Missed sharing this yesterday:
Beck FB Friday Weekend Warm-up: This weekend, keep in mind that you won’t regret what you don’t eat (or drink)! It can feel really hard in the moment to decide against a second glass of wine or another piece of cake, but once the situation has passed, you’ll always feel happy that you didn’t give in.

After looking at the bare fridge (again!) went and collected groceries for the week. An extra loaf of bread is in the bread-maker to hopefully make the coming crazy week better. Today's food was OP. I have to bake cookies for the "graduation" day of the financial class we are sponsoring.

maryann I like pressure cookers. The new one's are quite safe and they cook so fast. They also tenderize meat. Our dinner tonight was in the pressure cooker.

Just AWESOME, Joy, both the plan for today and that you can eat healthfully even without.

flnu Kudos for on time into bed, hopefully kiddos let you sleep!

Lexxiss The flower picture is great, thanks for sharing.

BillBlueEyes Hmmm the site said the Wilson's migrate through here, pretty! I'll have to see If I spot any.

GosfordGirl/Cheryl Your soup sounds yum! Can you get xylitol there? We add it to our nasal saline rinse and have had much less trouble with sinus issues (and no infections!) since discovering it. Wonderful stuff!

Brief check in - packed up for a few weeks ... work stuff and clothes and very little else.

Went to see The Lunchbox today - we enjoyed it. DH spent half a year there a number of years ago and I think some movies bring back memories for him.

Frustrated after the self-idiocy of stepping on the scale after a restaurant meal out. Feel as if the whole week has been solid with the exception of two days coming in about 400 calories over ... and seeing the scale UP aggravates me. I just have to trust that I'm doing well. And continue to use my clothing as a guide.

Skipped the idea of a bagel or scone as a major treat breakfast for tomorrow's flight... will just pack my dry cereal and a banana. I'm really fighting the urge to eat this and that because I'll be gone and it won't be where I am. I face this for EVERY trip - for camping/hiking trips, for regular vacations, visiting family - anything - how absurd.

Hope to set time to do personals, even if just a few, while I'm there. I appreciate all the good thoughts and wishes - you have all been such a great source of support through this.

Coaches

Checking in on my phone so this will be short. I'm on chapter 3 of the Beck green book. I bought index cards and a couple of.small boxes as she instructs. I find the green book's feel very different from the pink workbook. Almost like a brand new start! And I am feeling like this is a new beginning. Will check in in the morning. Have a good night.

Hello Coaches:

I am very happy to report that I weighed myself this morning after another week of healthy, sane eating and I have lost 2 pounds. I am officially out of the 290's again. Yahoo!!

Hope everyone is enjoying this beautiful long weekend. We have had sunshine and warm temperatures. Feels good to open up all the windows and get some fresh air circulating.

Hi coaches

Quick check in - still marking and deadline now - 7 papers to go (2-3 hours) and I would really like to sleep tonight.

Credit - I went to the health food store and was surrounded by samples. I actually picked up a corn chip before I realised it was way before midday and it definitely wasn't on my plan. And I dropped it in surprise - unfortunately into the bowl with the others and couldn't work out which one it was and...

Today I have eaten to plan and am about to cook a meal to do a couple of nights (Green Curry Chicken) and need to think about breakfast/lunch for work tomorrow. It might be the green curry I think, and soup

BillBE - what Ibis are you talking about - here they are sort of thought of as vermin - I don't mind vermin but I was just wondering if you could link to yours. This is ours (and interestingly Wikipedia agrees with what I said - it might be a different breed)

Debbie (Lexxiss) - yay for balance - I like the big flower analogy

Flnu - yes - I do remember your earlier discussion about not getting to bed. Lots of other interesting things aren't there. Yay for OP and getting to bed by 10 (I actually go at 9 because I often wake up at 4 am even if in bed late)

Joy - credit for a plan. Hope it does its magic

Maryann - I want to channel your food prep nature and ability - soon. Yes - science is my basic training - degree and doctorate. Teach in a slightly different area now.

Tricia - I need to have time to Google xylitol in sinus rinse - I use a sinus rinse - and I use xylitol in my cooking. Now I just need to know how to put them together. Your food sounds organised

Nationalparker - hope the trip goes well. Sending good thoughts

Onebyone - Yay for new beginnings - nice to stir things up occasionally

Ceejay - I am impressed and pleased for you. Enjoy your long weekend

have a good day / weekend coaches

Diet Coaches/Buddies – Did Beck cultural thing last night when we saw an amazing production of Shakespeare's The Tempest with non-stop magic tricks inserted. Metaphysical magic is part of the script, but this production added modern stage magic and jazzy music to produce a sold-out production. CREDIT moi for timing the elixir and for carrying a full pocket of cough drops to make myself socially acceptable. Exercise was deliberately zero to avoid exacerbating the cough - Ouch.

