Well, have I been here long enough to cry on your shoulders? Actually, I made it past that part. I got my cholesterol results and it was the same as last year. Too high. So all my changes; eliminated foods, reducing foods, eating new foods to combat this didn’t do a darn thing. I really was thrown for a loop. I was not hoping, but expecting a moderate drop. So there goes that. On my way to the bike trail I went through sad, mad, angry, denial (did they mess up the test?), crazy (I’m getting it second hand from my kid’s hamburgers ) and on and on. It was important to me and I had worked hard at it so it was disappointing. I know that a healthy diet is good for so many other reasons – I have no intention of going back to my old ways. Strangly, it is a sort of relief. I have been so focused on that and not so much on actually losing weight. Now I can. Recheck in 6 months, and with some weight gone (the one thing I have not changed! ) perhaps the numbers will change but I’m not getting my hopes up this time.

So, still eating on plan even though I thought about a few indulgances with the bad news. Good cardio workouts on Wed. + bike ride and Friday with a rest day Thurs. Still on Day 10 of Beck as I had to find my muse again for the journey.



BillBlueEyes; I love hearing about your meals. You eat so well. Great thoughts on the gym clothes, something I always think of as superficial and unimportant but really is part of the process ~ look good/feel good/do good. You made some great choices through your two events. Nice to let yourself have a treat of apple pie too, and keep it reasonable and come away feeling good.

Kuhljeanie; Great using that technique to avoid a doughnut, and nice plan to just stay away from the cafeteria during that time. Sounds like the gym is going to be good for you! Too bad pirate day falls on a Saturday. I prefer my kids drive the teacher’s bonkers with that.

ChinaMaine; Love your 18” commute. DH and I work at home. Yes, get yourself up from your work periodically – it’s good for your eyes too!

WndrAnne; Yay for being back on the saddle again and for going the veggie route.

WalkingPrincess; What everyone said before me is right on – just asking yourself those questions means you are on the right track. Hang onto that self-confidence that you built and take some time with the book. In fact I am reading all the advice knowing at some point I will need just the same.

Nuxmaga; Yay for Zumba starting again, Incredible isn’t it? You can dance without a problem and then one sneeze puts you out, yep that’s 40. Really cool that you do mosaics by the way. I have to make my son choc. chip pancakes every weekend, a definite weakness for me. I now put ½ the batter in the fridge for the next day, so there is only enough for him.

Gardenerjoy; Good for you tossing that candy and I might make a card of your thought; “Having a food plan improves my life” – perfect and simple.

RobinW; amazing that you could track all that to your mattress topper! Too bad for your $$ investment, but by finding out you won’t be paying in the long run. I have a memory foam mattress (which I love) but when we first got it I did have concern about the syntheticity (should be word but who could say it?). I’m a believer that there are many many health issues caused by man made substances that we cannot pinpoint as we are surrounded by so much of it.

Eusebius; Yikes for KFC, but great for your back on track thoughts. I’m noticing consistently here a lot of the slip-ups for all of us start with “so and so brought me this”. I know we can’t live in isolation, and part of this journey is to learn to handle those situations. Not an easy thing, as I am finding too. I find after those meals I have to drink so much water due to thirst I feel sick and bloated. I imagine that ab work was no fun for you either.

Carla; Welcome!

Dr Oz said something today (oh am I hooked on that guy). He said, at the beginning of a diet to pick 3 days worth of meals (so 9 meals) and just repeat those to simplify things at the start. This makes a lot of sense to me. I find I am struggling to enter calories for every new meal, every day. Simple might be good for a few weeks, or until it gets boring.

Have a great evening everyone.
Kim

Hi All,
8200+ steps and Zumba! I'm pleased I am still standing. Tracked food, credit. Went over calories--would've been under, even with eating out and wine, if I hadn't had some bad potato chips that were calling my name, in part because the tv jingle popped into my head. Bleah. Refrained from slurping up the tahini sauce at the bottom of the cauliflower delight at the Middle Eastern restaurant, credit. Refused a 3rd glass of wine, credit.

Kim in Nh--Ouch for the cholesterol not budging. How long have you been on your new healthy eating plan?

kuhljeanie--yay for finding the gym!!

carla--welcome! I have the first book, but I checked the 2nd one out of the library, and the biggest revelation for me was her starting with a 2400 calorie plan and working down from there. I always assumed I had to eat like 1200 calories to lose, but actually, being consistently at 2400 is enough for now.

Bill--congrats on your stellar buffet! Personally, anything with fruit doesn't truly constitute dessert, and I usually find it a let down. But if I could call it a fruit serving, apple pie would be just fine.

