Carol Sue, DH has changed over the years. It is like when I want to drink low fat milk and tell him he can drink the whole milk, he tells me he we can drink the same milk only he won't drink less than 2% milk. There are some things that I can eat or drink different from him but not always.

I read something today that says women as we get older need to eat 1800 calories to maintain. So going by the no veggies book, I figure I should cut my calories to 1200 to 1300 calories to lose weight. I am wondering if I need to go lower carb even keto after my doctor's appointment. I am watching youtube videos by a nutrition expert named Jennifer Powter so I want to see what she advises. She seems to help people learn how to keep sabotaging their diet etc. She has a kindle book that is free reading. She also has another one that is audio but I don't like those. I will get the one on kindle and if I need the other book, I will buy the paperback book. I do need to learn what I'm doing wrong and how to stop sabotaging my self. The only really good thing I did today was stay within 7 hr eating window.
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The name of the free kindle book is Stop Sabotaging Your Weight Loss. I started reading and saw that I need to be able to highlight things in this book. So I bought it. I identify with her completely. So hopefully I will be able to get help from her experiences. I have about 2 weeks to decide what I want change to get myself motivated. I want to be ready to move forward after doc's appt.

Trish, I downloaded the book. I have several to read before my membership expires in the end of August. I don't know if I will renew or not.
I hope this book helps you get on track. Right now I'm reading a book about calories. Long story short, we should be eating high nutrient calories rather than low nutrient calories. I think thats common sense. It explained when you eat low nutrient calories your body wants more food to get the lacking nutrients. I'm not sure how I feel about this book. I don't know if it offers anything that would help me. I know I should not eat low nutrient food but knowing and doing are 2 different things.

I really want to get back to exercising. I think about it often and how much better I would feel. But when I have days like today when I feel like someone beat me with a baseball bat its not going to happen. I know I'm just making an excuse. But I want to at least feel a spark of energy.

When I was,single I used skim milk, and that was when it was watery and blue. They add something to it now. When I met DH I bought both skim and full fat for them. After his heart attack he was told to use skim. He fought it, but I gradually went from 2% to 1% then to skim. He got used to it. One time he accidentally bought full fat and he thought it was spoiled. Now they say full fat is ok but he won't use it. He buys 1% or 2% if they are out of 1%. I just use whatever he buys. Its all in what you get used to. I think you should buy a small carton of what you each want.

I think your doctor visit will go well even though I know you wanted weight to be lower. My doctors never comment on weight, they are more concerned with lab results and yours are usually good. Your husbands improved A1c will be noteworthy. I wanted to go to my doctor every 3 months because that's when they say to get A1c checked. But he said he doesn't think my insurance would pay for that. I'm going to ask again if I can get A1c more often without an office visit, but then he doesn't get paid for that. It seems anymore that doctors are interested in what brings income. He was very different when he was independent. Now he is part of a hospital group and I think they have certain rules they need to follow.

My weight is 186 today. I just don't know what to say. I think it has to be fluid but time will tell. I am very disappointed. My doctors appointment isn't until Dec but I don't want to wait until Nov to get improvements. He smirked when I told him I would have my A1c down to a low 6. I want to wipe that smirk off his face. He is going by the rule that under 7 is good,but my thinking is low 6 or even under 5 is even better. A few years ago I was eating well and exercising and my A1c was a 5. So 6.9 is not acceptable to me. I have to keep thinking where I want to be and I have 4 months to get there.

I did not sleep well. I think I stayed up too late. I went to bed at 2:30 am. Yikes! I was so tired and fell asleep instantly but was restless all night.

Carol Sue, I liked something I read in this book about one of hepr clients. I don't think she is a doc but a nutritionist and trainer. Anyway she told of how one of her clients who found her on google had been to the doctor that day who told her she needed to lose weight. He said he had been telling her for years to lose with and asked why she wasn't doing anything about it? I loved her answer. She said she felt her cheeks burn bright with shame and then in a moment of rage of humiliation and frustration she said to him, "Well, if it was so easy, I guess you wouldn't be fat yourself". I remember my doctor in south TX who sweetly told me that he couldn't understand why I couldn't lose weight because he knew that I was so busy with my home child care. He knew I was always trying. Then he sweetly said (he was overeight himself) "there is no magic pill or diet etc to lose weight, but if they ever do find one, you will be one of the first people that I will call".

I don't think doctor's can be sympathetic or understand what people go through when they don't have whatever problem we have.

I think this book is going to be helpful because I don't think she pushes a diet so much as she does with how our problem starts from within our emotions and how we feel about ourselves. I hope I can get DS interested in getting one of the audio books. I don't remember if both of them are audio or not.

