[gardenerjoy]

I made it through yesterday's weirdness with minimal damage -- helped by a long phone call with my brother (who moved to a new house last week). I walked during our call -- CREDIT!

A lot of the weirdness came from getting a long email from Dear Niece. A big improvement over short texts! I sent a long email in return, offering all the words of wisdom, insightful questions, and other aunt tricks that I could think of. She's thinking about her future which is really good news.

Exercise +65, 270/1500 minutes for June

MrsCalypso: I love that you set a 2 lb goal, in spite the recommendation. The Beck approach works, in broad strokes, but you aren't the first to object to the imperious tone of the books, sometimes. Good for you for making it your own!

MommaMeli: My favorite tip for slowing down my eating is to put my fork down between bites. I tend to refill my fork while consuming the previous bite and it all goes by so quickly! This has the advantage of actually being able to pay more attention to what's going on around me. Putting down the fork is a hard habit to develop, but even if I manage just a few times, it slows down my eating. HA! I typed all of that out before seeing that MrsCalypso offered the same solution.

[karenrn]

Good afternoon coaches,

Food has been on plan. I hiked this morning and then took Otis on a short walk and did my other exercises. I've been doing a little reading and puttering around. I'm sure a nap is in order since I got up at 3. I could have slept 45 more minutes, but I just didn't. I'm not crazy about the book I'm reading, Alive Until You Die, but I'll keep reading it.

Personals tomorrow.

[maryann]

So on the drama front, the incredibly hurtful texts kept coming even AFTER I suggested I make separate accommodations. Yesterday a text came through of how Missouri has 98% increase of cases. I of course currently in transit to Missouri. The final straw a text singling me out as the highest risk in the group. I know that much of this has a foundation in Different political views. I keep quiet. They don’t. So after checking with two other girls that are like minded with me, I canceled my Canada reservations and will come straight home at the end of the week. I also requested to be removed from all group chats and texts in order to unplug and try and build some positive vibes during my vaca. I suggested if people wanted to call me they could individually talk to me when I return next week. The most militant of the crowd called immediately, accused me of “ throwing a tantrum” being uncompromising when it came to her health and “punishing her” for trying to take care of herself. I was also accused of “dropping out if the group.” byrefusing to group text. I asked if the price of her friendship is for me to continue to get hurt in her preferred manner of communication. No answer.

Good News is I have only eaten what I brought from home even though my flight is delayed three hours. Other good news is the people I am visiting in MO are totally chill.

Momma Meli: one trick is identify the slowest eater in your family and match their bites. Eating while not standing is one of my most difficult challenges. But thank you for reminding me it is still an important goal.

[nationalparker]

Me and my bright idea...dh liked the idea of a second mower at his folks to get thru the mowing faster. So he packed ours in the car. I used our push mower, not self propelled, everywhere I hate to mow anyway... under a long row of low trees, along the house and fences, into the ditch, along the street. Tried to make it easier for DH to use the zero turn on straightaways. I got too hot and my face was very red for ages. Mowed for two solid hours. The swarms of gnats drive me buggy (bad pun) ... It's like we're in the Amazon.

​​​​​​Food was great until I overate at dinner, got too hungry and we got home after 8. I'm giving myself grace on that though first temptation is to beat myself up. I packed good lunch and snacks but need more staying power with very active days. Grapes were the snack on the drive home.

Waving to everyone and will check in tomorrow.

[BillBlueEyes]

Diet Coaches/Buddies - Eating was on plan with no daytime snacks, CREDIT moi. Lunch was a ham sandwich, just as I'd planned since we served it to the family a few days ago. Did concede that ham for lunch twice was enough; the remainder can be frozen for red beans and rice in the future. Dinner was dahl consumed on the patio outside with a green salad of all home-grown lettuce. Nice dawdling weather.

