Morning Featherweights!

Dagmar is off tripping the light fantastic in NYC! What's up with everyone else this week? Long walks in the fall leaves? Big pots of fall vegetable soup?

mmm vegetable soup. I should make some!!! And long walks in the fall leaves sound equally tempting!

I don't have too much to report yet today Rainy days like this make me so sleepy!

Have a great day (and week!) everyone!

No much going on here. I'm recovering from the Oktoberfest party I threw on Saturday. It was a smashing success, but I think I cooked more food in three days than I've cooked -- or could eat! -- in a month.

I have a couple of days to take it easy, and then my parents arrive for a 3-week (!) visit. Not yet sure how I'm going to stay on plan or find time to go to the gym, but I'm committed to finding time somehow! I refuse to go into the holidays carrying extra pounds.

Have a great morning/afternoon, everyone.

Kim

Hey All,

DH and I went for a two mile walk in the leaves this afternoon. The weather is absolutely gorgeous here. Tomorrow I head off to Conneticut for a few days. Also I have family members coming in town from TO on Thursday. They are not staying with me but I am sure they will want to visit. My mom's younger sister was just diagnosed with breast cancer so they are coming to lend support. She has surgery on the 21 st then she starts radiation treatment 1 week later. It's going to be a busy time.

Anyway, I am down 3 lbs from the 4 lb gain over my 3 thanksgiving day dinner weekend. I am feeling a little bit better. I am finally starting to feel back to normal.

Cat - I am training for the Atlanta Thanksgiving day half marathon.

Have a nice day everyone.

I'm pretty beat... just checking in to say hello.

Hope everyone is having a good week so far.

Hey everyone

rswlchick - Half marathon? Nice. Good luck with it. I love half marathons. But I need a running partner for the longer runs and sadly I don't have one.

susan- Vegetable soup... hmmm. My roomie is making some right now actually. Smells heavenly.

Nic - Rainy days do make me sleepy.

So I'm all prepaired for the next two weeks from ****. I have five exams... but I'm prepared food wise:
Currently I have frozen:
- pasta sauce
- healthy muffins
- lentil stew (which is delicious! Thanks so much Kim for the recipe )

And I'm already stressed even though one midterms down. I'm having boy and roomie troubles right now. And it's not even very complicated! I'm just in a rut of nasty feelings. Arg. Oh well, tis life. At least on a NSV I can say that the horrible feelings aren't affecting my weight loss efforts. So I am chaging my lifestyle, which feels great.

Anyway I'm off to do some school work. Hopefully if I get something done I'll feel a little less stressed.

Morning! I've got nothing new. I'm still struggling to come up with a nice even food plan. I either don't eat enough ... eat waaayy too much or ... pig out. I remember the days when I used to eat pretty much the same thing day after day and was quite happy. Maybe I should wander through my fitday from years ago.

Ugh, Susan, I'm struggling with the same thing. Half the week I pig out, the rest of the week I starve myself to make up for it. *sigh*

The good news is I'm finally going down again. I hit 111.5 this am!! Very exciting after over 2 months at the same weight...or fluctuating around the same weight. For the record, those two months weren't really plateaus, I fell off the diet wagon. Now I'm climbing back up by starving myself. Ugh, no lectures please, I know how horribly wrong that is. I'm starting to think I need extensive amounts of inpatient therapy to combat my eating issues. *rofl* Actually, I'm only about half kidding there. *grin*

So, still struggling with food, still working out and loving it. I'm on month 3 in my second week of my Push program and really enjoying it...and still running of course. I can't wait to see what my legs look like in the spring after doing this all winter!

It's a bit of a trap GFTGold, isn't it?
I know how to lose weight and the books all say that at the first sign of a gain, maintainers go back to what worked and 'nip it in the bud'. But I think they mean Christmas pounds or vacation pounds ... not I feel like eating for a few weeks ... I'll fix it later. Who cares ... I know how to lose weight.
But my sane mind knows that this is yo-yo dieting and there is sooo much wrong with that.
Maintaining means maintaining, not oops, fix, oops, fix, who the heck cares, fix, I want pizza and chinese and lots of it, fix. Grrrrrr

Hey Everyone

Yesterday I ate a little bit more than I wanted, but came in around 1500 calories, which isn't too bad. I went to the gym for about 1hr and 30 minutes, so hopefully that will help!

Cat - Don't stress too much...soon your weeks from **** will be over!

Susan and Gold - hang in there, you'll figure it all out soon!!

Have a good day everyone!

Good morning everyone. I've been lurking and not posting enough. I really need to get a handle on this. I've been trying, but obviously not hard enough, to lose. I'll go down 3 or 4 pounds and the next week, it all comes back. I guess the really depressing thing about it is I though that exercising would make it easier for me to lose. Last year at this time I was unable to exercise at all and I had an easy time losing.

So, you all give me your critique. This is my routine:

Run 2 miles 3 times per week plus a 4 mile walk on Sunday (rather leisurely).