ChinaMaine--credit for planning to get the Feeling Good Handbook and CBT out. The Feeling Good book was a goldmine for me--I found it at a thrift store, and was just amazed by what I learned.

gardenerjoy--Yay for throwing out the goodie bag! When something is free, I'm appalled at what I'll eat!

What a day its been!

I ate off plan today. It was just one of those days that resisted being planned -- an appointment that ran over, an errand that I thought was optional that became critical. Oh well. I suspect I ate about as many calories as were on the plan. But fewer vegetables. That's been an advantage of planning -- I have been consistently eating more vegetables. Tomorrow should be better and I already made my plan.

I'm taking a break from the internet for a few days as part of a Fall Equinox Retreat. Hope you all have a great weekend!

WI: -0.35kgs, Exercise: +25, 799/1200 minutes for September, Food: off plan , Read my Advantages and Responses: no

ChinaMaine: Hope you're doing well with pulling away from work to get a bit of a walk in.

BillBlueEyes: Sounds like the event really did go rather well, eating-wise -- I suspect your humor will keep that justification muscle in check!

eusebius: glad you've had a good day under your belt and a plan to deal with the Tex-Mex

carla70: welcome! I'm pretty new to this. For the moment, I'm following a plan I made up for myself and using Beck's strategies to help me stay with it.

kuhljeanie: yay for the gym at your workplace! That is so cool!

Kim in NH: good job on not indulging after bad news. And sorry for the bad news.

Nuxmaga: sounds like you're really hitting it with the walking and Zumba!

Carla (carla70)

And, in honor of your first post,

How did you hear about the Beck books?

And how did you find this thread on 3FatChicks?

Diet Coaches/Buddies - Was an easy day after all the events with eating this week. Got Saturday in The Park ringing in my ear all day.

Eating and gym OP; CREDIT moi. Had an infrequent Group meeting at work. The Leader brought a pan of iced brownies. I didn't take one when the pan passed but was able to amuse myself for the entire meeting pondering the notion of political benefit of taking, not taking, or some variation of taking one and pretending to eat it. Finally decided that I should have taken one of the paper plates and a napkin and crumbled the napkin on the plate as if I were finished. Made it the best of a usually dull meeting.


Jean (kuhljeanie) - Wow, a GYM at work is such a benefit for the head; think every company should do it. A bunch of people where I work use the gym in the adjacent building which gives us a discount on membership, but I prefer to go home and then walk to my local gym. If my kids were still little, methinks a work gym would be the only choice that would work. You've got me LOL at the thought of Rosh Hashanah services on talk like a pirate day - it's enough to make me want to convert just for a day.

Robin (RobinW) - Waving back. Looking forward - perhaps dreading - to hearing about "What a day its been!"

Margaret (Nuxmaga) - Kudos for leaving the tahini sauce in the bowl; I've been known to slurp up that sort of thing - even been known to use a bit of bread to help in the task, LOL. Those TV jingles getting into the head is one of the evils of marketing. Wish there was a way to do selective lobotomy on the stuff we wish we'd never heard.

LOL at "anything with fruit doesn't truly constitute dessert." I'm a happy camper since I've made fruit my dessert of choice. It saves me a bunch of calories and, perhaps more important, helps me avoid that desire for more that I always feel after a confection thingy.


Erika (eusebius) - Sleepovers (at someone else's house) are the greatest invention of all time. Kudos for having your menu planned for the Tex-Mex restaurant as well as at the movie - appropriate reward for "a ridiculous amount of work."

Joy (gardenerjoy) - Yay for vegetables. Double Yay for planned vegetables. But Kudos for staying on calorie budget without them - not sure that I could do that.

Carla (carla70) - Neat that you've started on The Complete Beck Diet for Life, which is arranged as a five stage plan, and includes the Think Thin Eating Plan. You'll find that the workbook is the companion guide to the first book, The Beck DIET solution, which is arranged as a 42 day program. Both cover the same strategies. Different posters like one book or the other as their favorite. I used the first book before there was a second so I didn't have to make the choice, but I own both now.

Yep, you're right (as others have already said) that the first book suggests that you pick a diet and a backup diet from one of the many good ones available. I rolled my own eating plan when I started my new journey some two years before I discovered Beck. That worked for me because I simply chose my lifetime eating plan for my weight loss plan. So I didn't have a transition from dieting to maintenance and I didn't have to choose a goal weight - my body decided when it was the right size for the food I was eating. Later discovered that that's a strategy frequently used by people here on 3FC on the maintenance threads.

So you can choose from any good plan that will work for you, including the Think Thin Eating Plan. Good luck making that choice. It is one of Beck's neat ideas to have a backup plan for the day that you feel stuck and need a change.


Kim (Kim in NH) - Ouch for the disappointment in the cholesterol numbers, but Kudos for working your head back to a sane place by going through all the stages of grieving. It took about a year along my journey for my cholesterol numbers to improve (my HDL - "good" - dramatically increased, total and LDL were already low).

