[nationalparker]

Enjoyed last night with DH as it was the first time we spent together in two weeks. Made a chicken enchilada casserole with black beans, onions, green chiles, and forgot the corn ... it turned out delish. It'd been years since I made it. Was tired of battling corn tortillas that disintegrated when I was rolling them.

Watched The Sapphires movie that each of us rented from RedBox; great minds ...

Today we'll celebrate a personal anniversary though not the main wedding one. Not sure of the plans yet; they've ranged from nice dinner out to bowling. The latter seems like I'll move that to next weekend, though...

I did bring home two slices of cake from Publix down at home to enjoy for our anniversary and we split one last night - it turned out to be about 4-5 forkfuls each, and scrumptious. Nice treat. And being from Florida, I can't just go out for more here. I have told myself that the cakes here don't compare (like you, 3timeLucky!) and don't bother.

ForMyGirls - the skirt is white, so I'm not sure why I bought that to START with - the great white hope for me was always fitting INTO something white and having it look good ... the back has a (oh, i wish i knew what to call it) not quite a kick pleat but something like that and it looks really good with a particular black top I have... but only when it's not TIGHT TIGHT TIGHT. I put it on for our anniversary two years ago and DH said Oh, I'm not dressing up THAT MUCH. I should have said well, I am, since that's the last time it fit enough to wear in public ha!

Off to the post office to mail a nephew a sheet of quarters and pennies to use in those machines that create the penny souvenirs - he's traveling to Disney next week and this way he has his own to do whenever he wants. Silly to send but he'll feel "rich".

[reesuh]

Just checking in to try and establish a new routine. New plan is to focus on Beck-Tasks (including support group) between 7:30 and 8am (just after son goes to school) and 7:30 and 8pm (Just after son goes to bed). Excited about getting my routine down and continuing to move forward in the program! A large wooden turtle sits at our table to remind me to eat slowly.

[gardenerjoy]

The scale's moving in the wrong direction. I might need to tweak my plan, which is probably too generous, but I was losing at the beginning of the month so I was hopeful that the current plan would work for awhile. I'm going to wait until Monday to see what the scale does over the weekend.

WI: +0.15 kg, Exercise: +40 435/1500 minutes for August, Food: 80%op, Read my Advantages and Responses: yes

BillBlueEyes: We have a plumber we like so that's one thing we don't do ourselves, although DH will certainly hover so that he has a complete understanding of the process and then will explain it all to me after the plumber leaves. I nod and smile.

ForMyGirls: These days I stretch while watching something on Netflix. I "should" use one of many yoga DVDs and get all calm and stuff, but, yeah, boring. Your homemade bread and marmalade sounds like a heavenly breakfast.

reesuh: great job scheduling time for the Beck work -- love the turtle!

[BillBlueEyes]

Diet Coaches/Buddies – Exercise, CREDIT moi, was a walk around Salem, Massachusetts and its stellar museum, The Peabody Essex Museum. It was our first time to this museum in decades. It reminds me that I need to get a bigger house so that I can buy and display several ship mastheads in the living room, LOL.

Lunch was an Italian sausage from the street fair - not a very food plan friendly meal, but one that DW and I indulge in once every few years. We had gazpacho for dinner so that kinda balanced.


onebyone – Hoping that you did ride that roller coaster.

Joy (gardenerjoy) – Ouch for scale jiggle.

Debbie (Lexxiss) – Neat that thinking ahead helps when eating out. Thought of you yesterday when monitoring the miles-per-gallon display on our hybrid. If I reset the trip counter at the peak of the Continental Divide, I could watch my car get zillions of mpg as I coasted down the Rockies, LOL.

nationalparker – Yay for enjoying a cake treat that can't be replicated. LOL that your nephew will feel 'rich.'

ForMyGirls - Drooling over your home-made and home-baked brekkie. Do you grow your own lemons?

reesuh - Love the notion of a large wooden turtle to remind you to eat slowly.

Readers -

day 5 Eat Slowly and Mindfully

How to Notice What You're Eating
Here are some tips to help you concentrate.

