[BillBlueEyes]

Welcome to the discussion group, support group, Diet Coach group, Diet Buddy group relating to the two books by Dr. Judith S. Beck:

The Complete Beck Diet for Life

and the first book

The Beck DIET solution: train your brain to think like a thin person.

The Beck Diet Solution is a psychological program, not a food plan. It provides a step-by-step program to learn specific techniques to stay on our diet, lose weight, and maintain our weight loss for life. The program is based on Dr. Beck's clinical research in Cognitive Therapy (CT).

The Complete Beck Diet for Life expands the earlier work and includes a food plan with suggested menus. From the cover:
With The Complete Beck Diet for Life you'll discover the 5 stages of successful dieting and maintenance. You'll learn how to motivate yourself, give yourself credit for every change you make, create time and energy for dieting, and handle hunger and cravings. Dr. Beck eases you into changing one step at a time. You'll master one task before moving on to the next. And you'll learn techniques to deal with challenging situations, such as sticking with our plan at celebrations and dealing with "food pushers." With Dr. Beck's skills, you'll achieve a lifetime of healthful eating and lifelong motivation.

This is a place to discuss the Beck strategies and our daily efforts, to receive and provide support, and, for some of us, is where we serve as on-line diet buddy (coach) to each other.

If you’ve arrived from a search engine, you've landed at the site of 3 Fat Chicks (3FC), a remarkable place for those interested in a healthy life style, including mindful eating, exercise, and weight loss. More about the site, including how to register so that you can post, can be found here.

The books are available on Amazon through the 3FC store by clicking their names above; buying through 3FC helps to cover the costs of running this site.

You can find the list of previous (or more current) monthly Beck threads here on 3 Fat Chicks via:

List of Monthly Beck Threads for Support, Discussion, Buddy/Coach

[BillBlueEyes]

Diet Coaches/Buddies - The five pounds of scale jitter that appeared after our Indian restaurant meal disappeared this morning. Must have been a ton of salt, possibly in the naan since it's so incredibly good for just being a piece of white bread. Life continues to get put back together after the two-day visit from the DGD; ripples for days after she's here - and I can think of a few things to put back together. For one thing, she broke my beloved Glass Plasma Sphere. Ouch! The pieces remain to be disposed of. She's gotten a tad rambunctious; seems to bump into more things and cause more mischief. For example, when helping DW make the fruit salad, she dropped the bowl of blueberries to roll across the floor of the kitchen, pantry, and dining room. The good news is that she happily scooted about the floor picking them up. (I may just buy a replacement Plasma Sphere for myself since I'm more fond of it than anyone else. Perhaps because I remember when they were rare and super expensive. Or just because it tweaks my geek.)

Eating was on plan with no daytime snacks, CREDIT moi. Both the supermarket and the drug store prominently displayed Halloween Candy - already with some BOGO 50% off. That's two months from now!! Shelves and shelves and bins and bins of the stuff. Already I have to start thinking about what I'll hand out on Halloween since it's a time when I historically eat more candy than I plan. It's the only time in the year that I eat candy - except for a rare Christmas homemade candy.


Joy (gardenerjoy) - Making a picnic lunch sounds like a neat way to make an event out of a talk with your Dear Niece.

maryann - Do hope your body quickly fights its invaders. Yep, I suspect that you aren't in dire need of another Professional Development session.

nationalparker – Have a happy journey. Congrats for a pound gone in August.

curlyjax - Happy empty-nesting; glad that you got them both back to their schools. Can understand how difficult it is to deal with your dad's failing memory from a distance.

MommaMeli - Continue to think of you guys and hope you are doing well.

Readers -

Chapter 6 Stage 3 - The Challenging Situations Plan

weekend skills

Create and use a non-food rewards list. If you tend to splurge on Saturdays and Sundays because of sabotaging thoughts such as, I worked so hard during the week . . . I deserve to kick back and relax on the weekends, then find non-food related ways to reward yourself for your hard efforts. Consider taking a nap, relaxing in a hammock or hot bath, or getting a massage.

Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Complete Beck Diet for Life (Green book), Pg 139.

[curlyjax]

I woke up early yesterday and was able to get some weights done in the morning so yay for that. I stayed OP for snacking at work except for 3 hershey kisses but I didn’t go back for more. A colleague gave me some extra chicken pot pie she had made and it was quite tasty. I am pretty hungry these days, maybe i’m not getting enough protein. I vacuumed a bit, made cauliflower and cheese casserole and my banana-oatmeal-pb cookies, so a productive day.
Nationalparker-I will definitely join you in the Sept. goal. I’m down two pounds so yay for that. It is very hard to go thru things without DH, knowing what he’s missing too, I thank you for saying that.
Gardenerjoy- nice to have a walk with dear niece.
Maryann- you’re doing a great job working thru the old food- I predict some interesting menus ahead.
Bill-ouch for the broken sphere, those kiddos do get energetic. I am actively ignoring that Halloween candy , ugh.

[gardenerjoy]

CREDIT for exceeding my exercise minutes for August.

I also completed every single day of Yoga With Adriene's August calendar. The theme was "Begin" and there were a lot of beginner routines, making the whole month a bit too easy for me. OTOH, she invited us to be very mindful about building postures from the ground up and that has really helped my form.

This month's theme is "Celebrate." I'm going to attempt to do every day again. Some of these routines will be a bit more challenging.

Exercise +50, 1620/1600 minutes for August

[karenrn]

Good morning coaches,

I had some off plan snacks on Tuesday but food was on plan yesterday and so far today. I think it was that thing that dh was gone and no one would witness my snacking. So stupid since he is gone all day every day. Anyway, hopefully that is out of my system for the duration of his time away. Yesterday my planned take a friend to the doctor turned into take the friend to the ER which took all day. It's the former co-worker with back issues. This morning I hiked with Hiking Suzanne and then took Otis for a walk. Since it stays dark a little later we didn't start our hike until 5:45 which was nice.

I am trying to limit my grocery shopping right now and will need to focus on some baby bok choi these next couple of days. I bought a large container at Costco and now I'm the only one here to eat it.

More tomorrow.

[maryann]

Good morning, Coaches.
No painkiller this afternoon so I must be improving.
Dinner for official day 1 of pantry challenge is rotisserie chicken day 2 and a Martha Stewart' frozen spinach casserole that I adapted for the air fryer. i didn't want to heat the house. it is 107 here. Apparently reducing cooking time by 20% and lowering the temperature by 25 degrees should work.

Credit for chopping up an English cuke and eating it for snack at work. Very fresh and I bought 10 cent sabra hummus at grocery outlet ( the 8 oz. container) and now I can eat it without chips.
Curly: i want to find an easy chicken pot pie recipe that I can do in the airfryer.
BBE: A good Halloween candy that the kid's love and I don't eat is ring pops.
Joy: Thanks for mentioning yoga with Adrienne's Celebration. I will start it today as well.
Karen: if I have a lot of a green, I just freeze the bag and put in a skoothie. I also have a high dollar Omega juicer so I just so I can save the vitamins of something without the bulk. I need to pull that out again.


Wave to all.

[BillBlueEyes]

Diet Coaches/Buddies - Eating was on plan with no daytime snacks, CREDIT moi. Lovely dinner on the patio included grilled salmon - since it was wanna-be-Tuesday given the offset of the visit by the DGD. One more tomato salad; they continue to dribble in although the end is in sight. And the corn-on-the-cob was sweet - locally grown. Thought we were done with that. Breakfast was English muffins because the package we bought for the DGD's visit now has to be consumed by somebody.

