Karen~
don't get down on yourself. We all have our moments and funks that we get in. Don't start 2nd guessing yourself either. I do that to myself all the time. And I have to remind myself, that it's not healthy for me to keep doing to myself. :) You'll make great progress I am sure!! Just keep positive.

Karen - don't give up! I know for me, my body does a weird thing where it goes up for a bit right before a big drop. Who knows, maybe yours is the same? Just keep pushing through!

DK - I love to cook and I post my recipes every night on my blog. I don't really watch fat (though most of my meals tend to be low fat anyway), but I'm a calorie counter so most meals I make are 500 or fewer. Also, when I post the nutritional results, I link to the custom entry I've made on DailyPlate, so you can see the fat pretty easily with just one extra click. Also, everything I make usually takes half an hour or less (that's from when I step into the kitchen to when all the food is ready and the kithcen is clean again). Hope that helps!

Thanks Laura! I am going to check out your blog. With a busy schedule and two kids it sounds like just the thing I am looking for.

So I went back to the gym yesterday and had another guy measure my body fat and he said that it was at 41% which is a lot more believe able me being 270 pounds.....anyway....I still think I have got to lose some lean body mass cause even with me being 41% percent body fat.....if I got down to 25% body fat that would leave me weigh about 183. We will have to see how it goes but at least I know what I have to do to get me looking hot which is the first step right. Well I having been packing and doing outside work.....basically spring cleaning stuff. Well better get back to finishing sweeping and stuff! Hope you all have a great OP day!!!!

Good afternoon Red team!! I have thoroughly enjoyed reading posts this afternoon! I just love everyones response the the question, what I love most is how everyone complimented themselves in answering! You know those positive affirmations are so important! Way to go Red!!

I firmly believe that you get back what you put out into the world, so if we are thinking positive thoughts and believing them, then positive things will come our way. Negative thoughts just hold you back. When you tell yourself you will fail or you cant do something then you wont. Believing you can and you will! Sometimes easier said than done though I know. So keep up that positive energy everyone!

I am forcing myself to skip doing personals this afternoon. I won tickets to a basketball game tonight. Had to answer a radio trivia question..go me! LOL! So that means I've got to bust butt and get some studying done before game time.

Keep up the great work everyone!!!

Hi all, delighted to be a member of the red team. I'm really trying to get my diet and exercise plan back on track as I have lost my way a bit recently but am pleased to have manage to knock a pound off this week. Here's my notes...


1. What do you prefer we call you? Meech

2. What weightloss plan are you using? Bit of calorie counting and exercise.

3. What is your favorite exercise? I like to ice skate, I'm not that good at it but find it kind of liberating so trying to get back to a rink this month is one of my goals.

4. What is one area that you struggle? Motivation, when my head isn't totally focused on the diet and exercise plan it all goes rapidly downhill

5. What is one area of your weightloss journey that you excel at? When I start exercising I do really enjoy it, its just getting there in the first place.

6. What is your short term goal? 200lbs

7. What will you reward yourself with when you reach that goal? Bit of a makeover

8. Best weight loss tip? Drink lots of water and keep yourself hydrated

9. Bob or Jillian? Bob.

10. Tell us about yourself! I'm 31, married and have shockingly poor self esteem. No children yet but hoping maybe in the next couple of years when the weight comes off and body is much healthier. Work a lot of hours in a pub which means I'm surrounded by a lot of food and drink!

And for the bonus question of the day...
It sounds very very tempting but I got myself in this mess and I don't really believe in quick fixes so common sense says no. Cheese is my big weakness.

Welcome Meech :)

See that is the good thing about being in Southern Cali right now is that I am in the desert and you can buy bathing suits in Jan :D It was a bit nippy out but the sun was shining so I took advantage of it! :carrot:

Well aparently the tickets I won are not for tonight they are for sunday LOL...I'm glad I found that out AFTER I spent the last 2 hours getting my study guide done otherwise I'd have procrastinated and now its done so I can focus on studying it!

I'm having a really hard time coming up with healthy dinner ideas that the whole family will like. So I dont have to make 2 meals. So what are some meals that your family enjoys?

I would take the trainer. I don't have a problem cooking but I cannot get on track with exercise.

3 workouts done....2 left to meet my goal of 5 a week;)

Melissa- Good thing you checked those tickets before you headed out to the game...that would of stunk!

Way to go Tina!! Showing us all how its done!

I'm just waiting on dinner to finish cooking. I ended up having to make 2 meals because what the girls wanted was just too high in points for me to work around. I probably could have figured it out but thats okay, I'm looking forward to what I did pick out. I had to share though, I went to lunch with dh today, we went to a little mexican place that does burritos I ordered the chicken burrito, cut it in half, wrapped it up and took it home. So I only ate half! So proud of myself. I proved to myself that I could eat out and still stick to my points!