Weight today was 183.4 and FBG was 105. Obviously something I ate yesterday wasn't really good for my BS. But the fact that I saw the 183.4 yesterday and wasn't sure since it bounced to 183 too is good because I usually gain more with franks. Not sure how accurate it is since I went to bed an hr later and got up and weighed later and even FBG was taken later too which means it is possible that I just got a glucose dump which happens normally. Either way it isn't all that bad although I wanted to keep it below 100 for one whole month.

Swai fish is on the menu today. Since I'm following no rules right now, I had my 1sl cheese toast with a c of coffee. Now I'm going to go read more out of my book. Sounds like you have a lot of reading to do yourself. Have good one dear friend. I miss Mad. I hope she is have a really good time at their cabin and can check in with us sometime soon.

Have a nice day Lurkers.

Trish, I wanted to say that this book is The Calorie Myth. Its,free so if you want to check it out and see if its for you. I don't even know if its for me.

I still don't understand when they say that eating less doesn't help with weight loss. When I eat more I gain.

I got a grilled chicken sandwich with broccoli again. Its really good and not a really big meal. Here's the thing. I've had 700 calories, 55 carbs and 12 fiber so far. I'm still a little bit hungry so I think I should probably have more calories before bedtime but I don't want more carbs. I don't know w hat that would be. Ill have to think about that.

Ok. I understand the point this book is making. Its about set point, and some people don't agree with the set point theory. They say if you cut calories to gain weight your body wants to stay at that set point so it slows your metabolism. You may possibly lose a few pounds but your body will fight it and you will gain it back. But if you switch to high nutrition food you will lose and eventually lower your setpoint.

Trish, this makes me think of you and i. We were both in the 200s but now we are in the 180s. We have lowered our setpoint. Continuing reading.

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Wow. I can't put this book down, but I'm not sure its true. Basically, calories don't count. High nutrition foods make our hormones work properly but low nutrition foods like starchy carbs cause the hormones to malfunction. So if you eat high nutrition food and eat enough of it you will activate your fat burn.

I just watched a scary movie on Lifetime and now I'm afraid I won't be able to sleep.

I got the book and am reading it. I feel like it goes along with the other one I'm reading on sabotaging my diet. It is hard to put it them down but I am taking a break to watch a movie with DH. When I married him he had a small room of movies. When we moved the movers said they could get movies from him and not have to go to Blockbusters. In this house we turned one of our bedrooms into a library of movies we have bought and collected over the years. Now we don't buy them since he can tivo them. My DH is into movies the way your DH is into the casino. So now we are going through them to see what we have. We have passed the horror movies and now into apocolyptic type movies... hurricanes, erupting volcanos and meteors heading toward earth. I will read some more out of the book when we finish this movie. Funny thing is that I feel about movies the way you do the casino. When I was single, I very seldom if ever watched movies and wouldn't now if it wasn't for DH.

I thought the same thing when reading the book about you and me. I think maybe each time we get stalled within a 5 to 10 lb range maybe we are moving into a new set point. Perhaps when our body gets adjusted to it, we can start losing again. I want to go back and read some more of the science but for now I have fast forwarded to the Sane eating he is talking about. If I'm right, I think I can follow his plan most of the time because it sounds like a lowcarb plan that includes some fruits.

I didn't count calories today and I actually did better because I didn't feel like I had to reach a certain amount of calories. I also have decided to go back to making Saturdays my WI day. I am going to do my best not to weigh again until next Saturday. I also watched Jen Powter video on camparing food servings to slices of bread. She showed how a closed fist of a food is equal to 1 sl of bread etc. So I measured my blueberries by a closed fist of them and I did the same thing with peanuts and simi sweet dark chocolate morsels. Funny thing is that it satisfied me without me having to eat anything else. This has been a great eating day.

My weight is still 186 so I guess its not fluid.

I don't think I could ever stop weighing. If my weight goes up I know I have to take some action to get it back down. I can't bear to think that I would not weigh but then get on the scale and be up 20 or more pounds. After I had my heart surgery my cardiologist told me to weigh myself every day. If I go up 3 lbs in one day that means I'm retaining fluid and I need to call him right away. Before I got this new scale I would not weigh if I felt fat. Finally after a couple weeks I would get on to see how much damage I had done.

I am on chapter 10 in the Calorie Myths book. Starting on chapter 6 I could not put it down. It makes sense, but people can write anything and if its about weight loss people will buy it even if its not true. I just can't wrap my head around not having to eat less to lose weight. I always thought things like I can have ice cream if I allow for it in my calories and carbs.