Excitement was serving as mule to carry two five-gallon buckets of mulch to our community garden. Done. Was aghast at the Sugar Snaps towering about five feet. Ate one right off the vine. Just the best. The tomato plants looked robust without flowers yet. The lettuce is yielding a-plenty - looking like we need to be eating more. The cukes are starting. The green beans are just breaking the surface of the soil. Dinner question from DW was "How thick was the layer of mulch that I spread?" Well, the garden is 10 feet by 10 feet; made up a number for cubic feet in a five-gallon bucket; and, back-of-envelope estimated 1/4 inch. Just calculated it; it's about 1/6 inch. Not bad. DW has memorized that a cubic foot is almost 7.5 gallons. Gotta remember that one.


Joy (gardenerjoy) - Super good news that your DGN is responding to you. Acknowledging that one has a future is a giant step forward.

maryann - Ouch for the unnecessary drama. Super Kudos for taking care of yourself. It's a GIANT red flag when a person directs all blame back with no acknowledgement of their role. Sorry that you'll miss a chunk of your planned trip, but it might have only gotten worse with that "Karen" as part of the group. Missed a trip but dodged a bullet.

nationalparker – That's a lot of mowing. I do hope that there's an end in sight with you in-laws' house.

Karen (karenrn) - A little puttering around is good.

Penny. - Yay for a touch of socializing; hope you remember how to have conversation, LOL.

MrsCalypso - I interpreted this as being mindful of hunger and other eating triggers. Writing down wasn't for me. I did note that my desire to eat was rarely due to hunger - maybe never. For me, it was the clock. When it was our normal dinner time, I felt "hungry" for dinner. Felt "hungry" for lunch at noon. And seriously noted that "hunger" always followed a desirable smell - like fresh baked bread.

MommaMeli - Kudos for getting the sitting down part. I've had to interpret the "Eating Mindfully" as "more mindfully." It's hard to be a part of a dinner conversation and study the food. Yep, "slow down" seems like a good approach.

Readers -

Chapter 6 Stage 3 - The Challenging Situations Plan

The Special Event Calories Decision

But there are disadvantages to choosing this option. You will have to figure out the calorie content of the extra food or drink before you go to the event. You will still not be able to decide spontaneously to use you Special Event Calories.

Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Complete Beck Diet for Life (Green book), Pg 12.

[curlyjax]

I ate a lot of snacks yesterday and ended up skipping dinner, by ignoring the hunger, which I rarely do. I did however finish off some sweet wine to help me get to sleep. Today I am focusing on drinking lots of water and getting some greens in. It is nice to wake up not feeling overfull. If I was making dinner for DS i wouldn't be able to stay out of the food, or blast music/podcasts while sorting thru things, so i'm enjoying my time. Exercise was 20 minutes on the stationary bike as well as mopping the kitchen floor. I beat myself up for letting the house get so disgusting, but one thing at a time.
Maryann- I'm sorry you're going thru this. That person should not be traveling at all if she thinks she can control her health by focusing on one individual, that is ridiculous.

[MommaMeli]

Day 6 here: Find a diet coach. I'm already glad I joined this board! Thanks for the good advice. Also thrilled to be in a group with so many fellow gardeners. Gardening is a huge part of my life right now. We're making lettuce, spinach, onions, squash, zucchini, Chinese broccoli, and beets here in Texas. The birds got my first tomato, but I intend to be covered up in them soon.

I have definitely identified a challenge: eating slowly! I knew I'd been finishing dinner first, but yesterday I tried eating slowly and still wolfed down my meal faster than anyone else. Credit for noticing. Also credit for catching myself eating standing up a few times, but then stopping. I suspect this is something I'll be working on long term.

Some of you make some font bold in your replies. How do you do that?

maryann: My heart goes out to you! So many relationships have been strained and broken during this divisive time. My family has experienced this too, and it is very painful. You are being smart by setting boundaries. I hope you will be able to forgive your friends even if you are not able to restore the relationship.

[MrsCalypso]

Good morning, Coaches!

MamaMeli, the bold type is made by putting [ b ] (but with no space between brackets) at the front of what you would like to make bold, and [ /b ] at the end. I learned this on another internet forum, I think, that had instructions or cheats. There are other cute things that can be done. There is probably a list online but I don't know what I would search for.