Eating on plan, CREDIT moi, with exactly the same three meals as the day before - perhaps the first time in my life, LOL, because DW never serves the same dinner. But never happened last night because the sun called her to be out in her garden as late as possible and still make curtain for The Tempest. She reheated her bean soup made with the ham-bone from Easter dinner; it gets better reheated. I often serve myself the same breakfast and lunch, so that part was easy.


onebyone – Yay for the "new beginning" feel from Beck's Green Book.

Joy (gardenerjoy) – This is my life goal: "but ate as if I had one." Kudos, Kudos, Kudos.

CeeJay - Congrats on the 290's gone forever. Love that first day of Spring when fresh air comes blowing through the house. Kudos for another week on-plan.

Debbie (Lexxiss) – Sounds so British, "beans and eggs and toast." Love your 'balance' surrounded with petals of tasks to make the day.

Cheryl (GosfordGirl) – LMAO at the dropped corn chip. Kudos for having so much integrity that you didn't just pick one out and drop it in the trash as-if you knew it was yours. [Our Glossy Ibis is indeed a different species from your Australian white ibis. Your guys do sound like a nuisance - but would love to see one.]

maryann - Love "cook once - eat thrice" - that should be taught in home-ec for sanity.

nationalparker – Waving toward a plane flying to Florida. May your trip be helpful to you, your parents, and siblings all. Kudos for avoiding the notion of a breakfast treat for the flight. (I've added The Lunchbox to my list of movies to see.)

Tricia (AZtricia) - Thanks for the Beck tip, "you won’t regret what you don’t eat" - that one is really helpful to me when I'm thinking of a handful of something. Good luck with a sane response to your baked cookies.

flnu - LOL at, "unsurprisingly fell asleep" - Yay for a sleep tape that works. Kudos for OP.

Readers -

Coaches

I have had such limited success with weightloss precisely because I don't faithfully practice Success Skill #1 daily. I get and feel motivated, and then when I feel it, I no longer sit down and do it and then I'm not doing it and then my weightloss goals move down on my priority list and my food slips and my weight comes back and then it takes a massive effort to find the motivation to try again. Daily reminders would really change that for sure. No wonder it's success skill #1.I am struggling today with two sabotaging thoughts. #1 thought tells me to "just cut back on everything". My idea of what this really means is have everything "clean" ie bland - without sauces or gravies or salt or anything. Small amounts, like less than half what I want. No snacks. No fruit. No treats of any kind. Drink only water. Just accept you really can't eat much and anything you want to eat is the wrong thing to eat..

The other sabotaging thought really is exactly what she says it might be: DO THIS NOW! IT'S AN EMERGENCY! I feel a bit more panicky after listening to a series of radio discussions on the CBC about dementia and alzheimer's which my mother and many family members have suffered from. In the course of the discussions was a look at the causes and forms of dementia and one of these was vascular alzheimer's. Hello? New to me, this is a form of alzheimer's caused by brain trauma or mini strokes brought on by high blood pressurealert! alert! Will Robinson! Danger! Danger! I have that. I have been taking medicine for it for years now. Does that mean I don't have it? Or I am not in danger for it? I never know what the answer to that is--but wow. this brings me back to : if you lose the weight, maybe you won't have the high blood pressure and you can STOP BEING AFRAID that you will bring about your own demise through your own inability to get it together. Seems reasonable. Have not yet managed it though.

Anyway, I need to put my faith in the good Dr. and go along with the plan here. Practice Success Skill #1 and know that I am one day along the path to the greater health and peace of mind I seek because I am taking action.

Action Items
--in my Diet Notebook write down my compelling reasons to lose weight under the headfing "Advantages of Losing Weight"
Keep adding to the list as weeks and months go by. DONE

--After you make the list get out business-sized cards and write one advantage on each card.
This is an Advantages Deck. DONE
Add these to response cards made during the Tasks part of the book in the previous chapter.

--Read both daily. DONE

I especially like this part that she writes:

That's a big promise. It's worth trying this again to get that benefit.

Enjoy your day!

Hi Coaches!