And Kudos for the good bike ride and cardio. I always picture your bike rides as along one of your scenic NH trails. We're starting to see some color down here in MA; are your Sugar Maples up there changing yet?


Readers -

Coaches/Buddies Sneaking in a quick post this morning while the children are out with DH. I have a zillion things to do. Running a 10K race tomorrow, so today is exercise free, except for the full on sprint that is my life, that started at 4:47 am this morning.

Eating went well yesterday, I have a mental plan for today. I'm posting, and have convinced myself that the food log I've kept for the last 7 years really isn't that big a deal and I need to keep doing it. Snit over. I hope.

Nuxmaga I like to graph all my food/exercise/weight data too. It is the nerd in me. Sounds like you did great with your dinner out.

RobinW Ouch on being allergic to the mattress topper, but glad you figured out what it was.

gardenerjoy Nice work on ditching the candies, and hope your haircut looks awesome!

Yes, some days just will not submit to planning!

ChinaMaine Good luck setting boundaries at work. Working on that one myself.

BillBE Nice work on the mostly plants! Love your thoughts during your meeting. It is also my experience that most meetings are just about that productive, LOL.

carla70 I have both Beck books, but tend to go back to BDS (the first) most often.

kuhljeanie A gym! Nice! Thanks for the reminder about Talk Like a Pirate Day. I wouldn't want to miss it.

Kim in NH So sorry to hear that your cholesterol levels aren't behaving. Sometimes lifestyle changes take some time to work themselves in. Hang in there.


Anne

Im still really struggling with my asthma. My lungs are just not happy. Ive had the windows open for days. I feel better when Im outside....seems this mess infested the house

Im off to relax abit.........have a great weekend everyone!

Hello Coaches

I'm making myself post here as otherwise I am just sitting here crying. I don't know why today but after all the packing and the moving and the going back and forth and the cat arriving at my house and now roaming my house and making my cat hiss and growl continuously when she isn't off trying to find a corner of this place to just be in without the newcomer coming over to just sit near her, I have spent hours now off and on crying.

I am just so sad.

Really sad.

I knew the emotional dam would break. My mother moved to her seniors residence apt. yesterday, forever leaving the house she's lived in for a good 15 years now and before her my grandmother lived in that house. It's not the house I grew up in (my grandmother raised me) but I think I am processing the loss of my grandmother and the loss of this stage of my mother's life, and the enormous fear I have for her future, (she is in the early stage of alzheimer's, and moves are said to really trigger the disease and/or reveal its real state we were told by Experts), and the (imagined) emotional stress she is carrying right now. I couldn't get out there to visit her today as the cat escaped the confines of his room, like a week before I thought I would let him out, so there goes the slow gradual introduction to my own territorial cat.

Yesterday I took care of her two cats with my friend and we dropped one at her house and one came to my house. It can be a temporary thing as the same person who took George the cat would take Caesar, the cat that's here, but for now Caesar needs antibiotics 2x a day as he had 9 teeth extracted on Wednesday. He's fine though for all of that but I couldn't send him off to a new owner with the extra burden of having to administer medicine to him too. it's all just too much. The medicine will last a week so we'll see where we are at when it's done. I am BY FAR the most stressed creature in this house. I am falling apart. I feel like I have a hole in my solar plexus so deep and so old it just aches. For one of the very very rare times in my life I am reminding myself to eat. I NEVER lose my appetite. Today it's gone but I suspect my blood sugar is very low and that contributes to feeling sad and anxious so I will eat this yukky looking frozen dinner.

Anyway, I'm not crying right now so thanks for that. Being open and vulnerable like this is always an opportunity to heal some ancient hurt so maybe I'll be blessed with that in the end.

Better go. Thanks for reading.

Diet Coaches/Buddies - Aye I'm hopin' ya survived Talk Like a Pirate Day, me hearties. By the Powers!!!

Bought my first Delicata Squash of the season at the Farmer's Market; CREDIT moi - a delightful way to begin the fall here on the first day that I'll face breakfast with no blueberries. If you haven't already fallen in love with Delicata give it a try. The skin can be eaten right along with the sweet flesh. I love them.


onebyone - Sending supportive thoughts while you process the sadness. Your mother's move does seem like a single step, specific acknowledgment of the slow transitions going on in her life. Kudos to you for being aware of the source of your feelings and for not dumping them onto a convenient scapegoat like body image. I share your hope that allowing yourself to process opens the opportunity for healing "ancient hurt."

And sending supportive thoughts to the cats under your care. You're a kind soul to treat them with such respect.


Robin (RobinW) - Waving back. Ouch for challenged breathing; hope the weather co-operates for you to stay outside until you're cured.