Jen, that is great news about the cookies - what a great idea! I will definitely ask the next Girl Scout I see :)

Question - personal trainer for me. I have been calorie counting and cooking for years - this I can do. The exercise is much harder for me. I was a couch potato for so long
What's all this talk of being born in 82? My oldest was born in 82. I'm feeling older by the minute!!

I hope everyone had a great day - I love reading everyone's posts. We have such an active team. Tomorrow is weigh-in day for me. Got my fingers and toes crossed :goodscale

2 days in a row of exercise! Woo hoo! :carrot:

After doing the new Cardio Max dvd yesterday, I woke up today EXTREMELY sore. lol It made for a very long work day being on my feet. I jumped on the elliptical for 30 min. tonight and I'm really glad I did.

Yup, I just may get this workout thing, yet! :D


My answer to the question of the day:

While it was a tough one to decide, in the end I decided that I would probably take the personal chef. I tend to get stuck in ruts with eating the same ol', same ol' and get bored. Working out I think I could manage on my own as once I get going and string a few days along in a row I get into a zone. HOWEVER, if it were Bob coming to train me I'd pretend I didn't know zip about exercise! Train away Bobby boy!! :D :D :D

Meech - welcome! I love ice skating too; even went so far as to take figure skating classes this fall, which were so much fun. Good luck finding a rink!

Tina - I use DailyPlate to track my calories, which automatically updates my level based on my weight every week. This week my daily calorie goal is 1403. I aim to hit that every day, but I end up cycling just because some days I end up over and some days under. Today I went out for a business lunch and finished the meal this bread pudding that was absolute HEAVEN... but it was 700 calories (at least, my best guess when comparing to other known bread pudding counts - I used something from Cosi as a substitute). That really messed me up today, but I had a salad for dinner (64 cals total with dressing, because I make my own), and after exercising, ended up a bit under. However, I don't trust the exercise counts, and always awesome my real net calories are somewhere between the total I ate and what it tells me as net exercise. I normally aim for 300 cal breakfast, 100 cal morning snack, 400 cal lunch, 100 cal afternoon snack, 400 cal dinner, 100 cal evening snack. However, I mix those up a lot depending on what I'm in the mood for. Today was definitely not typical!

For those who said they were going to check out my blog for recipe ideas, I feel a bit guilty because I didn't post any today! And I think I'm going away Sunday/Monday, so there won't be any new ones then. There are still almost 30 meals on there though, and I try to add new ones every day, so I should add at least one or two tomorrow and Saturday. Suggestions are welcome!

It was a good and fun workout! Nice way to get an extra 45 minutes of cardio!

Some of my favorite musicals are Thoroughly Modern Millie, Rent, and Aida! There are so many that I've seen and love it's so hard to really pick favorites, but these three really come to mind as some favorites.

Let's see, with performing it's hard to pick my favorite role as well. I'd have to pick a few: The Witch in Into The Woods, Lucy in You're a Good Man Charlie Brown, Polly Baker in Crazy For You, Rosie in Bye Bye Birdie and Magenta in Rocky Horror Picture Show!

I also had the priviliege of originating a role in an original musical. The Ghost "Edie O'Reilly" in the Original Cast of In Good Spirits which the premeire was performed at the Broadbrook Opera House in Broadbrook, CT. It was a really fun role and we went to a recording studio to record a CD and everything. It was a really good experience! I have a few friends that went to NYU, so I hung out there quite a few times!

It is funny how much we have in common. Even our name. I'll post in the evenings as much as possible but I"m an elementary school teacher and I may not be able to post at school. They tend to block access through our network to any message boards. But I will try to check in every night!

I definitley have to say a personal trainer. My mom and I love to cook and don't have any problems with planning our meals and making healthy dinners. But I would love to REALLY now what to do inthe gym and how to get those target areas....and ESPECIALLY would love to really be pushed by somebody!

[QUOTE=jlbake;2004782[B]Melissa73[/B]-- Your son is so cute. It's sweet that he's being so supportive. Just don't tell him I called him sweet. That's probably worse than death for an 11 year old boy. :lol:[QUOTE]

ha ha ha very true. But I tell him how sweet and cute he is all the time. I can do that, i'm the mom and I love to tease him anyway! :)

Melissa: Glad that you found out before hand. YIKES! Well, I hope you enjoy the game Sunday.

ABout the meals, my mom and I try to cook a healthy dinner every night. Tuesday night we had haddock and just put a light breading on them, lemon, salt and pepper and baked the filets. I made basmati brown rice, rice and my mom steamed cauliflower and broccoli. for 6oz of fish 4pts, 1c of rice 3pts and all the salad and veggies we wanted our entire dinner was only 7pts. YUMMY.