After reading this book I am going to look at food differently. I am going to think twice before I eat something that does not have nutrition. Maybe that's the idea. I remember when I was on my first diet. I would get hungry at night after dinner but would think to myself "if I don't eat maybe the scale will be lower tomorrow." And it usually was. The weight just fell off then, but I was only 21 and active. I started in April and one day in August I thought to myself "Look how much weight I lost!". I didn't have a full length mirror at home. I went to exercise classes at the Y and looked in their full length mirror. Shock to see myself thinner. Some of my clothes were just hanging off me. Why can't I do that again? Or better yet, why did I allow myself to gain so much?

Most of the movies I watch are tv movies on Lifetime. DVDs are $2 at Goodwill and they used to be half off on Sunday so I bought a lot of them for $1. I have 2 big boxes downstairs that I will watch someday. Most are chick flicks. Once I watch one, I give it away. I can't watch a movie twice. DH rarely watches a movie. He has a short attention span. He sits there with the remote clicking channels and never finishes watching anything. I do most of my reading in the evening because he watches things like car repairs, car racing, boxing, poker tournaments. And he just switches from one thing to another. So we never watch tv together.

Carol Sue, I remember when I worked at the prison, we got a satellite dish because we lived in the country and we got so many channels. One day some of the other guards and I were talking about it and one officers said if her husband had a satellite that it would do them no good because he would constantly be changing the station.

I don't know if I will ever stop weighing everyday. I did weigh but I slept late and I purpogsely did some things in before weight that I knew would keep my weight from being accurtate. Funny thing is it was only up .4 lb so basically the same as yesterday so no gain or loss either. I didn't write it down. I will. try to give it up but it will be a chore for me to do so. I think your weighing everyday is different for you because of your health issues so I wouldn't stop if I were you. FBG was back down to 97 so that is good.

Today I am doing low carb doing it the way I perceive the Calorie Myth seems to be saying. I am not going to limit the calories although I did reset my calories back to 1600 again. I am watching the carbs more than the calories. I believe that when you plan eating healthy foods low in carbs, not worrying about the amount of fat or protein since they have no carbs, that the calories do go up means you will be eating higher calories. At least this is how I understand this.

For breakfast I ate 2 eggs, 2 sl bacon a small hand of blueberries and 1 small avocado along with a tsp of mild jalapenos on top of the eggs.. I will get mild picante sauce when we go to the store. I have sirloin steak out for dinner and I will along with my big salad. The amazing thing is that I can have a glass of 2% milk and my keto ice cream for dessert and I don't need another meal later tonight. Calories will be 1348 and net carbs 48 grams. He says for 5 weeks so I am starting that 5 weeks today. However, I'm ruling out a 3rd meal if I need it but will make sure it is protein or something with 0 carbs so I can keep my net carbs under 50 grams.

I don't see any reason to wait until after doctor's appointment. For me I just it as just tweaking a few things to make this work for me. I think the Stop Sabotaging my Diet will help me to have the mind set so I can do this successfully.

Have a blessed Sunday everybody.
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I stand corrected. His plan is not a low carb diet but what he calls healthier carbs. He says the average western diet eats up to 300 carbs a day. Eating this way you will consume between 70 to 125 grams of carbs a day.

Trish when I went to bed blood sugar was 124 so I didn’t need any G. Sometimes I take 1/4 of a pill. This morning Iblood sugar was 112. That would be high for you but it’s low for me. I wonder if the magnesium is helping. It’s not really helping sleep but I have a lot of sleep issues.

I received 2 Amazon orders this week delivered by an Amazon truck instead of UPS. They sent an email with a picture of my package sitting by the garage door,

I love these shoes I ordered for winter. Nice and warm.

I have not been able to walk barefoot for years. It hurt my feet. I even had trouble with flat shoes. I sometimes used inserts to raise my heel up a bit. I recently read about how important it is to walk barefoot, so I’ve been trying it lately in the house and it’s getting easier. I might even be able to wear all the sandals I have.

Carol Sue I never liked going barefoot, but I can do it now in the house only. I can't wear just any shoe either. I love the earth shoes I have bought from Walmart for years. but they now longer make them. I was thrilled when I saw that Amazon sells what they now call Original Earth shoe. They are a little different and take some getting used to it, but they are still comfortable.

I probably won't follow the Calorie Myth plan to the letter, but it will help me improve my woe. I will do my best to keep my net carbs under 100 grams. Calories were a little high today but under 1500 calories and carbs wer 76. I'm going to go back to reading the science of it, but I also think it is time for me to follow some of the rules so that I can start practicing ways to stop sabotaging my diet plan. I can actually tell from what I've read so far in her sabotage diet that I do sabotage my diet a lot.

