Yep. I need a chat thread too- How's your August going? I'm feeling like I'm pressing onward, but slowly. How many of us are working hard to push through summer?

32 views!! Speak up, feathers! lol. I'm trying to beat my baby plateau this week here. And we found an exercise ball in an empty office at work so yay for that! Lots of crunches and general movement. Hooray!

Lots of fresh veggies and fruit around these parts all the sudden! What are your current healthy addictions? Mine are teriyaki sauteed squash and tomato basil salad!

Hi Kristip,

My current healthy addictions are my meal planning. I am doing so much better when I have food prepared and ready to go.

The only drawback is preparing the food...my kitchen is a crazy mess since my cooking binge. I usually try to cook on weekends, but sometimes I need to on Wednesdays.

My favorite addiction is shiritaki noodles, I make pasta, asian dishes, dessert, and fake rice out of it.

My favorite lunch at the moment is a chipotle bowl dupe of shiritaki rice tossed in lime juice and cilantro, grilled peppers and onions and seasoned shredded chicken.

My favorite breakfast I am allowed on Dukan is a oatbran cinnamon crepe with a dollop of fat free whipped cream, a poached egg and some turkey bacon. Yum!

I did single leg lunges yesterday and OUCH! Fun times! I'm hoping to get a good empty weight tomorrow morning as it's been 2 weeks since I have. Here's hoping!

Thanks for starting the chat thread, Kristi! I'm right there with you about the squash. I also like zucchini as zoodles, but read a review on Bed, Bath, and Beyond that one of the cutting edges on someone's Vegetti fell off into the food! So now I've purchased a julienne vegetable peeler, and will try that out.

As far as life, is it just me or are things going a little wacky? Seems like for the last couple of days, if something can go wrong, it has. Looking towards a brighter future. One good thing about losing weight, that's something that consistently brightens my mood.

So much yummy-sounding stuff - you're very creative! I'm lately learning the true value of vegetables in filling out a plate. One thing I like to do is steam red pepper strips or pieces - it gives them a wonderful flavor.

I just saw this! Thanks for starting this, Kristi. I have missed featherweights chat, they used to be quite lively. I am always interested in hearing more about people's plans and where there heads are at, why they want to lose weight, how they chose their goals etc

Personally I am always contemplating things like how the actual stupid scale doesn't really tell much about overall body composition ... but yet it DOES and I am currently single-mindedly driven to make the scale give me a number as small as I can in a healthy way. I was SO TIRED of being angry at my scale and being frustrated and defeated by being stuck at a weight too high for my frame.

So things are going well for now. The scale is cooperating and I am eating lots of great veggies. My current healthy faves happen to be some that were already mentioned: tomato basil salad and zucchini noodles! I eat a lot of weird protein foods right now (I am doing a version of Ideal Protein), which I don't like in principle but it has been the only thing that has helped me lose weight in years of trying. Some of the foods are really good and I might continue to use even in maintenance, or, more likely, I am going to create my own versions: high-protein oatmeal, veggie chili and smoothies come to mind. I am not vegan but I eat a lot of vegan foods and I hope to incorporate that into maintenance as well. Low carb that is. I'm pretty sure I am going to remain pretty low carb in maintenance, with allowances for high carb days... something like that.

At the end of August I am going to re-evaluate my plan to see what is working and what is not and what my goal(s) is/are. I had planned to be done by now but things are going pretty slowly. I'm not really exercising now so I will say it again: THAT has to change soon. Kudos to all of you who can diet and exercise at the same time!! Something had to give with me and I chose weight loss (one of my fittest times happened to be when I was near my heaviest, ugh).

OK that's it for now - I usually come here when I am avoiding doing something else . I will leave with a question, about which I am really curious, since some of us feathers have some pretty low goal weights: How did you choose your goal weight?

My short answer is that I don't really have a goal... at 5'6 a common "ideal" weight is around 130 pounds and I would love to be that again, but 135 would suffice and honestly now that I am less than 140, this would be fine once I tone up a bit (ummm my ticker is at 125 pounds, way to set an unattainable goal!)

I came across this article (from 2012) when I was looking up something about BMI.

