Hello all.. well my Birthday week continues and my low of 221.4 .. well that was a few days ago and I am NOT weighing until Sunday... as I still have my Birthday dinner tonight with my parents (Cannot WAIT! and Presents too! woohoo)...

Have a wonderful, terrific, supercalifragilisticexpealidocous day everyone!

:bday2you: Wanna!

Happy Birthday Wanna!!!!!

I fell off the wagon and I feel like I'm losing motivation :( Any advice?

What's working for me lately is remembering times when I stayed reasonably well on the horse for an extended period of time (the periods were anywhere from 2 weeks long to around a few months) and successfully lost (or didn't regain) weight.

I stop and close my eyes and remember how satisfied, happy, proud, and powerful I felt - top of the world, control over my life. And I try to remind myself that that feeling is right there for me anytime I am willing to grasp it.

And I have to re-remind myself that even if I fall, it's still right there. I fell a few times during those periods of awesomeness too. But overall, those were victory times. This can be a victory time too.

In fact, it already is! How far have you come in the last few weeks?

Be happy with where you are and how far you've come. Then imagine how you'll feel in a few weeks looking back.

And happy birthday Wanna!!!!!!!

I hit 219 on the scale this morning. :carrot:

That said, I just reweighed myself at 221. :dizzy: I'm sticking around here because my weight can vary as much as 10 lbs throughout a few days. Two days ago I weighed in at 226, and a couple days before that, 222.

Which btw has always seemed so weird - this is how it's always been with me. It has to be water. But the doctors didn't find anything wrong with my kidneys or anything, and I don't overdo salt or anything, so whatevs. It just means I don't let myself get too depressed when I see higher numbers, nor overly stoked when I see lower. But gotta say, I still love seeing the lower numbers. Inspiring <3

EDIT: Mistype, I meant 219. LMAO I don't even want to weigh 119! Way too skinny for me.

I've been holding at 231 for the past three days. Hopefully I'll make it out by next week.

Wow gonnabfit. I am about the same height, we are the same weight, and have almost the same goal! :D I just got a whoosh this weekend so not really expecting one again soon but still hoping for one! Hope you get yours soon!!!!!

Thank you all for your Bday wishes! I did have a great 3 days LOL :) (sausage pizza last night - 1st one since last Birthday!) So NO WEIGHING for a few days till I get rid of the water gain and some Fat gain too I am thinking!

Water retention can happen with salty food, Air humidity, working out - Muscle retention and if there is inflamation inside your body (sickness, allergies, cuts, wounds, colds etc) Water is what our bodies are made of and its what helps us get well! :)

Happy Day to you all! :)

Happy birthday wanna!!!!!!!

Ruby why are you losing motivation? Is the scale not moving? Can you set an exercise goal? I go through the motivation loss as well. Seems like I will be losing weight forever, but the truth is we are so close to our goals! Stick with it!!

AFM: I hit 229.4 today! :D:D:D:D:D I can not remember the last time I was in the 220s!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

wanna- The heat and humidity definitely makes me retain water. Summer is overrated if you ask me!

loozer - Great job on getting to the 220's. So happy for you!

Well I was .4 lbs heavier due to the aforementioned water retention. GRRR! I'm hoping for another whoosh before my mini vacay. Fingers crossed.

Have a great Friday eve everyone!

Thanks Sakurai

Justa - I think it might be because I've gone a while without eating clean and exercising and I went too far when it came to cheating every once in a while. Which is bad now because I haven't exercised so it's lingering in my body.

Hello everyone!
Welcome to those who have just jumped into this group
congratulations to those who are seeing progress in their weight loss and healthy living goals
I like to come on here and read a lot of the comments, but I just never know what to say, so I usually don't leave comments...well I did comment as much as possible so I could get my ticker lol
So my weight loss is slowly moving down.

I did read that we need 1500 mg of sodium a day. Am I reading the wrong sites?
I don't think I eat a lot of food with salt added, mostly because I am eating veggies, protein, & fat, so I do add a bit of Herbamare to my veggies.

