[curlyjax]

I slept in late today, wow! The power of a sleeping pill. Thanks for your sympathy coaches. I am feeling better today.My DD felt better and did not come home but then I discovered my DS was allergic to prednisone he was on for poison ivy and I freaked out about that. The nurse on the phone was a bit condescending- a rash that covers your body is a side affect, not an allergic reaction according to her- whatever you call it, it isn't good! I cannot deal with any more medical issues. Anyhow, he's okay.
I got a good walk in yesterday with a friend from work who warned me its much harder to get weight off after menopause. I think i'm finally starting that so I do need to crack down (sorry, tmi!)
Today the choir i'm in is singing 2 songs for a fundraiser and we're really not- ahem!- quite prepared! but it will be fun. The director encourages us to sing loudly even if we're wrong, so okay!
Penny- sorry for the bike ride, that sounds scary and frustrating. It is so windy in the fall too.
Bill-ooh, the owl sounds magnificent!
Joy- you inspire me with the salad for a snack!
Karen- hope the mall shopping is productive!

[Penny.]

Good morning!

Food was on plan, and weight is the same. I think I've recovered from my embarrassing social situation. Lol

My mom and I did a local open art studios tour yesterday and visited a few. The one that I was most looking forward to ended up closed for medical issues. She does acrylic painting and home interior scenes, which I love.

Curly, I'm so glad things are calming down.

Karen, credit for making the food plan.I also had the same experience with a hiking meetup.

Bill, the owl sighting is exciting! Is this an organized public group you walk with, or friends and family? I can't remember if you've said already.

Joy, good luck with the no plan day and grocery shopping.

[karenrn]

Good morning coaches,
Food was on plan and with reduced portions. The good news is that I wasn't a bit hungry. I went to a couple of malls and found a new handbag, three new tops and a scarf. Yea me, I might just be set for fall. I don't buy much for cooler temps because it doesn't really get that cool. It was one of those days where several things worked, so I just purchased them. One of the shirts I wanted was not available in my size. I ended up trying on a petite small and it is fine. I'm not that small, but the sizes in J Jill were really vanity sizing. A really small person wouldn't find a thing in that shop.
Penny It wasn't even a meet-up group when I fell behind hiking. It was just my buddies and I was unfit at the time. A few of them are still faster than I am, but not all and not by much.
Curlyjax I'm glad you got a good nights sleep. I've been up at 3 a.m. the last two mornings. I think I may take an over the counter sleep aide tonight. I feel fine though thank goodness. I am a nurse and I say I am allergic to opioids cause I break out in hives all over, so pooey on her.
GardenerJoy My plan the past few days has just been tracking in MFP in the morning what I except to eat for the day. I do need to think about a plan for the week, or for a few days anyway.
Bill That sounds like a tasty little morsel that you had at Trader Joe's. I give you credit for how well you do especially considering all the functions you attend that have food available.
Dh's flight arrives in two hours. He will be glad to get home and Otis and I will be glad to have him here. I would not do well living alone, even with Otis.

[bethturnaround]

Hi all,

It's been a tough couple of days--I just want to eat and eat and eat--I dreamed about eating. And I've got that "just want something sweet' urge after eating solid food going on. That means I've undone my resistance to wanting sugar--and that means I get to start that fight over again.

On the plus side, I got my blood work done last week and saw the doctor yesterday--everything is great and in a healthy range.

So, tomorrow, I will do the following, and report in nightly:

1. Weigh and record my weight
2. Check my sugar and record my sugar
3. Record everything I eat in MFP (3 products plus dinner)
4. No sweets
5. Read at least 5 cards between breakfast and lunch time
6. Find/unpack a diet book and read at least 5 pages in the afternoon

I'm not going to commit to walking on top of all of that--I need to get myself back on track. I keep saying that--but at least it's days rather than months or years. "Hello. My name is Beth and I am a sweetaholic."

G'night all

--Beth

[BillBlueEyes]

Diet Coaches/Buddies - Was the day to dismantle the rope hammock in our backyard that gives DW a few minutes of peace when she's done a little more gardening that the body wants. It also serves as a special place for the DGD to try to kill herself since, like all hammocks, it's only stable after you're in and lying perfectly still. Perfectly still is not yet in the physical repertoire of that 3-year-old. Next on the agenda are the patio table and chairs. Once declared over, summer stuff has to find its place in the basement.

Eating was OKish. Dinner included ridding the fridge of some leftovers that were still tasty after reheating. I had snacks during Social Hour so I reduced the size of lunch to try to compensate. The calorie balance probably doesn't match - but it's a try. Lunch was yet another garden tomato picked green that ripened on the kitchen window shelf. There're only a couple left. The end is in sight.


Joy (gardenerjoy) - May you have a happy no-plan day.

Karen (karenrn) - Yay for success shopping for clothes. Must be fun flying home to be greeting by Otis.

curlyjax - Hope your DS gets resolved with his not-a-reaction issue. Condescending folks trigger my buttons.

