Uber--congrats on reaching your mini-goal!

Mandy--great work on your weight loss this week as well.

Laurie--I really like your attitude and think that the challenge is the perfect way to motivate yourself. I will be pulling for you!

I am going out of town for a long weekend. While I am looking forward to it, eating out three times a day will be a challenge.

Hope everyone has a good weekend!

Just found this site, and it's pretty nifty.

http://www.weightgrapher.com/

It charts your weight for you, gives you your trend, and a prediction for one month if you continue on the same trend. I like it. Great for people who weigh frequently.

Mandy: I like the weight grapher! It's so funny but I'm on exactly the same weight loss trajectory that I was on back in 2009. I started trying to lose in June, of course, at that time, I was 295. I'm losing at just about exactly the same speed I was back then.

Lotus Mama: Enjoy your weekend off! Eating out is hard, but getting away and having fun is worth it!

Happy to report that I'm down another pound for a total of 21. My first mini-goal is to hit 260 and I have been hoping to do so before vacation which is still about 3 weeks away. I regained in two chunks: chunk A from 190 to 259. chunk B: up and down and up and down but never below 260. Once I get to 258, that will be a beautiful feeling.

Uber - my favorite thing about it is as long as your dots stay below the line, you're losing weight. It gives you a "trend" weight below which you can bounce around a bit, but I'm assuming if you go above it, that will change the trend somehow. I also like the "in one month" trend prediction. I'm averaging about 3 pounds below the trend line, and my one month prediction is about 10 pounds below my current trend weight, so I think I'm on the right path here. Lose quickly while I've still got a LOT to lose and still can lose quickly, and slow it down as I get closer to goal. Hurray for getting so close to a mini goal! My first one is about 5 pounds away, too.

Lotus - I hope you enjoy your long weekend! Hubby and I will be leaving on Monday and be back Wednesday evening. Hopefully he'll take his laptop and let me borrow it like last time. (And that the hotel actually has wifi, we might be staying in a small town mom and pop hotel, wifi isn't necessarily guaranteed! Depends on where the church books the reservation for us.

So, I have some good news, some annoying news, and some bad news... None of which are super life altering, but still.

The good news is... My cats are finally getting along again after Brownie had her surgery. Last night I caught them snuggling in a chair together, and today I caught them grooming each other. I think that the hissing and posturing is done, and I can safely leave with hubby on Monday!

The annoying news is apparently something in nature is still horny and my sinuses don't like the tree/plant sex because my allergies are acting up and my sinuses are very unhappy. Probably grass, I'm most sensitive to grass pollen, though oak pollen gets me a little bit, too.

The bad news is my car is in the shop. Hubby took it in for a tire rotation (which was gonna cost all of $10!) and they found that both of the torque bearing motor mounts are broken and need replaced. Luckily they found a parts place that has the replacements available, because it's hard to find for my car since they aren't made anymore and it's 13 years old. So, that'll be $350 (which is really good for a car repair, usually I don't walk out of a mechanic for less than $500!) and I have to remind myself that maintenance and a couple repairs here and there are still cheaper than a new car's monthly payments and jacked up insurance rates! So, when we go to pick up the car, we'll walk over to get it since it's about a half a mile away.

Just for fun, here's the chart I got on www.weightgrapher.com (the blue dots are their predicted weight for that day because I didn't record one, and the pink dots are weights I did record. the blue line connecting them is the trend, and the one above it shows my weight 4 weeks ago, and that trend).

Hey guys, found this on one of my favorite food blogs and thought I'd share!

http://www.shugarysweets.com/2014/01...er-snack-ideas

It's links to 50 different healthy/lower calorie recipes on different blogs, and there are probably even more yummy ideas on the linked blogs. Enjoy! I'm already eyeballing the chicken with feta sauce.

I'm so happy to hear how well everyone is doing!

LaurieDawn - **** fatshaming trainer. That is not cool. Fatshaming's also been shown in studies to be incredibly ineffective as a motivating tool.

Is he getting paid when you make the appointment to see him again in two months? If so, you might consider that in how you respond. You can make an appointment to see him again - which, in my eyes, is pretty much saying that he is important enough for you to actually respond to - or... You can lose weight and make an appointment with another trainer at the same time that the fatshaming trainer is there. Go up to him quickly and say something along the lines of "I've met my goal but your lack of professionalism and knowledge is so offensive that I've decided to work with another trainer."

In other words, take the Pretty Woman "do you work on commission?"-scene and apply it to that idiot trainer.

Diane - My muscles are hurting just reading about all of those classes!

Über - Congratülations!!! 21lb is so, so, so awesome!!!

Mandy - I love the Oxford comma picture! That and the idea of "plant sex" has had me chuckling all morning. I'm sorry to hear that your car is in the shop, but it's wonderful that you're dealing with it by dealing with it and not by eating.

I'm coming up on the end of my first full week 100% on plan. What is making that little milestone more interesting is that I don't have a scale. I'm away from home until mid-August and have a cobbled together living arrangement. It's good and it's functional, but it doesn't have all the little odds and ends - like a scale - that one has at home. I got my start weight from a dermatologist's office scale last Saturday and, since then, I've been blind in terms of weight loss.

What I really like about not weighing myself is that I'm forced to look at how I eat as "this is just how it is" and not as something I'm doing to achieve a specific goal. That's really cool and I can see it eventually being useful for maintenance. In the morning I write down what I'm going to eat for the day and then forget about food unless I'm actually eating. I like that sense of freedom.

What is a little bit more frustrating is that seeing the numbers go down is a really useful motivator. The first time around with weight loss I worked with decades and going from the 290s to 280s and so on kept me motivated for months.