Excitement was voting! There are a couple of places where one can vote early. We took advantage of that and we've now voted in the primary. Rather unexciting list of local candidates for local offices, some of which I, to my embarrassment, don't even know what they do. The process for early voting is different: instead of loudly announcing my address and name in front of multiple poll watchers all looking at the printed sheets of registered voters, I had to show a driver's license to a friendly lady at a computer terminal. All workers were clutching their Dunkin' coffee cups as if just getting up despite it being after 9 am. My completed ballot was placed in an envelope that I had to sign and then sealed by a kind, elegantly dressed, man with a wet-stick that moistened the flap for sealing. "You go to college to learn to do this?" I asked. "Yep, a Master's Degree in flap licking." A pretty laid-back affair, the whole thing.


Joy (gardenerjoy) - Working postures seems like such a good idea. I join your celebration for success meeting your August exercise goal.

maryann - Reducing cooking time due to 107 degrees F sounds smart. Thanks for the reminder of "ring pops" for Halloween treats. One year we gave Tootsie Pops that have zero appeal to me.

Karen (karenrn) - You're a good friend to spend the day taking a buddy to the ER. Ouch for that level of back issues. I do love baby bok choi, but wither at the thought of facing a Costco-sized mountain of it.

curlyjax - Those banana-oatmeal-pb cookies sound good. Kudos for "but I didn’t go back for more."

MommaMeli - Thinking of you guys.

Readers -

Chapter 6 Stage 3 - The Challenging Situations Plan

weekend skills

Read your Response Cards and Advantages Deck more often. You will probably need to read them several times a day to continually remind yourself why it's worth it to stay in control.

Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Complete Beck Diet for Life (Green book), Pg 139.

[curlyjax]

Yesterday was OP at work.I felt a bit nauseous/bloated while there and didn’t even eat my whole lunch. I made up for it later at dinner-I was invited last minute to a gathering with some recently widow/widowered folks. It was at a farm outside,there was a band playing, and it was all quite nice. Not sure if I would go again as they are in a very different place than me, but it was good to stretch my social skill muscles a bit. Today I’m a chaperone to an outing so that will be fun, although a bit of a drive. We’re going to https://www.battleshipcove.org/ so there will be lots of walking around which I need.
Maryann- yay for 10 cent hummus.I’m going to look thru my freezer, I have things like frozen artichoke hearts I need to do something with. Glad you’re feeling better.
Karen- I know what you mean about snacking, I do less of it with junk food when DS is around to witness it. So nice of you to escort that friend to ER.
Joy- the yoga sounds good. It’s easier for me to stretch in the am but I don’t have enough time then, I should make a quick evening routine.
Bill- lucky to get more corn on the cob, I miss that already. Yay for voting early- I hear you on not knowing what some of those positions are.

[gardenerjoy]

With a morning meeting and an afternoon shopping run, I intend today to be all about getting things done so that I can clear off my to-do list ahead of next week. I know exactly what I would be doing if I could devote four hours a day to my writing project. Yesterday and today, I don't have four hours, but I might be able to get it most days next week. So, I'm gearing up for that.

Exercise +50, 50/1500 minutes for September

[MrsCalypso]

Hi old pals,

I've been having a lot of trouble accessing the site since I got a different computer, it takes forever to load and logs me out often. But I wanted stop in to say that I've been losing a little of the excess over the past couple months. I haven't been focusing on Beck strategies as much as just healthy Mediterranean diet eating, but it all helps. I'm weighing in once a month, and that seems to be really helpful for me too. Frequent weigh were messing with my mind.

I mostly logged on to verify my starting weight LOL....I needed to check in.

As far as yesterday's Beck excerpt, I agree. We need pleasures in our lives, and should have them! I planned a reward solo day trip to the coast after losing my first 2 lbs. I met that last month, and still haven't taken the trip, but I will. Maybe on Monday. I don't mind a little crowd. And I have been setting a hammock up in my yard in the evenings after work, and that is pretty nice, too!