Today is Day 12, practice hunger tolerance. Beck encourages us to plan a day where we will skip lunch, to experience the reality that hunger is not an emergency. I'm not going to do that either. I tend to be a perfectionist, and my natural inclination would be to go "all or nothing" with any program, but this is not one that I am willing to do. I have some experience with hunger, and I will just lean on that. Skipping meals is too 'diet-y" and triggering for me.

Coach Check In . Food was off-plan last night, due to not having a plan for where to go with a dear friend after our walk. We like to go out on Mondays for an adult beverage and a snack, but we wanted to be more careful about the cost, so we went to a place that did not have Mediterranean-friendly options. My brain went right into justification mode and I even found a way to eat almost double what I planned. Later that night was a bust as well.

I really don't like that this happened. It scares me. I don't want to fall into the "a couple good days each week" trap where I am not actually losing weight and just treading water. I can do that without reading Beck or posting here! : P

So, last night I created a meal plan for today. That ought to help. If I decide to change the plan, I will change it to something "on plan".

curlyjax, I can related to how nice it feels to wake up not feeling overfull. That is not my story today but I love it when it is!

nationalparker, you wrote "I'm giving myself grace on that though first temptation is to beat myself up." I needed to see that. Thank you for being an example of self-love. I suffer from perfectionism and self-loathing after a not-great day or moment. I need help to remember that there is another way to live.

maryann, I also have experienced harsh judgement from some friends and family close to me during the pandemic. I ended up taking a 2 month break from a friendship because of the non-stop comments even after I graciously thanked her for her concern and told her I had heard her perspective but was not planning to change my choices. My friendship has happily recovered. The pandemic has been a free-for-all for neo-puritan judgmentalism. Not my cup of tea! I hope you enjoy your vacation just exactly as you wish to. I'm glad your creative packing isn't going entirely to waste!

Joy and Bill, I appreciate the kudos around taking making the Beck advice mine. Thanks for validating my feelings! I old enough that I think I can just take what I like and leave the rest for another time. Hurray for flexible thinking!

[gardenerjoy]

Credit for being 1/5 of the way through my exercise goal for June, 1/5 of the way through the month.

Today's challenge is a long and complicated to-do list. But, probably doable. Reminding myself that I don't eat in the car and that I don't buy food that isn't on my list. Reminding myself that food doesn't fix busy-ness -- if I need a fix, it will either be to knuckle down and get it done OR to make a change in the plan so that it's more doable.

Exercise +30, 300/1500 minutes for June

[karenrn]

Good morning coaches,

Food has been on plan and weight is down just a bit. This mornings I hiked Sunrise by myself and listened to some podcasts. It was 77 degrees when I started at 5 a.m. and will be much warmer than that in the next week or so. I kept the hike a bit shorter and took my time. It's more important to get the exercise than push myself so hard I feel awful. I decided my breakfast portions could be reduced a bit and did that this morning. I will try to do the same with lunch and dinner and see how that goes. I'm just cutting it back to about 80% of what it was.

Dh and I had our 35th wedding anniversary yesterday. Who knows maybe we'll make another 35. I would be over 100, but I do have a great aunt that lived that long. Ds is heading back to Thailand today. He has been in the states for a month and a half. I'll miss being able to phone him whenever I want. I can still contact him easily, it's just that with the time difference it isn't as convenient.

Mrs Calypso I find I do better when I don't beat myself up and just move forward as quickly as possible. It seems like when I focus on the off plan eating it just happens more regularly or I find it difficult to get back on plan. I used to write out a plan regularly and it helped at that time.

MommaMeli I'm not one that has a garden, but your's sounds just wonderful. I'm afraid here in Scottsdale it would just burn up. I know some people do have gardens but their growing season is fall I think. I continue to work on eating more slowly. I grew up with 3 brothers and it seems like we all ate way too fast.

Curlyjax Sounds like skipping dinner (since ds is not there) was an easy way to keep the calories in line. Good job on the exercise. I think housework is a lot of exercise maybe because I don't enjoy it much.