Anne (wndranne) - Good luck in your 10K race today. I have this image of you running 10K to get a rest from the "sprint that is my life."

Readers -

Bill Belay that matey! It’s talking like a pirate day in our house every day. I will look for a Delicata squash – the name is certainly entrancing. Lol at the politics of meeting food.

one by one I am very sorry about what you are going through. It has be very wrenching. Take care of yourself.

Robin Yikes – I hope your house airs out soon. It’s getting too chilly to sleep outside.

Anne ‘ the full on sprint that is my life, that started at 4:47 am this morning’ I hope the race goes well today!

gardenerjoy Credit for staying in the right calorie range without being specifically op. Good luck eating those veggies! for seeing your weight moving in the right direction.

Margaret Kudos for not slurping the tahini sauce. and credit for the steps and zumba – it must burn a ton of calories.

Kim (in NH) Ouch about the cholesterol test. I have to do that soon myself. I’m on statins for cholesterol, but have been eating much better for 9 months now, and exercising. I’m hoping I can go off the statins completely. So I have taken a break from taking them daily so I can see what my cholesterol levels are without them. But I know that, like you, some folks don’t respond to diet and exercise.

That said you are right there are plenty of other good reasons to eat well (e.g. cancer prevention…) Good luck finding your Beck muse again soon.

Carla I use the second book (with the diet included). I don’t use her diet; I’d rather lose weight eating in the way I’ll eat for the rest of my life. I count calories to help me to determine how much I can eat. The skills she introduces really can be used with any diet. I do use one part of her diet, though. She has a formula that gives you a starting # of calories. In addition, as part of her diet she indicates how many calories she recommends for meals and snacks. I use the total calories, and suggested calories per meal as a guide when I’m making my plan for the day. Otherwise, I’ve ignored her diet.

Erika for being op for food and exercise on Thursday. Hope the same happened over the weekend too.

Afternoon

Just heard from my brother today...he's having a relapse with the serious stress/depression breakdown he had 2 yrs ago. He's scared enough to get himself to the dr's. So thats good.

Food for me is on plan, even getting some walking in with dh.

My body is healing. But very slowly. The pains are less, my lungs seem a bit happier. Ive been drinking water, green tea and lemon water by the gallons. Aside from my fur covered tongue, I think its working. The fur is telling me stuff is making its way OUT of my body. Exactly where I want it to be.

Ended up being a rather quiet weekend...lots was planned, but I scaled it way back. Back far enough where I could take a nap this afternoon

Back to it tomorrow.....Have a great Sunday evening everyone!

Hi Coaches

I made it to the farmer's market with my artwork today and sold enough to make me go back again next Sunday. I felt better this morning but still mopey and kind of tentative, as in not sure about things or how things are, a little bit less confident than usual you know? Anyway I'll take that over a gushing open wound of sadness for sure.

There is progress between the cats. Kitty X, the original cat, is much calmer. Her stady growl had progressed to a low growl is she sees Caesar and a hiss if he dares make eye contact. I consider this fantastic. No claws, no chasing, they even ate in the same area, about 1 foot apart, eye to eye and Caesar backed off after having a few bites. I think he's a genius cat.

Okay going now. More later.

hey all - realizing that i've gotten away from food planning since i went back to work. makes it much harder to stay within my calories. yeah, i know about where i am at any given moment, and since i switched to gowearfit i can log online all day and that helps - but i'm not doing it for the week like i was a few months ago, and it makes things harder. i should be doing it now (while sitting at the computer next to the monitor, watching el nino thrash around and yell instead of fall asleep. sigh) but i'm mentally drained. want to just zone out in front of the TV when he finally crashes and i'm relieved of my post. argh. (that's a pirate "argh," BTW.) will push the task of menu planning to tomorrow - here's to hoping i have time at work.

onebyone, . i understand. still getting knocked upside the head unexpectedly with grief myself. you know what i've learned? (insert drumroll) grief really sucks. i'm reading a book by this psychic who does readings on XM radio in the mornings. i know, i know...it's kind of intellectually trashy, but i don't care. anyway, one of her big things is that people's bodies deteriorate and die, but the soul never does. i had a dream thursday night that i was watching a movie at my mom's house, and my dad was hanging out with me on the couch. in the dream i asked him how he was there, since he's been dead for almost 9 years - and he winked and smiled like he used to. it was so HIM...i woke up feeling happy. not sure what you believe (not even sure what i believe, to be honest) and i'm certainly not saying that it makes what happned to him okay, but i'm glad i live in a universe where it is entirely possible that souls really don't die - it's just the form they take here that gets messed up sometimes. well, always.

all right folks...here's to a good week!

The run was hard and apparently I was ready to get sick, so sick I got. Will check in tomorrow.

Anne