Thanks for your patience with me just popping in with a personal update. I hope the site will start working better for me. It took me about 30 minutes to log in and get to where I could leave a post.

My weight is down to 160.5 this month. After this posts, I'll be able to see what my start was!

[karenrn]

Good afternoon coaches,

Food has been on plan and weight is steady. I slept poorly last night but was awake early so I did hike at 5:30 when the trails opened and then walked Otis. After that I got cleaned up and went to Costco and the regular grocery store so I would't have to go on the weekend. I haven't been very productive since then except a couple of loads of laundry.

Tomorrow I'm meeting a friend at a morning movie. It's $3 day and I hope it isn't too busy. We're seeing The Good Boss. My friend in Vancouver BC saw it and recommends it. I thought I might see a few movies while dh is gone, but haven't so far.

MrsCalypso I hear you about the site taking forever. Thanks for checking in and I'm glad you're doing well.

Curlyjax I hope you've had a nice day being a chaperone. Sounds like a nice change anyway.

Bill I'm proud to say that I've finished the baby bok choi. It cooked down quite a bit and a little bit had to be tossed before cooked.

Maryann I'm glad you're feeing better. I think it's a little hotter over your way than it is here. Yuck!

GardenerJoy Congratulations again for being so diligent with your exercise minutes.

[maryann]

Good Afternoon, Coaches. Whoo Whooo!!!! Friday. I was super low energy at school. I don't think I saved democracy for the next generation but we all lived contently working with ideas ranging from the Outcome of Plessy vrs Fergusson (subtitled sometimes the Supreme court does NOT get it right.) One of the student's at 2nd bought the class a movie with positive points. Somehow he had a ton of points. The movie was the Purge and I love to show it to the kids anyway. It is such a wonderful example of what would happen if we lose our Bill of Rights for just one day.

Last night's fun was to measure myself for https://www.fashionfitformula.com/. I have been feeling a little frumpy with this extra weight. I did not like the pictures of myself this summer. So I really want to weed out the pieces in my wardrobe that just don't work and never will. DH took 12 vertical measurements. If you buy the packaged deal, they put the measurements in the algorithm and then come up with specific measurements you use for your particular ratios. Fascinating. I found out where my sleeves should hit me. It tells what kind of belt I should use and that I should place it a half an inch above my natural waist because I am long waisted. Who knew? I also have perfect lengths for dresses, jackets, necklines, necklaces, etc. . . this of course is all based on "society's golden measurements." The clothing is meant to assist me in in a long vertical, hour glass look that is "ideal." I could philosophize of what is beauty, but I am happy to participate in this culture without too much squabbling. Here's what I found:

1. The pieces that I love and that receive the most compliments fit what I was "supposed to be wearing."
2. I now had statistical justification for donating pieces that never made me feel the best.
3. I can easily alter a few pieces that needed it.
4. I had to swallow some serious dollars down the tubes on a few high price pieces. I will try and sell these on Poshmark.
5. Going forward, I know exactly what I need to buy.

It was a bit pricey especially for a pantry challenge month but I figure I will count it as my wardrobe allowance. I don't have to buy new since I am just reconfiguring outfits. I love this stuff. I also had to purchase some necklace extenders for $5.00 because the majority of my necklace are too short for the "golden diamond" proportion. I love this stuff and it was fun measuring with DH.

Today is day three of chicken with roasted potatoes. This weekend I see my college buddies and will bring caprese salad for which I already have the makings. Monday, I am going to a new hairstylist becuase I just don't feel great about the cuts I am getting.

Wave.

[BillBlueEyes]

Diet Coaches/Buddies - Wore my "I Voted" sticker all day and no one commented. I used to wear my "I Gave Blood" sticker all day and many folks would offer congratulations. I suppose voting is more common than giving blood. Or perhaps I used to bump into more people each day when I was going to the office. The best feeling in the world, though, is interrupting each political phone call with "I've already voted." Some solicitors are smart enough to immediately ring off; some just keep going. Makes me want to not-vote for their candidate. But, I remember, I have no such threat; I've already voted.