Bill It sounds like you got your strength training exercise yesterday too. I guess you can thank dw for that. Sounds like the garden is really taking off. I'm looking forward to Dahl again soon. We really liked it.

Nationalparker I think you got the more difficult part of the mowing job for sure. You sure must be getting strong with all of that. We have little gnat like bugs that come around when the Saguaro are in bloom. They drive me nuts, but this year there seemed to be fewer of them for a shorter length of time.

Maryann I'm so sorry for all the drama. I'm of the camp that if a person doesn't wish any increase in risk it is up to them to stay home or do what they need to do to limit their risk.

Penny I forgot to say your Sil's restaurant looks great. Maybe I'll get to Portland again one of these days. I hope you are continuing to feel better and better.

GardenerJoy It sounds like things with dn are moving in a positive direction. Nice that you were able to walk and talk on the phone with db.

Have a great day all of you!

[Penny.]

Good morning!

Yesterday ended with some comfort food after my company left. I made a vegetable curry with rice. Each of my two friends brought ice cream treats to share and I ended up eating three, along with popcorn and spaghetti later in the evening. I need to figure out how to socialize without wanting to self soothe with food afterward. Weight is unchanged.

Today is going to be a long day. I bought the family concert tickets way before the kids started school. We are driving 1-2 hours for the Rex Orange County concert that will be outdoors. My son requested we go and I think they sound pretty good but am not totally familiar. It's going to make for a later night and a rough morning tomorrow for the school kids.

Have a great day, everyone!

[nationalparker]

Hello, coaches. A gloomy gray, misty day here today. I met my friend to walk this morning; this will be the last time for about a month as we each have trips scheduled after the other one. I'll still walk on my own, though. I stopped at the market and picked up a very reasonably price watermelon and pineapple. Thanks, Penny, for the dinner idea for DH - I went with a curry recipe that I make that he likes and it works out perfect with leftovers for him.

I'm frustrated by DH's "one thing at a time" with his parents' home and need to just chill myself out. I am used to organizing a lot of moving parts for a project on a higher level and he focuses on one task from start to finish. I want the meeting for the kids and his brother to select what they want from the items his mom left for the three of them to split to be scheduled so I can start cleaning that area out, want the go-ahead for dropping off his aunt's art (boxes of her drawings!) to his cousin on our way into town on Friday, etc. It is so, so hard for me to step back and not keep asking when something will get organized. A personality flaw. And I'm also struggling to not eat over it ... I stopped journaling a couple of weeks ago and think I need to restart that.

One of the biggest helps to me has been [I think it was] GardenerJoy's "kitchen is closed" mentality for not just at night but for midafternoon too. I had to use that today to stop stress eating for who knows what I was stressed about, but needed to stop and did a smoothie for dinner.

DH repaired our dishwasher that'd been out of service for several months with baling wire and a rubber band, I think he said. It's a stopgap until we need to take the time to look for another one. But if it's working, that's all that matters. I have to stay home when it's running but that's not a problem as I rarely leave the house with any appliance running. I'm thankful he took the time to tackle that.

Game night with my sister was switched to tonight, so will just close and aim for personals tomorrow. I feel like a taker when I don't post and start stressing but will use Bill's advice to not skip posting /stress about it if I can't do personals.

[BillBlueEyes]

Diet Coaches/Buddies - Eating was off. Ouch. The good news is that we went to a garden party in a splendid large yard with a dozen folks who all knew each other sitting comfortably among the landscaped shrubs. I'd planned to make the food my dinner; did that part. But the food was walking appetizers - the kind that I, ever so graciously, pluck from the tray each time it passes. I got hooked on little sausages in a phyllo dough shell with a strong mustard to splash over it. You'd think the young ladies were being paid by how many they handed out, LOL, since they kept coming by me. The best looking and best tasting item had a marvelously toasted ham around ... a date! A date! That was a surprise. Had to remind myself that there are folks in the world who adore dates; I'm just not one of them. I did, CREDIT moi, refuse the hostess' offer to take a tray of appetizers home with me since "we can't eat all this." Alas, I let that be her problem instead of being the hero and taking home another zillion calories.