Some days my weight doesn't change at all, the only time I noticed it went up was at that time of month, or at Easter, when I sampled one of the desserts I made....blueberry cream cheese puff pastry.....
I would have been just as happy to eat the blueberry and cream cheese with a bit of stevia...would that be so harmful to my weight loss?

Berries are supposed to be lower in sugar, and although I haven't looked it up, I am thinking that cream cheese would be considered more of a fat or protein than a carb.

Other than that I am sticking to my eating plan, which isn't any program that I have seen, just sort of a mix and match of what I have read.

Any comments?

Hi cleanslate! What you read is a recommended maximum sodium intake. Minimum is ~500 mg. It is very difficult in the modern world to eat too little sodium.

Most natural foods, even vegetables and meat, have some in them. Some more than others! Salt is almost always added when food is put in cans, jars, processed, or packaged. Also when meat is cured, stored, or cooked. Cheeses, yogurts, condiments... You would be very surprised just how much salt is in foods we eat every day - without adding a single grain!

So I would not add salt! The fact you don't use much is great, it will help keep your heart much healthier! (If you want, I can explain why it works that way.) Most people have to LEARN how get used to adding less salt. (Like me lol) Don't change!

Sodium intake in general:
2,000 mg is a good max limit to shoot for for everyone - but it's even more important if you have high blood pressure, in which case 1500 may be better. We get away with eating more if we have healthy kidneys, but they have to work harder to get rid of it without letting it raise your blood pressure. That can hurt them over the long term - even permanently.

Summary: Read food labels! Look at how much is in what you usually eat. It adds up. It can help to look at the % daily recommended amount.

Cream cheese is pretty low in carbs. The carbs are sugar, but the sugar is lactose, not sucrose or glucose, so it's different enough - your body has to process it before it becomes glucose. The slow processing makes it enter your system slower, so it doesn't spike blood sugar. But even then, cream cheese doesn't have much to begin with.

Berries are fairly low in carbs, and a great choice. When you look at carbs, the thing you want to stay away from are most sugars (especially glucose and sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup). Fiber carbohydrates break down very slowly compared with other carbs. Fiber is VERY important for all diet types.

Why?

• Besides helping you be regular (normalizing either extreme!), it helps you absorb carbs, proteins, and fats BETTER.
• When fibers are slow to break down, or don't break down at all, it slows down the absorption of everything around it.
• This keeps sugar and cholesterol and fat from entering the blood stream too quickly.
• IN FACT, it TRAPS some of the cholesterol and sugar - and you never absorb it at all!
• This slower absorption into your blood allows the molecules and cell organelles responsible for carrying and processing food to work efficiently and keep blood levels normal, without getting backed up.
  ( Lots of quickly absorbed sugar can overwhelm insulin's ability to do that, which can add another straw to the camel's back towards diabetes.)

This is especially important for us.

• Overweight people get diabetes more often than people at normal weight - and it's not just what we eat.
• Adipose (fat) cells create insulin resistance - meaning just by being overweight/obese, we are more likely to get diabetes, and get it earlier. After many years of obesity, much of the insulin resistance will be permanent.
• BUT losing weight will reverse at least some of it, as well as slowing it from getting worse. (It brings some people back close to normal!!)

Other things that help are what you eat and how you eat it.

Secretz: One way to improve eating habits is that if we were to fall off the wagon, or decide to trade 1/2 our day's calories in for a sugar bomb treat, there's a bad and a less-bad way to eat sugar!

• Eat it with at least some food that is high fiber, or high protein, or some fat - whatever fits your diet model. This will help the sugar enter your blood slower. Doesn't change the calories you eat, but decreases how harsh it is on your body's insulin function.
• Fiber slows absorption of the nutrients of what you eat into your blood, making it go at a more even rate. This is VERY good for many reasons. One is that it even TRAPS some sugar and cholesterol from ever being absorbed into your blood.