Tonight we had low point fajitas. Cut up onions, tomatoes, lettuce, get some FF sour cream. Cut up steak into small strips and sautey with peppers and onions. We used low sodium soy sauce, lime juice, salt, pepper, chili pepper. 2oz of the beef was 3pts, as many veggies as you want for 0pts and 2 tbls of FF sour cream 0pts, use some fresh salsa, 0pts and we made mediterranean couscous 2pts for 1/2 c, I took a few more bites of beef and separated my little over 2oz of beef into two fajitas. We used low carb whole wheat tortillas for 1pt each adn I had two fajitas, 1/2 c couscous and a salad for only 9pts.

I'll be sure to share more meals as we make them.

ha ha ha going back and looking at page 18, it's mostly posts from me. Sorry, I just took some time to read through most of the posts from the past day or two and replied to some.

It's time for bed and I just completed my 20th day Perfectly On Program for WW. i'm so proud of myself. I was able to get to teh gym tonight while my son was at basketball practice and I pushed myself for the first time in over a year to do some walk/run intervals. I warmed up walking for the first 5 min and then ran 2, walked 3, ran 2, walked 3 and repeated these intervals for 30 minutes. I got 10 min of high intensity and 20 min of moderate intensity...it was a great workout and it felt great to finally start jogging again. Then I did 20 minutes more on the bike and did 30 minutes of weight training (legs, chest, abs and shoulders)

Now i'm exhausted and i'm off to bed. I'm going to see if I can post during my prep period and lunch break from school to keep up more during the day. Because the network blocks many message boards I may not be able to and I"ll just have to check in at night.

Keep up the good work everybody. Red team is going to kick som Booty!

Wow, talkative again today and I am too beat to do personals. I'm just going to do a quick update here:

Got on the scale yesterday. I am down 2 pounds so far for this challenge! Woo-hoo!

I went to 24 Hour Fitness and signed up for a 30-day free trial thanks to the flyer that was in the TBL workout video! Worked out for 30 minutes on the elliptical after signing up and am looking forward to going tomorrow evening!

Goodness...pages and pages in this thread, I feel terrible because I am not keeping up well AT ALL. Ugh. lol.
I spent my day doing homework and taking quizzes, all of which I think I did well on. I worked out today, and also stayed within my calorie range....success!;)

Hello everyone, I haven't posted much but I am in the challenge. I have been doing pretty well with watching my intake, but could do a little more with exercise. Yuck! Go red team!

Andi18 I had a kitty like that. Her name was Alex, she was a sweetie. She got ill and had to put her to sleep. It was a sad day!

~Good morning Red!~

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t.../Hellobear.gif

Here's some eye candy to start your day. I know we've seen it before, but one can never get too much Bob. :D

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t...7/Misc/OMG.jpg

what an awesome picture to wake up to in the morning! Thanks Roni ;)

So sorry to hear about your cat floann. They are very pretty cats, of course this one has an evil side to her and we don't like each other! haha

I so wish I could stand on a bosu ball on one foot (for more than 5 seconds, yes I've tried it) and not fall off!!! Yummy, bob, he's wonderfulicious!!! Roni, you get triple points for that, one for the picture, two for being a southern gal, and three for being a "rocker chick" as put it!!!

Have a good day ladies!

Good Morning Diva!!! LOL!! Yum! What a beautiful man!

melissa73...you just go right on ahead and post all you want!! I try to break my posts up so they arent really long so no worries there!! Keep up that amazing support!

Cassie, please try not to think of the busyness(is that even how you spell it business isnt right LOL) of the board as a bad thing, you dont have to read every post, just jump in there when you've got time. If its something important, trust me you wont miss out because I'll make sure it gets posted over and over so everyone sees it.

Andi...I went in and reread the rules for the Million Pound Matchup and I didnt see in there the deadline of 1/11/08 that I thought I read before. So you should be good. Not sure where I read that maybe I dreamed it LOL! I'd love to see your site if you dont mind sharing.

Okay I'm supposed to be studying, so I better run along! have my final exam today then a 3 day weekend yay!! Have a fantastic Friday Red team!!

And I almost forgot question of the day again! LOL!

Question: What is your comfort food and have you found a way to make it healthy?

My comfort foods are chinese takeout or pizza. I find that when I've had a bad day those are the foods I reach for. I can make the pizza healthy by making it myself. I could also order healthier versions than the usual. Chinese food isnt something I've been able to modify. Again, I can do my own cooking and modify but I generally dont.

Hi Red Team -- happy to be here!

