LONG POST ALERT 
@ Cicibel: and@ Cadensmom:
Welcome to the group you two!! I love that you are ready to go and thinking PREPARATION!! You will be so successful with that mind set! IMHO, the things that work best (at least for me) are the preparation and staying committed to this treatment program til you reach maintenance. Do the program as strictly as you can tolerate to have the biggest losses. My tips are:
get a salt shaker and daily (or the night before) measure ½ tsp of REAL salt into the shaker; use it by the time you go to sleep even if you have to lick it from your hand or have a hot salt water drink. It will stave off any headaches, fatigue, and may help with any bowel issues down the line.
get a pill box with removable day slots or something portable, every night or for the whole week, lay out the supplements you need, plan a place you are at often during your day and remember to take them.
get a high quality omega 3/6/9 oil like udo’s, barleans omega twin, or a flax oil. Use it for your 1 -2 tsp of oil per day and use the olive oil sparingly for cooking.
find online or at a local store some Walden Farms (WF) dressings in packets togo. I like the regular Italian best but everyone is different. Keep it handy. You may also want to keep a bottle or two at home if you like their flavors.
Prepare a purse pack (Ziploc bag works) with: several packets of your on program sweetner, a few WF to go dressings, some hot tea bags, and 1 or 2 IP drink packets. This will be your lifeline if you are out to eat or get caught out at a meal or snack time. The dressing helps you when restaurants offer nothing, the tea gives you a variety choice to water and coffee and usually hot water is free, the sweetener saves you if the restaurant only offers off plan equal , saccharine, or sugar, and the packets are great for a quick fix with a purchased bottled water from anywhere!
Plan to prepare your food on two set days a week. By this I mean, measure your meat into portions of appropriate weight for you to grab and cook with (keep in fridge or freezer). I cook for two so, I know I need a portion for me and a portion for him. I just work in weights of 5 or 7 oz now instead of 1 or 2 pounds. ALSO, wash and chop your veggies for a couple of days at a time (kind of like home prepping those prepared grocery kits) . This makes it easy to cook the veggies quickly and to incorporate them because, it is now less work. as a new mom (Cadensmom) you will like having things quick/handy because doing a lot of prep with a baby is hard to keep up on! I know this from experience! Keep handy the things you plan to use a lot. Also, having things ready to go allows you to grab a Ziploc baggy when you are rushing out of the house and might wish you had an on program snack with you. Keep one extra portion of meat cooked/ready in the fridge. It is great if you get in and are starved and have gone way past when you should have eaten. It takes the pressure off and prevents you from choosing a food you shouldn't if you don't have the meat handy and like eggs make 2 whole eggs and 2 egg whites. It is fast and on program. ALSO, when you make up a salad, I have found it helpful to make an extra one or two without dressing and put them in plastic containers or baggies. This way they are ready if I have to plan a to go meal and If I am tired I don't have the issue of making one.
EAT OFTEN: plan to eat every 2.5 to 3 hours no more than 4 if you can avoid it especially the first weeks. it will help keep you in control of the cravings as you go through sugar/carb withdrawal. Eat breakfast, a morning snack of veggies, lunch, afternoonsnack of veggie or IP drink, dinner, evening snack of veggies or IP snack if you didn’t have it in the afternoon.
DRINK AT LEAST 64 oz of water every day.. try for 3 liters or more. It will help flush fat and toxins from your body and reduce the weight. I prepare 2 liter bottles and a 2 liter jug of water the night before and keep it in the fridge because I love cold water! Then it is ready to go when I need to leave the house and I KNOW by looking where I am on my water for the day.
Keep a daily notebook of how you are feeling and what you are eating. Note if something makes you feel better or worse and at the end of the weeks your weight loss. you will start to notice what foods you metabolize best.
ALSO take pictures and measurements when you start! You will be amazed how many inches you lose and how fast. It will happen even on weeks you aren’t dropping much weight.
Keep your preparation sheet and foods list on or near the fridge. It works great for quick reference and helps family members too.
Set alarm times on your phone if you are busy and need to remember when to eat or drink. It works great and, especially with a baby or work, it is easy to lose track of time and then wonder why you didn’t eat or how you got so hungry.
To start, consider not having any salmon or tuna for the first month. The fat is a little higher than they want you to have. ONLY have the select vegetables and none from the occasional section for at least 2 to 3 weeks, until your coach advises otherwise or as long as you can. AVOID THE ROOT VEGGIES these have high starches by the nature of what they are and are designed to do for plant growth. Use splenda or stevia/truvia/purevia as sweetners only. NO GUM, MINTS, SODA. NO RESTRICTED FOODS until your coach advises and even then think about not using them til you are past 90 days if you want the biggest program results. These are great for keeping you interested in the program but will slow you down a little or more if you use them too often.
Keep an assortment of hot teas and herbal/decaf teas that you like. When a craving strikes have a cup of hot tea. It really helps calm the stomach. I find the good earth decaf original spice works great to kill most all of my sugar wishes!
Buy salt free/sugar free spices and herbs. Read the ingredients list as much or more the the nutrition chart to make sure that is what you are getting.
Buy some of the torani, da vinci, or artisan flavored sugar free (splenda based) coffee/Italian soda syrups. They are great for doctoring up coffee, water, and IP drinks and puddings.
Great kitchen tools to consider or drag out if you own but haven't used in awhile: Ziploc baggies, scale, good measuring spoons, cups, ladels, etc. , steamer, food processor, magic bullet, George foreman like grill, turbo cooker, garlic press, shaker containers ( I use old peanut butter and spaghetti sauce jars at home because the pour out so well and clean nice. I use an old spice jar to keep my homemade salad dressing pre-prepared in and waiting in the fridge. I use other old spice jars for my personal spice mixes I use often. I buy the prepared jar ginger and minced garlic at the store, I use a lot and this is fast and easy and I get the jar for later. I have 2 liter bottles for my water and 3 shaker containers for mixing drinks. It keeps things available. I got them at the dollar store. I also have 2 soft side coolers, small and large with ice blocks( in the freezer), so that if I am going to be out running around all day, at meetings, or at work, etc. I can keep my on program food handy. It only takes a few minutes to grab a snack or drink and maybe 20 to eat an IP drink/salad lunch. I can usually get away from anywhere for that long. A SHOEBOX! I love my IP FOOD shoebox. Silly but it made a great way to organize all my packets and took up less space and I wasn’t knocking boxes down all the time in my pantry! LOL
Don’t exercise. Keep things light and easy for a few weeks at least while your body makes its new adjustments! It may seem counter intuitive but you will have the results you want and can add the toning and exercise back a short while down the road.
OK That is all of my advise! Good luck and stay in touch. Everyone here is really willing to be supportive so you will do great !
). We've decided to continue this way and if we seem to hit a road block at some point we'll back off of the restricted (he eats one every day, I have one about every other day). For now, though, it's making it easier to get through the day, since they tend to be more filling, especially as a lunch item, and they're more on-the-go. We're both special education teachers and are on our feet all day long (literally... I sit maybe 20 min all day), sometimes getting only 15 minutes to eat and with 6-7 hours between lunch and dinner most days. Yesterday, I had 5 min to eat AND set up between groups, so I had a bar, then didn't get to eat my veggies and salad until 2:30 (my Friday schedule is TERRIBLE). The bar was holding me over so well that I didn't even want to eat at that point! 