Try eating without distractions for just a few meals until you really master the skills of eating slowly and fully noticing what you eat. Then incorporate these skills into your normal eating conditions. Whenever you find that you've eaten too quickly or mindlessly, try to eat the next meal without distractions to sharpen your skills.

Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Beck Diet Solution (Pink book), pg 81.

[Tracey on a journey]

Hello Coaches,
A couple of good days. The wine got broken into last night - I really should just plan for that on Saturday suppers. Didn't get as much exercise in yesterday as I had hoped - DH and I looked at 5th wheels all day yesterday and think we've found one we want to buy so didn't get time for a workout. I'll get a bit of one today making bread (I'm my own 'automatic bread maker').

BBE - I've always wanted to visit Salem (the witch trials and all). Is it very touristy or is there some history preserved there too? You Americans do a fantastic job with national parks. DH and I loved a trip to Philadelphia and Gettysburg after watching Paul Giamatti play VP Adams and after reading Killer Angels. A side trip to Eastern State Penitentiary was very cool.

[VioletDolphin83]

Originally Posted by BillBlueEyes

VioletDolphin83 – Glad you're liking the Green Book. What are your two eating plans now?

Don't know about that part yet in the book. I'm up to task 8 in the Get Ready to Lose section. So far there are a few differences between the pink book and the green book. I had a look at the blog on the Beck diet solution website and it pointed where I went wrong with the advantages list. Can't wait to start losing weight.

[Lexxiss]

Hi Coaches!

One meal to go, and although I'll be sad to see my brothers go, I will be happy to return to my Beck style, planned meals. I made good choices yesterday with both lunch and dinner. credit. I delved into the pile of cookies at moms yet my mind kept reminding me I "could" stop and I did. I did accomplish my planned exercise at home before we left and we had lots of spontaneous exercise including a hike through the BettyFord gardens, which I learned is the highest botanical garden in the world at 8200'.

Today we head to brunch. I am food weary and my goal is to make good choices and not to overeat. My aggravation at this club is that the salad selections could be far better. Many times the salad is wilty and today I'm not going to "pretend" and eat it if it's not fresh.

BBE, I would love to ship you the mast we still have sitting in our yard in Alaska...off a smaller boat, which might possibly fit in the house you have. Yay for gazpacho on the patio. It was my choice for lunch yesterday....the healthiest item I could find on the extensive (and expensive) Vailmenu. ($10 for a very small bowl)

[ForMyGirls]

Bugger, bugger, bugger - just accidentally deleted by whole post. Here we go again:

Excellent day - 100%OP (even the boring stretches) extra proud for not having Icecream when rest of the family were and not snacking on bacon I was cooking to put into a lunchtime salad for tomorrow (is there anything more "eat me now" than just cooked bacon? Was inspired by One by One's declutter discussion and tidied up some spaes that have been bugging me for months. Rewarded myself by printing some photos for some frames I found along the way.

One by one - looking forward to hearing about the rollercoasters!

Lexis - great to hear the planning ahead paid off

National Parker - the skirt sounds lovely! Here's to it fitting next year if you're not there in time this year.

Reesuh - well done for working out where to find the time to do your Beck tasks. I found that bit pretty daunting at first as I think I am pretty time poor - but now that I am in the groove I am finding I have more spare time than before I was making time for Beck stuff.

Gardener joy - your plumber tale made me think of a sign I once saw that said "$200 we fix your car; $500 you watch us fix your car; $1000 you help us fix your car"

BBE - we rent our home but are lucky to have two established lemon trees with masses of fruit. There are some fruit trees too, but last years crop was full of worms - we only moved in towards the end of summer so hoping that we can do some spraying in time to hopefully get some fruit off them too (peaches, apricots and apples - yum). My partner is a repressed farmer so what with chooks, big vegie beds and fruit trees and his enthusiasm we're eating very well!

Tracey - LOL on the being your own automatic bread maker - I handmade bread once and yeah - it is quite a workout!