I just skimmed it, but it is hilarious and has a lot of good information about shapes and measurements:

Eternal Curves

One interesting tidbit:

Good luck with that, and excellent job on the leg lunges! I've been so out of it with exercise lately. And it didn't help that there was no difference, weight-wise, between the week where I exercised most every day and the week I didn't exercise at all. Still had to work out like a maniac on both weigh days to make weight! (That's me on our 25-year-old treadmill right before it died. Thank goodness it's a Sears, and they said they still service that model! ).

Amazing article! Very important read, and with some extremely - to me, at least - surprising information, that every mother and/or mother-be-be needs to know:

Just as human mothers have seven times more body fat than other animals, human babies have a body part that is seven times larger than the one in other animals—an enormous brain that grows fastest in the first two years of life. Other than water, the human brain is mostly fat and has a lot of a particular kind of fat: an omega-3 fat called DHA (docosahexaenoic acid). We can’t make omega-3 fats; they have to come from what we eat, and women tend to stash their DHA in the same hip and leg fat that men value.

A human baby’s need for DHA to feed its rapidly growing brain—DHA is especially incorporated into nerve cell membranes, facilitating the rapid transmission of information—is so great that a mother can’t supply enough from her everyday diet. Most of the DHA in a mother’s milk comes from what she has stored over the years in her lower-body fat. Even then, her supply is limited, as it is depleted by each child. Since a mother’s DHA levels are greatest for the first child, it may be one reason why first-born children tend to be smarter than their siblings.

That’s what men’s brains are telling us—that a woman’s figure signals the abundance of her DHA supply. Studies show that women with curvier hourglass figures have more DHA stored in their body fat. And because DHA makes brains work better, these curvier women also tend to have smarter children and, contrary to what you might expect, to be smarter themselves.

Thanks, Emma!

Love hearing more of your story, Emma, and glad to hear a protein-focused, lower-carb diet is working for you. I'd say I'm doing something a little similar. In my 1200 calories a day, my loose rules are: eat clean, get protein, get veggies, drink water, have some fruit, and have high-cacao, low sugar chocolate (favorites include Lindt and Endangered Species!

As for how I chose my weight goal, I'm short, so I look better thinner, imo. I'm just going for the healthiest, almost thinnest I can get above a safe BMI of 18.5. So I don't accidentally go into the underweight category, the goal is actually a BMI of 18.6 (101.5).

I chose my goal because at my height and frame, I found something that showed I was still technically overweight until 118 lbs. I totally agree with that as I just marched past there and that was indeed the breaking point. I was 110 forever and since I'm afraid of creeping up as I'm not getting any younger and I have a very sedentary job, I chose a goal of 107 to give me some mental wiggle room. But my goal is to stay between 105-110 long term. I just plan to switch to maintenance at 107. I would like my BMI to stay under 20.
I am slowly adding in more resistance exercise too. Lunches squats exercise ball abs etc. I have a workout buddy in my office and we lightly exercise every day for around an hour.

Mmm yes I love peppers. I have a really good stuffed bell pepper recipe with ground turkey.

I actually am not a cook normally, but I do find those times when I make time for it is always when I am most successful with changing my habits and feeling better.

An odd thing came up this month, my fiance might have just developed a gluten allergy. He got a bad rash a couple months ago and was originally told it was psoriasis, but then on days he didn't consume gluten it was getting better. He has to have a skin biopsy and some blood tests next week. If he is gluten intolerant, we will be kissing off the processed food...which is fine by me.

I chose my weight goals because I have a very small frame and anything over 120 and I am in back problems and double chin territory. My healthiest adult weight is around 112-114 pounds, but I have a wedding coming up and pictures add 10 lbs...so there is that. I am not fixated on weight numbers as much as how I look.

I hope he's doing better now. Yes, leaving behind processed foods would help in many different ways. We try to keep our processed foods down to a minimum, though hubby likes sausages and such. I should be talking, I just polished off a couple of breakfast sausage patties! But I think our bodies recognize and process meats more easily than breads or other flour-based products. They basically turn to sugar anyway, and that can cause big problems.

Wow, I was expecting a boost from the carb fest this weekend. Not so much! I must be on a woosh. At least for now. Yay! Almost to the last five pounds!!!