I’m starting to understand what this book is getting at. A few years back I read that we have slowed our metabolism so much from dieting and to reset our metabolism we have to start eating more. We might gain weight at first but eventually we will start losing again once our metabolism is fixed. I think this is what he’s talking about. In the chapter I’m reading now he says we should start eating more and stop weighing for 3 months. I can tell you quite frankly, I might eat more but I’m not going to stop weighing while I do it for 3 months. He said that weighing is what makes us go back to starvation mode. To me that means we will gain, otherwise why does he not want us to see the scale. I can start eating a lot more vegetables because that is how I was losing last time. But you take my scale away I’ll break your arm!

Trish, I don’t follow any plan to the letter. I never did. I just like to read the why and how it all happens and this book has taught me a lot of why and how that I never knew before. This guy has a website and I bookmarked it. I don’t know if I will go to it because they usually want you to buy something.

The reason I never want to stop weighing is because if I start to gain I want to know before it gets out of hand. There are some things I just won’t change.

Well, I’m up another pound today. I don’t understand and don’t really know what to do about it. Whatever.

We went out for breakfast again today. I think we should eat when I decide it’s time. At least it was almost 11:00 by the time I ate. I get tired of telling him no over and over but eating because someone else wants to doesn’t help me on the scale. I just had eggs and bacon. I guess the scale has me in a grumpy mood.

I bought some collard greens. I’ve never cooked them or even ate them. I watched a show where a woman made them but she made a big potful and I just want to make a small amount. DH wouldn’t go near them. They are mostly a southern thing. I don’t know anyone who eats them or cooks them. They sell them canned and I tried them once but they were very spicy. I want to adjust my own flavor.

I don’t know what’s for supper.

Carol Sue, I weighed this morning too. Weight was 184.6 up 1.3 lbs from the Saturday. I know they say you may gain at first when you eat more but it will come back down. I am like you, I'm so afraid I will keep gaining and won't lose, but I do think it is important to reset my metabolism so I can lost this weight. I don't think I could go 3 months without weighing, but hopefully I can eventually get into the habit of once a week WIs again. I know WW expected fluctuations from time to time. I also realize why they had you start out with a certain amount of pts daily and they would lower them as you lost weight so you wouldn't hit the starvation mode. It is just so hard to get my head around that too.

I also rethought his woe eating. I'm sure eating low carb of no fruit and keeping carbs at 20 grams would work if you are eating quality meat and lowcarb veggies and fruits, but I also believe that contrary to popular belief that we get some things like important B vitamins from good grains. We don't eat a lot of them but we do include them in our woe. I think using complex carbs in grain form is good for that. I admit that I could be wrong, but I seem to do better with some of that rather than cutting everything out. In his food guide, he does include them if you want to eat them but stars which ones are fair and really bad.

I think I can take some of his good ideas and include them in my woe but I need to do it so I will do it consistently. I will use my FBG and A1c as a guide as to whether I'm doing okay and staying healthy. I am going to trust that eventually the scale will move downward if I am eating healthy. It was 94 today so that says to me that I'm eating healthy. At this point I want to work at not sabotaging myself so I can succeed.

I eat collards and other greens from time to time but not as much as I used too. I used to love the canned but they changed the seasoning several yrs ago and I don't like them any more. I like mine cooked with a little bit of bacon in it and if I was doing strict low carb I would eat them like that again, but the last time I cooked them I didnt care for them too much. I had a doctor tell me yrs ago that I couldn't eat a lot of greens because they caused my colon to become spastic. I took combid for years so I could eat them but I don't want to do that again.

We are having chicken tenders today. DH likes the Harvard beets I made him so he will have those and I will have zucchini plus our salads and usual sides. I had to fudge on some of my quantities of foods and add a blueberry protein shake for supper just to get to 1000 calories today and net carbs will be under 70 today.

Have a nice day everybody.
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Ended the day with 1159 calories and a net carb of 82. It has been a very good day. I have lab draw in the morning but will be just going to doc office and back home. This has been a good day. Reading the sabotage book. One of the changes she talks about is instead of being a perfectionist expecting to follow a diet perfectly that we need to be willing to tern what we call a failure or falling of the wagon a learning experience. Looking forward to reading and learning from her. I want to be able to lose weight this time and keep it off. Like she says if others can do it then so can I. I wondered about my age doing this but she told a 75 yr old woman who came to her and successful reached her goal. For one thing she didn't see her life as almost over at 75, but she said she still had a lot of life left and wanted to reach her goal. There is hope.