VioletDolphin - it is tricky the "wait to start dieting" thing isn't it? I did like that when I finally got to that point I had changes so many habits that it was like "oh - actually this dieting business is Ok - it's just kinda like normal!"

Thinking of you Bunnababy and hope you're getting through your work days OK.

[nationalparker]

Ahhh... another gorgeous weekend morning here. Warm and sunny. Slow so far, but was up way too late for me last night - another 2 a.m. night (I HATE the days when DH is transitioning back from sleeping days to sleeping nights - I allow them to affect me way too much.) I need more sleep that I've been getting.

We went to see Twenty Feet From Stardom and I LOVED it. Realized we'd seen one of the phenomenal singers when we saw Chris Botti. It started "clicking" at that point - Ohh! If anyone loves music, I'd suggest catching it on the big screen (documentary style movie).

Dinner was leftovers and they were delish, and today's dinner will be the dinner out - we were way too late last night to go out after the movie and mall walking to stores I've not been to in years, like Williams Sonoma, etc. I get frustrated at all simple things that I cannot afford (gorgeous olivewood spoon, $18, etc.) so don't set myself up for longing because I have what I need.

I set up a pallat in the backyard with shepherds hooks and lanterns, candles, pile of blankets on a tarp ... surprised DH with it and we lay out there stargazing and talking for several hours before coming in to bed. We could hear the coyote vocalizing and saw one shooting star. Tonight with the meteor shower would be the time to try it.

Today, yard work and landscaping are on the agenda. I've been very lazy here lately with it and not sure what the issue is. Increased weight making me think it's harder?

Aiming to catch up on personals tonight... great day, all!

[onebyone]

Coaches

We spent a great day at the amusement park yesterday. I did ride a roller coaster. One rollercoaster. I did the Backlot something coaster. DH said "Look just try this one. It's a really small one. Look it just goes over the rails and tours around a bit." And then, after assuring myself that I guess my BP is under control with my meds (it's always high normal even with med) and that well the chances I won't just drop dead in my tracks like my brother just did (sigh) probably won't happen, well ok. I'll go. And so we went on an INTENSE little ride that is HIDDEN from view. My eyes were closed the whole time. LOL It didn't turn me off roller coasters. I got jolted in the neck though and the shoulder. DH said he was too, and in the other coaster he did before the one with me. I saw his legs kicking like a baby's legs when the coaster ride went by and he was inverted, after two corkscrews truns right before that. Part of the amusment park is the physical challenge: eat too much, walk too miuch, ride too much, throw up, get queasy, all part of the thing. And I had the funnel cake.FREE with our picnic package. Wow. what hideous thing! I ate 3/4 of it though and I am done for the rest of my life with that one.

What i LOVED were the water rides. We did a log ride with giant splash, witting at the front of the car and we got the most soaked you can get. Then I amde DH go again. I could have gone again after that. I was wringing water out of my hat and had wet shoes until we came home. Peopl were pinting and laughing at us. It made me laugh. We did a lazy river ride too where DH got even wetter. He picked, by chance, the seat that got the random geyser shots more than anyone else.

Becksters, I think I want to go to a water park!

We did walk alot. My est. is 2-3 hours of solid walking. It's a big place.

I don't know where my Beck How to eat at a buffet" knowledge went. It was like I only knew how to do a buffet one way somehow. But the foods were not what I expected as a "buffet". It was weird. Giant pile of white hotdog and hambirg buns. A hot covered table of hotdogs, hamburger patties, chicken patties, tofu dogs and tofu/veg heat patty. Lettuce salad, coleslaw and mac and cheese, pickle slices. Weird. My brian went: on make a hotdog and burger-get buns-get mac-get lettuce, for burgers... Afterwards I ent back for another hotdog, with bun. And then once home I thought OMG you didn't have to have the bun! Truely the thought never came to my mind when I was there. I have been off a real plan for a while for this to happen, to so completely revert to this. Wow.

Better go. Will be back later.

[gardenerjoy]

The scale is still moving the wrong direction. I think I'll get out my kitchen scale today so I can have a better sense of what I'm doing and what I can change.