The run to the supermarket was, again, boring. Since I had over-bought the prior week to be prepared for having the kids for dinner, I had a reduced list. Was annoyed that I didn't need Red Bell Peppers since they looked so good. Buying attractive food is just plain fun. And I don't need to buy lettuce since we're now in full blown production mode.


Joy (gardenerjoy) - Always appreciate the reminder that "food doesn't fix busy-ness." My brain seems wired to think that whatever the current feeling, food is the answer.

maryann - Waving toward Missouri - hoping you've gotten into vacation mode.

nationalparker – Kudos for finding a way to stay calm when facing a one-task-at-a-time person. With your professional organizing skills, your DH would do well to ask you to be Czar and get things moving faster.

Karen (karenrn) - Happy 35th Wedding Anniversary. May you have 35 more - the old age home, when you're over a hundred, will be happy to wheel out a cake along with a few cute little girls and the local newspaper photographer to publish a feel-good story. Someone has to do it.

curlyjax - Always Kudos for "ignoring the hunger." Yay for the reward of waking up not feeling overfull.

Penny. - Hope you made the long trip to the concert and back - an ambitious plan. Rex Orange County is new to me so I followed that link to listen to some previews of their new album Keep It Up. Waking me up here this morning.

MrsCalypso - Ouch for "justification mode" leading to overeating. It's so easy to step off the plan. Kudos for making a plan for today.

MommaMeli - Yes, we're delighted to be your online Diet Coach and ask you to serve as ours. That's been working for me. Love the list of the veggies in your garden - it must be pretty big.

Readers -

Chapter 6 Stage 3 - The Challenging Situations Plan

The Special Event Calories Decision

Also, some dieters can obsess for days: Should I use my extra calories when we go out to dinner on Saturday night? Or should I use them at my cousin's party? And if I do use them, what should I spend them on? For some dieters, having the choice makes their lives more difficult. They agonize over the decision, so for them it's better to forgo this option.

Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Complete Beck Diet for Life (Green book), Pg 12.

[curlyjax]

I ate a huge lunch of taco bowl yesterday, but then ate very little later in the day and went to bed hungryish again. I've been worried before about whether I would get to sleep but so far that hasn't been a problem, so I'm thrilled about that. I'm still not sleeping well, I should probably focus on getting exercise back in my life again. I' did the stationary bike for my hip but that was it.
There seems to be a lot more flies in the house this year and I'm worried there's a nest or whatever somewhere. And the back door lock is stuck on locked, so I need to deal with that. Ugh, these houses are constant upkeep, and there is so much to clean, sort out etc. I get mad at myself for letting things get so bad, but as long as I get something accomplished each day or most days, I will see progress.
Karen- happy 35th anniversary! That is indeed an accomplishment these days.
Bill- yay for enjoying a nice party but not bringing free and delicious food home.

[MommaMeli]

Good morning coaches!

Today is [B] Day 7: Arrange Your Environment [\B]. That seems fairly easy to me. I'd guess the one downfall is the treats the kids make. Two of my kids are going through the dessert making phase. I plan to try everything they make, but I need to make a plan for the leftovers. I think last time I served it as a snack for the kids the next day just to get it out of the house. So the cake my son made will be snack today so that it can quit calling my name! Credit for the idea. More credit if I execute it.

Slowing down my eating isn't really happening yet. I sometimes don't remember until the last few bites of a meal. I need some sort of trigger. You'd think when I'm eating I'd remember I'm trying to lose weight.

[b] Bill [\b] I enjoyed your description of the garden party! You are quite a good writer. The adjectives you used to describe the food had me giggling!
[b] Penny [\b] You sound like a fellow introvert. I tend to over eat at the parties, not after, but I understand needing something restful and soothing after being around a lot of people. No advice, but good for you to at least notice the pattern.