I'm on the run this morning as yesterday changed a bit. While I was down in Denver running errands for the project it came up that DD didn't have a babysitter and had tickets for a baseball game. I drove back up to pick up DH and our planned dinner supplies and headed back down to babysit. We took turns sleeping on the couch while our energetic 2 yr old bounced all over and we didn't get home until midnight. FAr too late for me but the kids had fun.

How did the day affect my written food plan? I had based my plan on working and staying home. Lighter calories worked for that. While in Denver for the first trip I added brown rice sushi picked up at the store. Credit. I had been hungry long enough I knew to eat. We did not plan dessert for our at home meal and I picked up organic strawberries/cream and angel food cake. I planned one serving and that's what I had....after our healthy dinner which I TOOK TIME to haul down with us. DD's house is filled with foods not acceptable in my environment and it's easy for me to turn it into a special eating event. Our dinner plus the dessert kept me out of bags of candy, chips and leftover pizzas, etc. Credit.

Today, I'm rushed. My plan (not written yet) is to go with a repeat of last night's dinner adding my homemade potato "fry". A small portion for me does work. Fortunately, DH does not mind the repeat meals. I don't think he even notices. I left the remainder of the cake on the counter. It's a strategy I employ because he usually eats it all up during the day while I'm at work.

flnu, thanks for asking....no I don't have anything I can cut out of my busy schedule. Mom is 92 and DH has a brain injury. I have found that even as organized as I've become that I can always find more ways to save time. It helps me to stay in a good frame of mind as I accept that challenge.

MaryAnn, I got an electric pressure cooker and primarily use it for beans. This unit would not work for canning. I set it for a prescribed time, it heats to pressure and after the allotted time it shuts off. I don't have to watch it at all and it cooks beans perfectly....under an hour from start to finish...saves me lots over canned beans. In Alaska canning fish is a part of life and those giant presto pressure cookers work great for that. I've used them, they seem very safe....you just monitor them.

onebyone, finding that daily routine is work but I've found it's what works best for me. Thanks for posting all the references from the green book!

OK, need to get to my 3 Essentials (decluttering thread), DH is blending my smoothie and I'm off to work.

(Debbie R: You have an fabulous attitude. Acceptance is such a powerful force.)

FB Beck Today: People who have never fasted for a religious or medical reason often don’t know the following: hunger comes and goes, it doesn’t just get worse and worse until it becomes intolerable, and it doesn’t even begin to approach the level of physical discomfort caused by other things (like surgery, labor, migraines, etc.). Hunger is not something that needs to be feared!

Made no-bake cookies to take and kiddos will enjoy the few leftovers. Off to take oldest ds to tryouts for drama/solos for music camp coming soon...he loves it. Chicken for dinner marinating to grill, with lots for leftovers. Windy in my new avatar with my walking buddy, Teddy.

OP for today

Lexxiss So busy, but you are also so organized. Great pre-planning!

onebyone Great job getting going on ARCs

BillBlueEyes Hurray for weather nice enough to be out in the sun and for yummy leftovers.

GosfordGirl/Cheryl Hoping your grading is done soon. As for Xylitol, we use it in the same proportion as salt in the saline.

CeeJay Kudos for sane eating and the great result of two pounds gone!

nationalparker Wishing you a safe trip and no nastiness from you sis today.

A thanks to onebyone for the reminder that I will never lose weight until I get back to the skills required to lose it. It is not what I eat but how I eat. And BBE provided the second most important idea: No Choice. I cannot fail with those two ideas firmly practiced.

Continued with super budget/ super healthy cooking. I cooked chickpeas from our co op (free). Roasted them ( for the first time ever) and sprinkled them with MIL's rosemary I had dried. The olive oil was pressed right here and a gift. If I had mined the salt it would have been completely FREE! I think I will crack the last bag of pecans from our orchard, roast them after a little salt bath, add the dried cranberries I have, and make my own trail mix for the week. Fun to pretend I am living off our land (even though I sent DS to the Walgreens ten blocks away for milk - not exactly what Laura Ingalls would do.)

Pilates done (check) and food logged ( check) My goal for the rest of the day is only to eat the planned dinner smoothie and go to bed with a concave stomach.

Best to all.

p. 57 green book.