Eating was on plan with no daytime snacks, CREDIT moi. Dinner was eaten inside because it was a tad chilly. DW made a cucumber salad which, to us, is a Greek-like concoction of slices of cucumber in a spicy Greek yogurt sauce. It's a good way of dealing with an abundance of cukes. I passed on the call to have an almond biscotti in the afternoon when something wasn't going right and the thought entered my mind that a biscotti was the solution. Fortunately, just in time, I remembered that food only fixes hunger and I wasn't hungry, just frustrated. Extra CREDIT moi for a single uneaten biscotti.


Joy (gardenerjoy) - So fun to think of you clearing your calendar for some serious writing time. Are you still on the topic of code breaking?

maryann - Yay for one more day of getting your students interested in real world issues. I know that you don't live in Death Valley but our local newspapers published eye-popping temperatures there of 127 degrees F.

Karen (karenrn) - Good that you always find time to walk dear Otis who must miss the Alpha Wolf presence in the house. The movie The Good Boss looks fun.

curlyjax - Congrats, indeed, for "stretch my social skill muscles a bit." Your battleship cove trip sounds like some fun walking and climbing about.

MrsCalypso - I do hope you give yourself that solo trip to the coast. Such beautiful coast up there. Congrats on the scale losses since you're started this journey.

MommaMeli - Continue to send supportive thoughts.

Readers -

Chapter 6 Stage 3 - The Challenging Situations Plan

Memory Box Cards

When you stick to your plan during a challenging weekend, create a new card for your Memory Box. Terry wrote:

Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Complete Beck Diet for Life (Green book), Pg 140.

[karenrn]

Good morning coaches,

Food was on plan yesterday and weight is holding. Yesterday I agreed to hold the former co-workers get together at our house next weekend, so today I will decide what to cook and also remove glasses from the cupboard and get them all washed. It's a good reason to get some things done that don't get done often. It's dmil's 92nd birthday today. Dh is driving from Chelan, WA to Aberdeen, WA where his dm and db live. He'll be there for a few days before flying home. I'll call dmil this morning but I have to say I'm glad I'm home this year.

Bill A tad chilly sounds so good. I can't wait for a tad chilly. It will be a couple of months at least.

Maryann I'll have to take a look at the link you posted. I am forever trying to decide what my style is, but usually come up with the fact that I'm most comfortable in classic styles. Maybe now that I'm close to my ideal weight I will give more thought to it.

Waving to all others and continuing to think of MommaMeli. Time for some breakfast and get Otis out for a walk in this 84 degree early morning.

[curlyjax]

Nice day yesterday although I got a bit bored; there’s only so much battleship I can take, especially since i’ve been there before. Its usually more women than men on these trips but this time that was reversed. Definitely a different style of talking. I had a very good salad with fruit and two golf ball sized spheres of fried goat cheese. Then later I had a coleslaw salad for dinner, topped off with way too much ice cream. I’ve been feeling so sleepy, maybe its the sugar catching up to me.
I’m taking my time this morning. I may zip off to the farmers market as i’m aware they won’t be around too much longer, and then later I think i’m doing something with my widow friend. The priority this weekend is continuing to move some stuff out of the basement in prep for the radon eradication next week, and creating a menu with lots of veggies that I can eat for a week or two and not have to think about food.
Karen- that movie does look fun. You’re so lucky to have cheapie theaters near you. That will be fun to host your former colleagues.
Bill- a nice thing about getting rid of my landline is I don’t get those political calls anymore, and way less junky phone calls. They haven’t found my cell phone yet.
Maryann- good for you for doing the fashion fit thing. I’ve never been very stylish but am at least getting rid of clothes that make me feel frumpy.
Wave to everyone else.