My comfort food is ice cream. I personally think it should be a food group unto itself. Fortunately, a local coffee shop sells ONLY 8, low-glycemic, low-calorie, nothing artificial, and probiotics to boot! You can google only 8 yogurt to find out about it. Without this stuff, I'd be doomed. But we get it by the quart, scoop out a little, top it with cinnamon and 2 or 3 chopped walnuts -- and comfort ensues. When I am really needing a huge chocolate fix, I put 2 T. Sunspire chocolate chips on it instead of walnuts -- or in addition to walnuts.

Yummy! Thats so great that you've found a healthy substitute! Way to go!! I actually really like your ideas too I'm gonna have to google. I do like the Breyers no sugar added icecream, I just figured once you added the toppings though, but see you can do it and still be healthy! Thanks for sharing!

Hi all,

Am not even going to think about my comfort food; I'm spoilt for choice. My husband spent this morning making Baileys Chocolate cheesecakes....I am in dieting ****!

I've promised myself today that I'm going to be good for the rest of the day, bit PMTish which makes me carb crave.

Off to do something positive so going to ring round the ice rinks and find out when I can go skate.

Good morning ladies! Well I had a talk with the office yesterday at school, and the second I mentioned the childs name they all rolled their eyes. It seems causing trouble is not new to this child. The principal was going to have a talk with him and they are going to move Madison and Kyle’s seat, so I was happy with how they handled it. It is so cold here today it’s not even funny, and it’s supposed to be like this all weekend long...good thing my plan was to stay inside anyway Today the kids have an early day. I am so excited I weighed myself this morning and I’m down to 147.5, and when I signed up for the challenge I was 152, so down 4.5 lbs! Pretty cool I have to make the gym 2 more times this week to meet my goal of 5 times a week. I’m for sure going tonight and then again probably Sunday instead of Saturday...I think I’ll be ready for a rest tomorrow! I finally watched TBL last night while Kev was at the gym...it was good. I was very pleased with who got voted off. I still have so many shows to catch up on, so it’s a good thing it’s going to be cold and I’m staying home. It’s crazy yesterday was my nephews b-day, today is a nephews b-day and Saturday is a newphews b-day. These are Kev’s brother and sisters kids. It’s weird because his sister was born Jan.2 her oldest was born Jan. 18, her next oldest was born Jan. 19, and her second to youngest was born Jan. 31...that’s weird isn’t it? I’m always so paranoid that I’m going to forget to call one of them. After Sat. it’s like okay we can breath for a few weeks until the next one!LOL! Next weekend Kev’s brother is moving out by us, so we’ll be helping with the move...I hope it warms up some, or that won’t be fun! I finished my book yesterday while soaking in a nice bubble bath and have a new book picked out and ready. I have some housework to do today, but nothing crazy. That is about all for me though....have a great weekend ladies~

Tina – I’m glad they could work out moving your kids on the bus. I really doesn’t surprise me at all they knew this kid’s name. I am a lifetime “self-beater-uper”, and I do usually turn to food when I do it. I guess being aware of the triggers helps in breaking the old patterns. Thanks!

Cat – You really are lucky to have a free trainer. It’s nice to have variety and her expertise to show you different things.

Kari & Laura – Thanks for the kind words! If I didn’t have the wonderful RED team, I may be more tempted to go off plan for a while and give up, but I’m staying strong. I really want it this time (I will be smaller for my beach vacation in June!)

Barbara – I need to get in the spring cleaning mode. Just think of all of the calories you burned! And try not to gloat too much about your warm weather; some of us in the colder states will be jealous! ;)

Melissa-Hun – I was not in the best place yesterday and wasn’t too positive in my response to the daily question yesterday. You are so right about the positive affirmations. I have to really work on that. I have not given up even though I’m discouraged. I can do this. I am doing this.

Meech – welcome. It’s good to have you posting with us!

Danielle – good job on the exercise. A couple more days and you’ll definitely be in zone! :exercise:

Melissa73 – It’s great to have you posting! I usually post from work. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t visit 3FC from work anymore. You’re doing great on the food and exercise. Sounds like you had a great workout!

Andi – Congrats on the 2 pounds. I’m glad you enjoyed the 24 Hour Fitness! A workout is a great thing to be looking forward to!

Cassie – It’s great to be able to stay in your calorie range. Here’s hoping that you don’t get overwhelmed with school!

Floann – Thanks for checking in with us. It’s great to hear from you. I recently read that one key to exercise is to find something you enjoy. I hope you can find something for you. It makes it a lot easier.

Diva – you’re more than welcome to stop by our thread anytime. Especially when you bring presents!! :drool: Even ones we’ve seen before!!

Kim – I’ve never tried a Bosu Ball. Do you have one at home or do you go to the gym? I see them use the on TBL. It’s one of the many things I have in the back of my mind to add to my home collection.