Coaches

I don't have any issues with skill 2: weighing daily. I didn't do that when I was following Diet Fix as he says not to, but I feel better doing it for a simple reason. I am very detached from my body, from my physical self and I have no idea how heavy I am or whether I am up or down in weight. The only time I get any kind of reality check is in photographs. If I am standing near someone else that I know on the photo, then I can see what my physical size is. So I need a daily check in and the scale has long lost its sway over me. It may depress me some days but it doesn't derail me. I have seen massive fluctuations of 10+ pounds sometimes (rare but has happened) and 2-4 frequently. So go having gone through that a few times and also stayed the course with my foodplan no mater the number, I have also seen the number fall back down in a day or so. I've experienced this often enough to understand my body fluctuates like the ocean's tides, and can be especially unpredictable during a full moon .

Today my sister became a motivator for me. We made a pact to close the kitchen at 8pm, to not eat sugar and to move for 5 minutes today. I have done all but the 5 min moving which I will complete before bed. I also completed the advantages and response cards and weighed myself. I ate from scratch and did not have seconds though I did have more of the same food served in a different way after a main course. Splitting hairs but it wasn't a second helping. Or was it? Maybe. Oh well. It stopped there. *credit* I also made an effort to eat raw veggies again. I have been craving them like crazy but wouldn't do the work to have a tray of them as we were doing before. So I bought a pre-made tray. *credit*Once we get into the habit of the raw veggies again I will start making the trays up. We begin at the beginning. I know momentum will build as I get in the groove again.

Bye for now.

Hi Coaches

Quick check in - finished grading papers and now need to catch up on life and organise my house/life after days of neglect. I don't want to eat the leftovers I have tonight just to be difficult - I want canned red salmon with onion and tomato in malt vinegar - I am going to satifying this craving as it is healthy!

I will have a go at personals tomorrow. And I am going to think about going to gym tomorrow for the first time in a week because of this cold and asthma.

So even though changing what I eat tonight it is still within plan and time

Talk tomorrow coaches

Diet Coaches/Buddies – google has a 3D doodle of Rubik's Cube as its doodle today! Go nerds of the world. Continued with no exercise on purpose - Ouch. Methinks this lack of exercise is beginning to affect my brain's ability to think mindfully about food.

Eating wasn't so good. I did great for breakfast and lunch, but wandered at a late afternoon party where standing was the only choice and nibbling from small plates was happening. That threw me off so that when I went to a second event where I've easily ignored snacks in the past, I had some manufactured cookies. Ouch. Then came home and mimic'd DW having a bowl of cereal for dinner even though I'd had enough nibbling to not need dinner. I'm back on track for today.


onebyone – Kudos for focusing on Success Skills #1 to get the basics soundly working. Love being reminded of the real goal, "greater health and peace of mind." LOL at the thought of your body weight as unpredictable as the tides. Kudos for enlisting your sister for motivation.

Debbie (Lexxiss) – Yay for using your energetic 2 yr old as an exercise leader. I do like the simple and obvious, "I planned one serving and that's what I had."

Cheryl (GosfordGirl) – Congrats on getting all the paper graded. How do you prepare your canned red salmon?

maryann - Yay for roasted chick peas and home make trail mix - Little House on the Prairie out there.

Tricia (AZtricia) - Neat new avatar with your pup, Teddy, picking up the weight you're dropping.

flnu - Waving back. And wishing that acceptance could be bought in a jar.

Readers -

Hello - wrote a post yesterday but never "posted" ... so will go early and most likely late today.

Long night - slept about an hour and 20 minutes, if that. Up throughout the night with Dad, who cannot sleep and was in pain. Back massages, company, checking to ensure he was okay and that his bladder cath was draining properly as he's been confused and removing the bag at times. I'm exhausted and this is just day #2 dawning here.

Plans are to work as much as I can with my job, and got a lot done yesterday, but will take a catnap when I return home from taking mom to dialysis and Dad is at appt. with brother. Irony is the night before I left, DH and I spent nearly the whole night up, as he's on nights and was keeping that same sked, so have had three hours sleep in two nights and I'm a sleeper Hoping for some rest for my father tonight. Mom was awake much of the night as well.

Crossover with sister was brief, yet still frustrating. Organizing the week with my brother took a while as it's a busy one - who takes who where and when and what needs to be asked of what dr./nurse, etc. No issues arose at all.

Well, my sabotaging thought that has been in my head is: I lost weight the last time I was helping my folks, so I CAN EAT MORE. What the heckarooni? Day was higher-calorie than needed. Again. Someone has removed the battery in the scale in the room I use, so unless I weigh in on one in my folks' room, I'll be awol from the digital doomsayer.

Wrote about interaction with sister and deleted it. Served the purpose to vent and didn't pull anyone else down.

Time here will be almost three weeks - thankful DH is fine with choices made.