Beth (bethturnaround) - Congrats for healthy blood work - clearly the result of your hard work. Wish you well getting back your resistance to sugar.

Penny. - LOL at the thought of painting home interior scenes instead of just painting home interiors. We lead bird walks for a Friend's group of our little wildlife area.

Readers -

day 15 Monitor Your Eating

The Benefits of Writing Down What You Eat
Continually monitoring what you eat will provide you with the following benefits: . . .

It helps you build your confidence. As you focus on how well you're following your plan, you begin to realize that you can stay on a diet, that you can do what it takes to lose weight.

Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Beck Diet Solution (Pink book), Pg 143.

[curlyjax]

I didn't get much exercise in yesterday,but i did manage to do a little on my stationary bike. We had our mini concert yesterday which was so fun. It is great to be a part of a group experience and its a nice group of people. I was patting myself on the back for not having any sugar/excess calories today when I realized I did have some celebratory Baileys-197 calories in 1/4 cup, oops! Will have to save that for special occasions.
Karen- always good to hear from another medical perspective, thank you! yay for fun shopping.
Beth- I'm a sweetoholic too, I totally relate.
Bill-hammocks are tricky. When you're so little they can flip so easily! Goodbye summer
Penny-ooh fun, I love open art studios.
Off to do my hip stretches!

[karenrn]

Good morning coaches,

Dh got home yesterday early afternoon and I did have a couple of beers with him sitting on the patio. Other than that food was pretty good. This morning I'll go for a hike after I take Otis for his walk. I'll start packing for my backpacking trip, since I like to have plenty of time to decide what I'm taking. I take the same basics, but change it up in the clothes and food depending on the weather. We will be eating dinner and the next mornings breakfast at Phantom Ranch at the bottom, so that saves some weight in the backpack and is fun at the community tables even though it's a bit expensive. I took half a Costco sleep aid last night and slept like a log.

Curlyjax I'm glad your concert was fun. I so wish I had a good singing voice. My Mom sang beautifully, even sang at weddings and funerals, but I certainly didn't get it.
Bill I can about imagine your DGD in the hammock. I think I mentioned my niece's son hanging by his ankles from the fabric hammock in her apartment that hangs from the ceiling. He dropped onto his head! He is a real dare devil. Otis was over the moon when dh got home. I think he jumps 3 feet in the air after we've been gone awhile.
Beth I hear you about the sweets. I also do better to leave them alone most of the time. I still think probably the most important trick to all of this is getting back on plan as quickly as possible and you are doing it. Good job on having all your lab work in the healthy zone.

I'm working on smaller portions and trying to eat only until satisfied. My breakfast is not that many calories so I expect to eat it all, but I think I could be a little more careful with lunch and dinner portions. I especially need to work on not eating calories earned from exercise unless it's only a portion of them from a really long hike or backpack. I will always be a work in progress, that I know.

Well, up and at 'em. Everybody have a great day.

[gardenerjoy]

I got a discouraging bump up on the scale this morning. But, it may just be sodium. Aiming for lots of water today. And, at least two salads!

Daily weighing streak: 8, Weigh-in: +0.65 kgs, Exercise: +55, 790/1200 minutes for October

[Penny.]

Good morning!

Yesterday was on plan, weight is down a sliver.

A problem has come up, I won't complain about. My jeans are sloppy big but my next size down is still too small. Maybe I'll switch to my broomstick style skirt through the transition.

Beth, credit for the plan and good luck with getting through those sugar withdrawls.

Karen, you are so inspiring with all your hikes!

Curly, kudos for the choir performance! That sounds so much fun.

Bill, credit for okayish eating. Very cool that you have enough bird watching friends in the area to form a group. For a half a second I consider trying to lead my own slower cycling group but then remember I don't want to. Lol

Joy, good luck with the two salads. Credit for always moving up the exercise minutes.

[bethturnaround]

Hi all,

It’s late but I want to check in since that’s one of my behaviors.

Credits for today
—recorded weight and sugar
—3 products and good dinner choices (prepared my first meal in our new house)
—no sweets
—read cards (after lunch which might better since evenings are harder than mornings for me)
—read diet book (Thin for Life)
—got through Costco without buying treats
—talked myself through multiple desires to eat

Exercise was more unpacking. I unboxed all the artwork. It’s now leaning against walls in the dining room. DH hates hanging pictures. I may invite a friend to come help me—he’s good at stuff like that. (DH is good at it, too—he just doesn’t like to)

On a plus, I did buy 3 new jackets (all different weights/uses) at Costco. I’d had one of them in my online cart and never ordered it. I’m now covered for outerwear for the fall/winter. I was surprised at what they had.

G'night all!

