we get to the whole reason for this story) …

“My ass hurts.”

ROFL!!!!!  OMG that still makes me laugh!!!

Apparently his bike seat is very uncomfortable for him and yesterday he was having such pain in his nether regions that his whole leg was bothering him.  I asked him if he wanted to turn around and go home and he said no, that he wanted to continue.

So we got to the overpass-thingie, the one that is such a challenge to climb.  The wind was blowing pretty hard against us, so hard that it was difficult to pedal on the flat part of the trail!  The steep grade plus the wind and I barely made it to the top!  When Hubby got to the top he had to stop for a bit because he was in such pain.  I asked him again if he wanted to quit and he said no. 

We went down the other side and he stopped about a half-mile down the trail.  He was having really bad cramps (charley-horses) in his upper right thigh that he decided that yeah, we should go home.  Of course I was agreeable and understanding - out loud.

Great, I thought.  I wish he’d decided this while we were still on the overpass because now I have to go up this ramp-thingie again!  The cool thing was, though, that the wind was at my back this time!  When I got to the top I was moving pretty quickly still and wasn’t even short of breath!  I felt really bad for Hubby because he was in such pain, that I couldn’t even celebrate how easy that trip up the ramp was!! 

It doesn’t look like that big of a deal, but it wasn’t that long ago that I had to walk my bike up because I couldn’t possibly ride up that steep grade!!

So anyway, I couldn’t really celebrate my (somewhat) effortless triumph over this man-made hill, so I thought I’d celebrate it here!  =D

P.S.  We went shopping last night and bought him a new (cushy) bike seat!

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Eileen - Day #272 - Saturday
 Daily intake goals::  20-35g carbs / 1200-1700 calories / 64+ oz. water
Exercise yesterday::  3 hours of being Hubby’s “gofer”
(equal to about 1 hour of exercise)
Total net carb grams yesterday:  30.1    Calories:  1472
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Hubby and I went garage-sailing this morning - rode around in my Mustang with the top down, it was SO gorgeous out!  We didn’t buy much (which is probably good) but the outing and the company were awesome.  =D

Last night we went to pick up our son from my brother’s house.  This past week was Spring Break from school and the poor kid had to go and WORK for his uncle.  He surprised me, though, when I got there, by announcing that he’d just joined the April Challenge!  Woohoo.  Little twerp posted NINE stars though because of all the work her did for his uncle!!!

Anyway, it’s just cool that my 16-year-old SON would WANT to join a bunch of ladies in dieting and exercise!!  Ha!  He told me last night on the way home that he considers himself “lucky” in the parents department.  I was like, “Awwwww, that is so sweet” until he went on to say, “You know, like compared to kids whose parents are homeless or drug addicts, yeah I’m pretty lucky.”  LOL!!!  Yeah you’re lucky, kid, you’re also grounded now.  Har har HAR!  =D

He’s really funny.  I’m so proud of him I could burst!

Edited to add:  This is his picture from his myspace page.  I personally don’t care much for photos that highlight one’s nostrils.  =D

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Eileen - Day #270 - Thursday
 Daily intake goals::  20-35g carbs / 1200-1700 calories / 64+ oz. water
Exercise::  Rested - sore as hell from yesterday!
Total net carb grams:  43.0  calories:  1513
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Yeah, Hubby wanted to go see Monsters vs. Aliens tonight.  Eh, it was okay.  The popcorn was awesome but unfortunately indulging this evening put me over in carbs for the day.  Usually if I’m gonna have popcorn I save up carbs to make room for it, but tonight I didn’t know we were going to the movies until well after I’d eaten dinner.  Oh well.

I suppose I could have just sat there in the theater with no popcorn.  Nahhhh.  LOL I’ve never done that in my whole life! 

I didn’t exercise today because I’m sore everywhere from the work I did yesterday!  It’s amazing that something like raking leaves and squatting down 800 times (to pick up stuff or lay out the mulch we put down) could make a person hurt like this!  Ouch!!  So I got a grand total of zero stars today.  It’s okay, I’ll be back at it tomorrow!  Hubby and I are going to do some more work at home since he’s off of work (spring break) and tomorrow’s his last weekday off.  We were supposed to go bike-riding but the stuff at home needs to be done.  Maybe we’ll go on Saturday.