Diet:
Breakfast: egg whites & 1 "sausage" patty OR small bowl of raisin bran with ff milk OR 2 slices ww toast (dry) AND (with any or all of these) 1/4-1/2 c melon

Lunch: salad with chicken and low fat dressing OR cold veggies and sandwich (no mayo, lean meats) (Friday is a restaurant meal, but usually a sandwich)

Dinner: protein (4 ounces) vegetable (usually roasted green beans or steamed broccoli and cauliflower--1 cup or so) starch (brown rice most of the time, occasionally 1/4 c mashed potatoes) OR sandwich (no mayo, ww bread, lean meat) OR a cooking light recipe entree (I always go for low fat and low calorie and it might be meatless, but not always)

Any suggestions? I know that if I could find the time, joining a gym and doing weight training would be a huge benefit, but my schedule is a bit crazy.

Allison: Your diet seems too high in carbs and low in fat and protein to me, but I tend to be skeptical about low-fat diets. Regardless, it's hard to see from your diet where the 3-4 pounds of regained weight are coming from. Unless you're way, way off in your estimates of portions (and it doesn't sound like it), there just aren't enough calories in your list for a 140 lb, moderately active woman to accumulate a 10,000-15,000 calorie surplus.

If the 3-4 pounds are coming from "cheat" foods and off-plan eating, then I think you have your answer and your solution. (Rats! )

I understand your hesitation about joining a gym. However, weight training doesn't have to be done in a gym, nor does it need to be terribly time consuming. Check out Krista Scott Dixon's site (www.stumptuous.com, click iron, then training, then "basics of a home gym") for ideas on building an inexpensive yet effective home gym. She also has great suggestions for workouts for people who can't lift more than two times a week.

Kim

Kim~I agree carbs are my problem. I find that if I have bread or cereal in the morning, I crave it the rest of the day. I try to limit those breakfasts to only once every week or so (egg whites is the norm). I can probably forgo the carbs at dinner most nights, so I'll start there. I need to get back to salads 4-5 lunches per week rather than 3 which I've been doing lately.

As for snacks and things that creep in, I don't really snack that much. Here are a few that might show up:
3 triscuits with 1 ounce cheese
1/4 c cashews (I limit this to ONLY once per week)
I just bought some whole grain pretzels, but if I do eat any, it is only 1 serving a week--I don't over do them
cereal bar (various brands 120 calories)
I estimate that I'll eat a snack about every other day, and at about 120-200 calories per snack, it is reasonable.

Today I have had 2 hard candies (10 cals each per the bag). I won't get home until just before dinner so I won't have time for a snack. I don't eat dessert except perhaps once every 4-6 weeks. I just don't have that kind of a sweet tooth any longer.

I limit my alcohol intake to 1 glass of wine 2 times per week.

I just had my lunch, which today was a sandwich. 420 calories. I had about 1 cup of cut up carrots and celery with it. And water. So far for the day, I'm hanging around 650 calories. Dinner will be about 600 calories, unless today is a wine day, and then add 100 or so to that. And today was a 2 mile run day. Maybe what I'm doing is following a maintenance diet rather than a losing diet. I'm considering trying the South Beach phase 1 diet for 2 weeks to see if it jump starts anything.

Hey all,

I'm here from Waterbury, CT. New site. I am looking forward to visiting this location.

Allison- I agree with Kim regarding the carbs. Your snack choices are also heavier in the carb dept. Perhaps you may try snacks that are more protein based such as protein bars.

Regarding exercise, are you running the same route for your 2 miles? It's possible you body has adapted to the workout. Have you gotten faster but are still doing the same distance? For example if originally you ran 2 miles in 45 mins but now you do it in only 30 minutes you are actually getting less exercise. Maybe you could add some mileage or change your route so that it's different ie more hills. Just switching it up a bit could shake up your work out. Kim had a good suggestion regarding the website you could also try home videos for weight training. Finally, what about adding a class of some kind. Yoga, pilates, and bootcamp will help tone you up. The benefits are that you don't have to think about. Someone else plans the workout. I took a bootcamp class for 2 months last spring and had some great results.

Well I hope this is helpful.

Good Morning Everybody!

Sorry to hear you're having a rough time Allison Your diet seems really healthy to me... Maybe if carbs are a problem for you, you could try counting carbs? 1 serving of carbohydrates is 15g...to get the amount of carbohydrates in a product, subtract the fibre grams from the "net" carbohydrates. I don't know how many servings you'd need a day, but try checking out the food guide for an idea! Also, as a snack idea, I really like to eat 1/2 a Luna bar for a snack...its a protein bar that's about 180 calories for a whole bar, and they come in really yummy flavours!

Things are coming along for me...when I weighed myself this morning, the scale said 140.2, which is two pounds down from when I started counting calories, and only slightly up from my ticker weight! I'm not going to adjust anything until Sunday though, which is my weigh in. Yesterday I did pretty well on calories, coming in around 1250.