ChickieChicks - Your son is adorable! I always wondered how life is in the country

indiblue - good luck starting weight lifting!!


Whoops! Today I weighed in at 134. Need to figure out this maintenance thing!

I'm from New York and I've lived here my entire life. I'm in the suburbs and very close to good ole Manhattan. I love living here and I want to work hard to stay in this area even though it is very expensive. My fiancee and I don't really want to go far, although if we can't find good jobs here we are considering moving South for the time being as the market for teachers is a lot better there.

I'm a Special Education teacher and I currently teach in one of the boroughs of New York. It's very nice to drive to work in the morning and see the skyline of Manhattan sometimes I can see it from certain parts of my school.

S- That sounds awesome..I've never been to New York. It kind of scares me. LOL Are you upset that you are down a pound? Or just trying to figure out your cals still to stay at 135? how cool that you teach Special Ed. What ages? Where we live, it s borderline redneck, and yet I love it. Our area is the last pocket of agricultural land attached to a major seaport onthe eastcoast, so i feel like I have the best aspects of country and city..and beach!

Indiblue- Why are you in India? that sounds like an adventure. I've never been to that part of the world, but I love Europe. We've moved all over the South for my husband's job, and i could never dream of living up north again. People are just NICER down here. LOL

No workout for me today. I did Kickboxing and Zumba yesterday and i am still sore. My neck gets so much tension, and it drives me crazy. I was in a small car accident 18 months ago and every day my neck still hurts. I've had physical therapy and chiropractic, which just sucks at this point. It often affects my workouts, b/c i've learned which exercises i can't do, b/c they strain my neck too much and then I'll be out of comission for a few days. Not worth it!

i made some kick-booty turkey noodle soup yesterday, and I've pretty much been living off of it.....yumm-o. I made a 20 pound turkey for the heck of it, and that was the last bit of it all. My hubby is off work for the next few weeks (WOOHOO!) so we ran last-minute Christmas errands and stocked up the fridge so we wouldn't have to go until after Christmas. I'm a bit of a grinch like that...people drive me nuts!

I'm not really upset. I wouldn't mind losing another few pounds and I figured I probably would just trying to figure out this whole thing, haha. Kinda wouldn't mind getting to 70lbs lost but I'm not going to push it.

New York isn't as scary as everyone makes it out to be It's a really nice place full of interesting people. Although we're all pretty jaded so if we see something that seems strange we tend to ignore it haha.

I teach grades 4, 5, 7, and 8

So sorry you couldn't exercise today! I hope that you can get back to it soon and be pain-free!

i'll be visiting New York for the first time next week!! We're there doing the total touristy thing from 28th to 2nd so really looking forward to it (even though i'm not really a city person normally). I hear you NewYorkers put on quite a decent New Years celebration?!......

On the maintenance front, i seem to be miraculously maintaining although i don't deserve to be. I've been eating too many sweet things which i didn't touch all through the diet-period. I'm not going to worry about things too much til after my hols though, and then a year of food discipline and moderation in 2012, and really make sure i stick within my target range.

Today turned out better than expected. I ended up going to the gym with my hubby and running. I ended up being high on calories today, but that was my fault for not eating enough yesterday when I did a double workout. That always seems to be the case...the day AFTER I workout out super-hard, I feel ravenous.

ange have a great time in NYC!! I like NY a lot and I'm not a big city kind of person. So vibrant and alive!

Chickie I think one of the great things about calorie counting/maintenance is that high days are normal... and that you can and should eat more on WO days and can reduce cals a little bit the next day.

I'm following NROLW right now and am in REALLY uncharted territory right now. I am not CCing, but trying to generally get closer to 1700-1900 cals on non WO days and more on WO days. I'm also not working out on non-lifting days... except for gentle yoga or a walk. The combination of those freaks me out.

Yesterday I lifted and had roughly 1500 calories at the end of the day... but knew I needed more so ate an apple with pretty big heap of peanut butter at night. Usually if I end the day at 1500 without feeling hungry I'm ecstatic... so it was strange to make myself eat more.

I'm just going on blind faith right now in the NROL program and will see what happens over the next few weeks. I'm pretty nervous about gaining fat (especially since I'm not calorie counting), but am going to go by mirror/clothes. Every little pound changes the way things fit, and it's so easy to gain a few pounds quickly that shouldn't be there. Fingers crossed!

How are people transitioning to maintenance calories, by the way? Add 100cal a week? Faster than that?