I wish I had good scale news to share with all of you, but maybe it's better for me to stay in the dark a little bit longer. Another five weeks of practicing life with a different relationship to food can't do me any harm!

Hi All! I've still been attached to my scale every day now. I have always thought that it was a bad idea to do that, but I'm beginning to think that maybe I was wrong about that. Without jinxing myself for my official weigh in tomorrow, I was at 147.6 this morning. That's down about 4.2 from last Monday. Now.... I had gone up as of last Monday, so I am not concerned about a big loss. I really feel like my body is releasing a lot of fluids that I had retained as of last week. But, I feel like I might be more mindful of what I'm eating when I weigh every day or every other day. It is making me a little obsessive, but I'm ok with being obsessive for a while. I've wanted to make a big effort to get this weight off, so that I can live a little more normally. I don't know, weighing daily just goes against everything I've ever thought about weight loss. But, I've struggled so much in the past, maybe a change in thought is good.

Martini: So, you're having to do exactly the opposite of my obsessiveness. I think that's good, though. If you still keep on track and keep your focus, then hopefully you'll have a nice surprise when you do get back to the scale.

Mandy: Good news about the cats! Bad news about the car. I just hate dealing with car issues. It seems like they always find more than what you originally went in for. I'm sure it is legit, but it is frustrating!!!

Uber: 21 pounds is so great! I hope you see 258 soon. I know that once you break through a barrier, it is just such a good feeling. I've reached through a couple of barriers, and it is so great, but so strange. I keep thinking "Ok, tomorrow I'm going to wake up and it won't be happening." And sometimes I feel like it will suddenly stop and I'll head back up the scale. But, I think that staying connected here and just taking it day by day is helping.

Lotus: Hope you had a great time being out of town! So good to get some new scenery!

Diane: 4.2 Wowsers! Time for some carrots.
Maybe being scale obsessed isn't so bad. I know when I'm NOT scale obsessed... when I'm squeezing my eyes shut and gaining! I SO get what you mean about expecting the scale to just reverse itself and start going up... I have that exact same fear-- or I start to fear that my body will simply REFUSE to go lower than a certain point no matter how little I feed it.

Martini: On the other hand, when you think about it, we are not so much trying to lose weight as we are trying to adopt a livable healthy lifestyle which will lead to weight loss. So maybe staying on track without a scale will be an interesting lesson in tuning into yourself.

Mandy: I love that recipe site, although he sugary dessert pictures almost threw me off. I want to try the carrot hummus. I loved cooked carrots, and I love hummus. What's not to love? I don't know how you managed those chocolate chip cookie dough truffles... total self-restraint!

Totally weird day for me yesterday. Was running around with my kid between 11:30 am and 4 pm so I never got a chance to eat and also forgot about it. That must be how life is for normal people. Ate a healthy dinner and was rewarded with another 2 lbs gone! So, the good news is that my BMI is officially now below 40, which means I'm no longer excessively obese, but only obese. The bad news is that I'm now officially at the bottom of my yo-yo zone. For the past two years I've never gotten below 260. This time, I'm determined.

Cookie dough truffle report: So far, I've managed to eat only 2 of them. 1 yesterday, and one the day before after I made them (cook deserves to sample her work, right?). I gave several of them away, and my husband has eaten like 8 of them. He LOVES them. I'm thinking we'll take the rest up to Indiana with us as something to bring with to contribute to the potluck. (Yeah, they are doing a potluck dinner for us right before they do his interview... Oy, calories)

Martini - This going scaleless is a good time to rely on measurements, how your clothes fit, how you feel, progress pictures, etc! More than one way to see your progress, the scale is only one way. I'm sure you'll do great!

Diane - they were good, and didn't do/check anything we didn't ask them to check. The thing they are replacing was a part that I already knew was probably going to need replaced. One side of it has been broken for over a year now, and the other side broke a couple weeks ago. It needed to be fixed before lots of travel. And I totally hear you on the daily weighing! When the weight is going down, it's very motivating, but when it's barely moving it can be SO frustrating!

Uber - That blog is mostly dessert and sweet treats, but she does have several regular meals, and healthy eats. It's where I go when I need to make a dessert for a gathering. Awesome that you've hit the bottom of your yo-yo zone, but make sure you're eating enough! Don't fall into the "I want to lose FAST so eating is BAD" state of mind. I've been there, it ends in binges heh. I have to tell myself pretty regularly that food is not evil, that it's fuel my body needs to function.

Speaking of food being fuel... My tummy is rumbling, so I'm gonna go grab a late lunch.

Have a great day y'all!

I will bear in mind that food isn't evil-- I can easily fall into that trap. When I lost 110 lbs, I had to fight for every single pound that pushed me under a BMI of 30, and I definitely was struggling with the temptation to push my calories too low just to see the scale move. Right now, the weight is coming off okay, so I've pretty much been meeting my calorie goals-- skipping lunch yesterday was an accident, but next time I'm stuck, the devil on my shoulder might whisper "remember that day you skipped lunch and lost 2 lbs... why don't you do that again...?"

Uber - I'm so glad you didn't take that in a negative way. I was hesitant to post something about it, but I'm so familiar with the feeling! Maybe I'm just too used to people biting my head off or some other psychobabble.

Believe me, you guys understand me perfectly! Sisters in crazy food heads!

Hang in there, uber! Only a few pounds left before 260 and I know you can do it!!

Greetings, everyone.

I'm Jessica. I've been in the process of getting myself back to living the healthy lifestyle I prefer and, of course, losing the weight that I put on during the six years I was married. One of the things I miss is having the ability to talk to other people who are on the same journey as you and really being able to share in that moral support. I'm hoping I might be able to find some of that comradery here.

Hey, Jessica! Welcome! Congratulations on those 30lb that you've already lost!!

[I love exclamation points!!]