—Beth

[BillBlueEyes]

Diet Coaches/Buddies - More class about the brain. The left side of the brain controls the right side of the body. Mostly. One side alone controls speech. Mostly. (Specific brain injuries have caused some folks to lose one of their two languages.) Everything about the brain needs to be modified by 'mostly' because there is a patient history that shows what we've been generally taught isn't completely true. The limitation of using my brain to understand my brain appears to be a real limitation. But even birds have a separated left and right brain. While the left brain is selecting grain from gravel, the right brain is scanning for hawks and racoons. I'm easily impressed.

Food was OKish. Lunch was a cafeteria provided smoked turkey sandwich eaten with a friend who will teach a course with me next fall. We're trying to understand the difference between "Machine Learning" and "Artificial Intelligence." It's easy to get a gut feeling, but it's a challenge to get an understanding that will stand up to a question asked in class. One more time I'm driven to the notion that the only way to know you understand a subject is to teach it to a group of freshmen.


Joy (gardenerjoy) - Hard to accept that little sodium weights so much.

Karen (karenrn) - LOL at the image of little Otis jumping three feet in the air. Just green thinking about your Grand Canyon hike.

curlyjax - Congrats for finding fun in your concert instead of concern about its level of preparedness.

Beth (bethturnaround) - Yay for your first meal in your new house. Three jackets from Costco in one trip is a major success.

Penny. - Yay for the wonderful NSV of jeans that are too loose. Guys can always resort to outlandishly bright suspenders - folks are so distracted by the suspenders that they fail to notice that the pants don't otherwise fit.

Readers -

day 15 Monitor Your Eating

The Benefits of Writing Down What You Eat
Continually monitoring what you eat will provide you with the following benefits: . . .

It helps you recognize and solve problems. By taking time each night to see if you strayed from your eating plan - and why - you can figure out how to correct the problem in the future. Instead of labeling yourself as a failure for overeating or engaging in unplanned eating, you can see these behaviors as solvable problems and not as personal failures.

Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Beck Diet Solution (Pink book), Pg 143.

[curlyjax]

Today's challenge is a work lunch. It's very fun, I'm bringing a van of elders to a tech high school where you can get a very good meal for a decent price. They also have a little bakery so I will limit myself to one thing to bring home for DS and possibly myself. And i'm going to bring half the lunch home for supper because its always too much, and then I don't have to cook, win win! Last time I had to chide a few folks for saying mean things about other elders that weren't there- its a lot like middle school at times
Penny- I had to laugh at the broomstick style skirt but I know exactly what you mean!
Bill- teaching a course, that's great! Have you done this before or is it a new thing?

[gardenerjoy]

I forgot to weigh this morning in all the excitement of it being Trash Day. Oh well. This next streak isn't going to last very long because I'm going out of town this weekend.

Today's other excitement is my annual doctor's appointment. I'm not sure what I weighed last year at this time, so I don't know if it will be up, down, or the same. I'm more concerned about my blood pressure reading. I'd like to stay off medication (when I lost weight the first time, I was able to get off the medication that I'd been on for a decade). But, we'll see.

Daily weighing streak: 0, Weigh-in: NA kgs, Exercise: +40, 830/1200 minutes for October

[Penny.]

Good morning!

Yesterday was on plan and weight is the same.

Beth, credit for checking everything off your list!

Bill,it's amazing how much we still don't know, isn't it? I can barely keep up with medical practice research recs.

Curly, that is so funny about the gossip.that's good to know there is a high school out there with good food.

Joy, fingers crossed the bp med stays gone!

[BillBlueEyes]

Diet Coaches/Buddies - The salmon for dinner was farm grown. It tasted good to me; I have no serious information about the environmental impact of cages of fish being grown in the ocean. The concern is disease spreading rapidly, first to the caged fish then to those outside the cages. There's no easy solution to the challenge of feeding 7.5 billion people on the planet. DW lamented that the little fellow had never had the chance to swim up-river to its breeding grounds. I felt sorry about that - just a tad, since I thought it might have more lament that I was eating it.

Eating was OKish. I had two snacks - not my best. But forgot to snack when we watched at home the DVD of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). Don't tell anyone that we're 54 years late getting to this, but I always presumed that I'd seen it. Particularly since the scene of riding the bomb waving a cowboy hat is so familiar. Apparently, Stanley Kubrick had a rather low opinion of American Air Force officers. I got snookered by Peter Sellers because he appeared as three of the main characters - always looking familiar but leaving me feeling confused.


Joy (gardenerjoy) - Love the thought of Trash Day causing excitement. Around here trash day tweaks both our routines just enough that we are able to forget to do something else. Good luck with your doctor.

curlyjax - LOL at the elders reverting to middle school gossip. This will be the first time for me to teach a full course; think I'll feel comfortable once I'm in front of the classroom.

Penny. - On plan is always worthy of Kudos.

Readers -

day 15 Monitor Your Eating

Dieters who kept detailed food
logs were even able to lose weight over
the winter holiday season.

Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Beck Diet Solution (Pink book), Pg 143.