I just got to maintenance and think this is a great thread! The temptation for me is to check out the "getting out of the 130's or 120's" threads even though I started with no intention of getting out of the 130's. Then I see people of my same height who weigh much less than my goal and think I need to go lower too, which I don't think is really the case. I'm happy where I'm at and think it's right for my body.

For me, the holidays have been a weird time to reach maintenance. I'm bouncing around more than I think I ordinarily would be, with parties and constant junk around. I haven't really been overindulging, but I do think I'm eating more than I would usually be, so I don't really know what my maintanence calorie number is. I'll go up a couple lbs. one day, then right back down the next. I think it will take a month or so to really get a feel for what maintanence is like.

Times Square at New Year's is supposedly fun, but you'd probably be hard-pressed to find a New Yorker there! Most of the people I know avoid that place on New Years and just stay with friends. I've never actually been there and really don't have the desire to go. Same thing with the Thanksgiving Day parade. I went a couple of times and thought about going this year (OMG SONIC BALLOON) but just skipped out on it because I didn't want to deal with all of the people.

I'm guessing if you hang out at a place a lot that it just loses the magic, right? That or that we deal with traffic and lots of people on a daily basis that we just don't want to deal with it on a holiday too.


I had the same problem. I saw people taller than me who weighed less and thought about going lower, but I realized that I looked good now and because I'm large-framed I can't really lose much more weight.

I like being curvy too. I think I might lose my curves should I go lower.

I did ~100cal to my daily total per week as I got closer to goal. I'm still getting used to higher calories and I find eating more snacks and/or meals has helped.

I didn't snack during my weight loss, but I am now. It feels like I discovered a cheat code or something.

You might want to also take pictures and measurements weekly too. You might not be able to just see the difference.

I remember when I first starting lifting at my SW. I lost a size (going from 14/16 to 12/14) without losing any weight. My measurements really spoke there, but I wish I had more pictures to compare.

Esofia After 11+ months of very precise calorie counting, I threw caution to the wind and just stopped counting. I started eating intuitively. I was up 1-2 lbs for a few weeks, but during those few weeks I also went way off plan a few days. I have always lifted but I started a new, structured program on Tuesday AND upped my eating (roughly counting in my head) so I'm staying far away from the scale. I'll weigh back in in a few weeks... if I can stay away from the scale for that long.

I think the 100 calorie-at-a-time add-in in smart and recommended. I just was tired of over obsessing... for me I needed to get my mindset in the right place and moving away from the numbers was a part of that. If in a few weeks the scale is rising, I'll need to start counting.

sontaikle I'm glad you reminded me! Everyone says to take pictures... so I just did. I didn't try to stand in any particular position or get the lighting right.... so all the little bumps and such are there haha. Would love to see a difference in a few months

Esofia- My calories increased by about 100-200 per month until I got where I am now. I didn't plan this, but I found that as I lost more and really worked out hard, it became increasingly difficult to exist on extremely low calories.

Sontaikle- LOL about not being a tourist when you actually live in NYC! We've lived in a lot of beachside resort areas (due to the military moves) and you can ALWAYS tell the visitors from the locals. LOL Even when you live there for a short time, you still feel like a weirdo if you do all the kooky stuff.

I've had a pretty good couple of days. I tried really hard to work out more frequently this week, so I wouldn't feel like a lump over the Holiday weekend. I think today was my last workout, though, b/c tomorrow morning my preschooler still has school, but my Kindergartener does not. It is a great opportunity to do something special with just him, since that doesn't happen very often!

Welcome! I just read your Goal Story. Hot momma! This is exactly what this thread is for...to be supportive whatever our goal weight is, but to avoid being tempted to "go lower" if that really isn't our intention.

PS. I'm curious about your screenname and Sontaikle's? Can I ask what they mean? Mine is so generic. LOL

Hahaha mine has a really nice meaning that came from me wanting to show off that I'm a Sonic the Hedgehog fan without using numbers

The three main characters in the Sonic The Hedgehog games are:

Sonic
Tails
Knuckles

Thus, Sontaikle!

Merry Christmas Eve and Happy Holidays to all of us! We didn't travel home this year, so it has been VERY low-key....and I kinda love it.

This morning I had a yummy breakfast for only 325 cals. 2 whole eggs, 3 whites, chopped spinach, small roma tomato diced, 1/4 cup mozzarella and a sprinkle of bacon bits. It was soooooo good and very filling. I actually had to break it up and reheat half of it just now.