I’m back to weighing myself every day.  I tried it - I gave it a good run - in fact, too good.  In the three weeks I didn’t weigh myself, I got a little too comfortable with not weighing myself.  *Sigh*  Is there no happy medium for me??  Sadly, though, I didn’t lose any weight in March.  In fact, since March 1, I gained 2.6 lbs.

I read in someone else’s “About Me” page (can’t remember whose!) that the person was now at the exact weight they had been at for many years - and it was like their body had developed a default setting so it stayed at that familiar weight level.  That is exactly where I am!!  I weighed about 235 when I got married in 2000 (going on 9 years now!) and hovered between 235 and 240 for more than 7 of those 9 years.  It’s been a VERY long time since I was in the 220’s or lower and I want to be there SO bad!!!  I’m gonna hafta REALLY work it if I’m gonna push through this stall and get my weight-loss moving again!

And so that’s what I’m gonna do!!  April is gonna be my breakthrough!

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MARCH WEIGHT LOSS CHALLENGE - DAY #31
Totals:  Tuesday, March 31, 2009

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If you’re new here and wondering what this challenge is click here.
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Eileen - Day #269 - Wednesday
 Daily intake goals::  20-35g carbs / 1200-1700 calories / 64+ oz. water
Exercise::  Over 3 hours of really intense yard work!
Total net carb grams:  20.6  calories:  1255
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The March Challenge is officially over and closed…

AND THE WINNER IS … JAXIE!!!  CONGRATULATIONS!

2ND PLACE GOES TO DELITAAGAIN!!!  WOOHOOO!

3RD PLACE GOES TO GOODLIFE!!!!

Each of you can right-click on your Challenge Medal
and “Save Picture As” to collect your graphic.

(You can insert the graphic into your widget, umm, if you can figure out how.)

Your medals will also be posted on the
www.w8challenge.com website in the Hall of Fame!!

AWESOME JOB EVERYONE!!

PS  Delita, I changed your password into w8c.  The other one was so negative it was killin’ me to type it!!  Your new one is all letters, all lower-case, eight letters long, and it’s an intense and difficult but really rewarding part of your life now - I think your son introduced you to it?  =D  I can change it again if’n ya want!

Edited to add:

I went back and looked to see how I’d added pictures to my widgets.  I added a text box (“Arbitrary Text or HTML”) and then inserted HTML language into it.  Unfortunately it doesn’t allow a right-click for paste, so I had to type it in manually.  But here’s the language, in case you want to link to my images.

For Jaxie’s gold medal:

<p align=”center”>

<a target=”blank”

href=”http://www.w8challenge.com”>

<img src=”http://www.w8challenge.com/images/GOLDjaxie.jpg” border=0 alt=”W8C Gold Medal” width=”227” height=”425”></a>

</p>

For delita’s silver medal:

<p align=”center”>

<a target=”blank”

href=”http://www.w8challenge.com”>

<img src=”http://www.w8challenge.com/images/SILVERdelita.jpg” border=0 alt=”W8C Gold Medal” width=”227” height=”425”></a>

</p>

For goodlife’s bronze medal:

<p align=”center”>

<a target=”blank”

href=”http://www.w8challenge.com”>

<img src=”http://www.w8challenge.com/images/BRONZEgoodlife.jpg” border=0 alt=”W8C Gold Medal” width=”227” height=”425”></a>

</p>

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Hey, just a middle-of-the-day update on the final March Challenge / switch to April Challenge stuff.

The following March’ers have been switched to April:

brseay
hveeck
joy
goodlife
jaxie
grabthebull

The following folks are already up and running in April:

inkheartmeg
eileen2
shallweshrink
sterling
katiesmom
whitters
canttellya
hungry4achange

The following folks are still in the March challenge but said they want to join April:

delitaagain
photogirljen
beerab

Let me know if you’re truly done with March and I’ll move ya over!

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