WI: +0.15 kg, Exercise: +30 465/1500 minutes for August, Food: 80%op, Read my Advantages and Responses: yes

[maryann]

Good morning, Coaches.

Tried to catch up on posts then got overwhelmed. It is funny how this thread moves in cycles between scarcity and plenty. I enjoy how it is constantly changing, but for now, I have to skip over some days and just post. Today is my wedding anniversary —12 years. Happy to wake up to our lovely little family. As J.K. Rowling said, "All is well." I have been traveling and eating for three days. We had two family reunions and a party thrown for me by my college friends in celebration of my MFA in Creative Writing graduation. All in all, I have a feeling of abundance to have so many good people in my life. Food was lots of sweets but I didn't make myself sick as I have in the past. Weight is three pounds above ticker but I know most of that will disappear in a few days. Off to the market to expend the necessary energy referred to by gardenerjoy — that which is required to reach my goals.

Wave to all.

[3rdTimeLucky]

Ditto Maryann. Have read the posts but not got time for personals. I've missed a couple of days and it's been busy on here (which is great). Had an okay couple of days. Abs very sore from my weekly personal training session yesterday :-) Am looking forward to the week ahead. I will check in tomorrow and try to keep on top of the posts!

Have a good week all.

[bethFromDayton]

Hi all--

Ditto on the idea that it's so hard to catch up! DH and I went to spend the weekend with BFF--today is her birthday. I probably won't see her again for 2 months--when she'll come visit for my birthday.

Food--well food Friday, even traveling, was really good. Saturday and today, well, totally off plan, but not as much as I would have eaten a year ago, so that is progress.

Even though some of the food was off plan, we had a great time making it--BFF, another good friend, and I did all the cooking for her birthday dinner, with some observing of the grilling by BFF's uncle. (BFF does the grilling--her specialty). The original plan had been for BFF's mom to have us all to her house, but she fell and broke her arm about 10 days ago, so that changed the plan. The day was a total success, and was a great blend of people (BFF's mom & stepdad, stepdad's sister, BFF's brother & girlfriend, as well as DH and me, BFF, and our other friend) Lots of conversation, laughter, and then a few games, all of which DH won.

I'm heading for an early bed tonight--not even doing all my planning for next week--I have plans for tomorrow evening, so grocery shopping will have to wait until Tuesday after work. I do know what we're eating tomorrow, though.

No exercise this weekend, except for cleaning BFF's garage (long story) (and we'll go back to working on ours next weekend).

[IBelieveInMe2]

Just stopping in to say hello to my coaches! No one has replaced you, and I am back in a tennis shoe after surgery. Still can't exercise, but I have done a few very small walks up here at the lake this weekend. My foot is very tender still (almost 3 and a half weeks since surgery), but I have high hopes for a full recovery. The podiatrist said he will "turn me loose" (whatever that means.....LOL!) at 6-8 weeks. I hope that means exercise. At my 3 week check (this past Thursday), he said the x-ray shows my foot is about 70% healed. (They had to break the bones to fix them; hence the pain and tenderness now.)

Anyway, enough about my foot!!! I still keep all of you in my thoughts and prayers and check in periodically. I hope to revisit the pink book as I start over (yet again!!!) on this journey to good health and fitness. I hope I want to exercise as much when I am allowed to as I do right now while I can't!!! I am committed to giving it another go once my foot is healed. Since I am about halfway there, I am planning to begin watching my food intake again much more closely and revisit all of my Beck strategies. I also need to set up a regular workout schedule with my trainer once the kids are back in school (August 21st). I feel afraid to make the commitment to the trainer, because he is "all business," but I know that it is a necessary step I will have to take to get back into shape, so I am hereby committing to making the phone call soon; hopefully this week or next!

Please send me some very powerful and any positive vibes you have to share!!! I need all the help and support I can get!!!

Waving hello to all of my old coaches and sending a warm to all the newcomers!!! We can do this together, so let's all huddle up and do this as a TEAM!!!