Hello, Fiona! Great to have you! Congrats on your loss!!!

Hi, skinnyki! We made it to the other side of Christmas. WHEW!

I gained NOTHING. WOOOOOOOT! I'm pretty pleased with myself.

Now I can start counting down till my birthday. Nine days.

Hello folks. After Christmas I weighed myself and found that I'd hit the dreaded 290. I am 10 pounds away from the dreaded 300 and refuse to EVER see that number. I will get this weight off and be a healthy mom for my kids and a healthy wife for my husband! :)

Hi, CourtneyDaisey! Welcome! I'm right there with you.

Thanks! We can do this and get out of this dreaded weight decade! :)

Hi ladies!!

TheSecondHalf- great news that you did not gain anything over the holidays. Something to celebrate for sure.

skinnyki- hello to you! Hope all is well. Like what you said: "we can do it!"

ShelBl- waving hello to you.

Fiona W- welcome and congratulations on your huge weight loss!! 56 pounds is fantastic. Can I ask what you have done to get there?

CourtneyDaisey- welcome! Maybe think about 290 this way: it is NOT 300!!! :):)

For me- I saw 291 this morning and that freaked me out. Some is salt but I think most of it is sugar and fat. Ugg.

I have been thinking that I need to start trying to frame weight loss less in a "loss" framework and more in a "treating myself well" framework. I tend to focus too much on the fact that I can't have food that I crave and that I am deprived. I still automatically see food as the way to soothe all the bumps of life. I see food as my reward for having a stressful job and too much to do. I need to start thinking positive- all the ways my life will improve with less weight. Especially my health.

Anyway, today I did some good things for me: started a new journal about what steps I am doing each day to treat me nice, rode exercise bike, ate a healthy breakfast and lunch and planned a healthy dinner, and did my arm/shoulder weights.

Wanting 2014 to be the year I hurt less at the end than at the beginning.

Let's rock and roll 290er's!!!

:cheer2::cheer2::cheer2:

Let's all try to be out of the 290s by the end of Jan so we can change the title. Deal???

Amen, TheSecondHalf! :carrot:

Thanks for the welcome, CeeJay! :)

Hello lovlies!

I missed you! Vacation was fun... good to go back and see people, and good to get some perspective on what's changed (including in myself) since I left.

I ate too much of the wrong things as expected - I'm up 7 pounds from when I left, between that and the falling back into old habits -.- I need to get back on track and start eating mostly veggies again. I can feel a difference without them, so that's something. But! I fit into the airplane seats without an extension or anything, and on a couple of the planes there was even a bit of space before the seatbelt was maxed! I'm happy with that.

Lots of stress eating and eating my feelings the last couple of days. Christmas morning, our epileptic dog had a seizure that she didn't recover from. Her heart stopped, and she was gone by the time we got her to the car to go to the vet. We have no kids and won't, so our dogs are our little family. It's been hard without her, after almost 7 years.

Welcome to the new girls! I still need to read all the posts while I was gone, but I'm happy that we've gathered a few more for the journey.

Have a wonderful Sunday, ladies. I'm happy to be back :)

ShelBl, I am so sorry! Our little dog is 14 and he is our first baby (he was seven when my daughter was born and they are best friends). I am so so so sorry.

Congrats on your airplane victory!

My husband and child are off for another week. I don't know if I can survive this level of togetherness. Everyone is too meh to get motivated to leave the house, but too antsy to stay home.

ShelBl - *hugs* I am so sorry about the loss of your dog. We have two dogs too and they are definitely like kids to us. :(

I am pleased to say that I weighed this morning and the scale said 288.8. Goodbye 290's! Still, these 280's better not get too comfortable because I don't want them hanging around for too long. ;)

Oh, congratulations! Good on you!!!

I am 290.5. I am SO READY for the 280s.

If anyone is interested, WW seems to be running a special - free sign up and half off the first six months. Can't wait!

I think I'm getting sick :( I slept till 10.30, got up and ate some oatmeal and then went back to sleep. I just woke up and it's almost four. I have a cough and I just feel off and exhausted. Ugh. NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Howdy y'all! (I'm from Texas, so that's how I actually talk =laugh=)

ShelBl— I am so sorry to hear about your dear departed dog. My husband and I have chosen to have fur children as well—in our case, they're cats—so I know how devastating it is to lose one of them. Seven years is too short of a time with a friend like that.

TheSecondHalf— Oh no! You take good care of yourself, and get well fast!

CourtneyDaisy— Congrats on being out of the 290s!

CeeJay— I know just what you mean about getting out of the "loss" mindset. I'm trying to think of this journey as a gift I'm giving myself from a place of self-love. As for how I've lost the weight so far, well it was sort of a spastic combination of trying to stay on the Atkins diet with intermittent binges on cookies. But I'm happy to say that the cookie binges are now a thing of the past: about 40 days ago I read Kathryn Hansen's Brain Over Binge, and since then I've been binge free. I'm still doing the low-carb thing, trying to stay under 40 grams a day but not being really compulsive about it.

I haven't weighed myself since the 22nd: gonna see what the scale has to say tomorrow. I'll be happy if I'm still 295, because I did allow myself some joy eating over the holidays. And I'm definitely going to split a bottle of champagne with my husband tomorrow night, so...it is what it is.

Oh boy! I just weighed myself, and I've lost 6 pounds in the past ten days! I don't see how that is even possible, given that I had chocolate on The Winter Solstice, but my digital scale doesn't lie. I'm so excited! I'm out of the 290s!!

Wow! Congratulations!

One bright side of this cold, I should weigh less when I cough this lung up, right?