Trish, I know that they say you will gain first from eating more then eventually lose, but the Calorie Myth book says it will take at least 3 months. That sounds so long, But I know 3 months will just fly by. I don’t want to weigh more for 3 months. I wonder how much you gain. I don’t want to be the one to find out. You do it, then let me know. Ok?

last night I got hungry so I ate a can of chicken. I bought 2 cans of that chicken because someone told me they used it to make chicken salad. I tried that and didn’t like it. But I did like it right out of the can with no mayo. I bought Great Value but I will try a different brand, too. It makes a quick protein snack like a can of tuna.

When my MIL was in her 60s she was overweight but as time went on she got thinner. She rarely sat down to eat a meal but her son who lived with her said she picked at food all day long and it was not necessarily healthy food. She was short and got very tiny as she aged. She was not trying to lose. She thought being overweight was ok as long as you feel good. She passed away in her 80s. They say people get thinner as they age but it never happened to me. I had a neighbor who was very big until she died. Her nephew lives in her house now and he is very big.

I posted a long post but now I don't see it. Maybe it will show up.

So now I can see my earlier post.

My weight is 187.0. I think it was a few 10ths higher yesterday but I didn’t let it register. I let it register today. I have to face facts.

So back to discuss eating more and gaining to lose later. The eating more is supposed to be only healthy nutritious food, no starchy carbs, so the weight gain shouldn’t be a lot. And without the carbs there should not be water weight. It’s not like when I started eating dinner and gained so much because there were lot of carbs. I wonder how IF fits into this. I guess it would work as long as you ate a lot in your eating window.

I hope your blood draw went well. Does DH get blood draw too? When is your doctor visit?

Carol Sue, I got such a big laugh out of your "I wonder how much you gain. I don’t want to be the one to find out. You do it, then let me know. Ok?" statement that I called DS and let her laugh with me. Actually, I guess I have been doing that because my weight has been going up since I've been eating a little more calories and jumped up to 184.6 yesterday. I remember wondering how much I would gain before it would come back down, but I was down 2 lbs today. Of course, I have no idea if that has anything to do with it at all. I guess we will see since I would love to reset my set point so I can lose weight. I think I will have to weigh everyday while doing this. I remember my doctors saying I needed to eat 1800 calories a day, but I always thought that was too high as I think I would gain weight not lose. I compromised with my SC doc and set my calories at 1500 for a while. It is hard for me to eat 1500 calories these days because my mindset is that I need to eat less which is what every dietician has told me.

Blood draw went well. I was the only one there for blood work. Everyone else was seeing DS doctor. DH gets his blood draw at 1:30 and then we get results at our doctor's appointment next Tuesday afternoon.

I want to take the good things recommended from both the sabotage and calorie myth books that will fit into my lifestyle and create my own woe. I think I need to start thinking about how my eating makes me feel... what makes me feel good and what doesn't as well as learn to eat the foods I really enjoy at the same time. I know keto is out because I'm not going to give up all bread or some fruits and grains. However, I could continue eating a limited amount of those foods and try to stay within 100 to 125 total carbs (working toward net carbs being between 50 to 70) and do this within a 16:8 hr IF window. Blood sugar would stay low and I could reset my set point and hopefully lose weight. SC doc said the "diet plan" that will work is the one "you can live with". I still may have to eat less carbs due to swelling that I don't get with low carb, but I don't want to give up my milk. I am thinking of it as creating a lifestyle woe, not a diet plan because as someone once defined a diet "it is something you go on to reach your goal and then go back to eating the way you ate to gain the weight to start with". If I can learn to replace bad eating habits with new healthy eating habits, I will not only lose weight, but I will be creating a new lifestyle of eating so that when I reach goal this time, I will stay thin instead of gaining it back. This is pretty much what I have taken away from the few chapters I've read in Stop Sabotaging You Diet book. She says it comes down to making choices daily to change habits and believing I can do it. I honestly believe that with God's help that I can.

DH is up and I have to make the bed and do a few things so I need to do before we leave for his lab appointment and then shopping.

Oh Carol Sue, I used to love tuna salad. BS called yesterday and she mentioned eating tuna salad. She loves it as much as I always did and still does. So I asked her what brand she uses. I think the problem I've had is I've been buying store brands instead of name brand. She uses StarKist or Chicken of the Sea. So I am going to get a few cans of them and see if I can go back to eating my protein at night in the form of fish. I used to do the same thing with canned chicken for variety. Thanks for the reminder.

Have a good day everybody..