Oh, almost forgot! I got my mother on plan using alternatives/whole foods - she's on day 3 and down 3 lbs, so I hope she stays motivated and sticks with it. I took her grocery shopping and showed her what to look for on labels, what veggies are higher-carb and limited/restricted, etc. I gave her the P1 sheet, plus the "real food" P1 sheet that PishPosh posted awhile ago, and a HUGE stack of P1 recipes. Fingers crossed that this sticks for her - she's starting to have a lot of weight-related health issues. I just want to see her healthy and happy.

Liana, the irony of wearing a weight vest is not lost on me.....

At least I can take a weight vest off and put it on any time I want.....

Darthkitten my thoughts go out to your Mom - my Mom keeps thinking about doing something and has similar health issues, but can't quite find the motivation. It's difficult when the addiction part comes into play for her.... I hope your Mom does well. I think for many people, even small health changes can have big effects.

Kimo (who I somehow called Kira before), I also expected a gain, and am surprised so far not to have. It seemed like so much more food, but my body responded really well to it and seemed really happy actually and functioned better. I had gotten a little too depleted I think at the end of P1 so it was happy to have a little more fuel. I also did a little more exercise, not crazy, but just a few days more and a little more intensely, and I think that balanced it out. I am still weighing and measuring and keeping track of things, as that just generally makes me personally feel calmer, and also I can get my doctor/coach's help if there is gain over time, so we can figure out what to adjust.


---
I tell my friends I'm like this sensitive race horse right now, things have to be weighed and measured and tracked so the horse gets just the right amount of fuel to be at maximum potential!. I like to look at it like that - healthy fuel for the body.

At my doctor/coach's suggestion and from my own realizations, my biggest "avoids" are sugar, alcohols and most flour - I'm 47 years old now, and I think I've figured out at this point after many trials and errors that my particular body just doesn't process those things well at all, and ends up causing me some degree of suffering, so might as well avoid.

They both continue to caution me that with the amount of insulin resistance I have, that any weight gain above 5 or 10 lbs is really not good for my body, and will make it much harder for my pancreas, and cause it to further weaken even though it has had a good amount of healing this year, so this is good motivation for me just to keep maintaining it all. I want to keep my focus this year as much as last year, as I know I have about a 2% chance of succeeding (based on overall weight loss statistics), but I feel this strange confidence and also intense commitment that I will do this. This thread in particular has helped me this year, I don't post much but I have been inspired to see people really stay on track and how you are doing it. It is an area where one can't drop focus, or allow for much deviation/overboard for very long. For me, the loss part often has been easy, but the maintenance not so much. So here's to a new pattern.

Thank you all for your posts, your thoughts, advice, and encouragement.

Kimo - I had a lot of fear going into P3. But now I find I'm getting into it and I bought a bunch of things at the store to try and figure out the best P3 breakfast for me. And to top it off, I bought a loaf of really good bread at a local bakery. I figured if I'm going to eat bread I might as well love it.

Grateful4Health - Congratulations! You have a great attitude. I have a lot of confidence right now that I've gotten it thru my head that this is for life and that I will always be watching it and trying to make sensible choices every day, every week, and when I don't that I won't let it go on for so long. I don't know if I have insulin intolerance but I have ALWAYS gotten the low blood sugar which is why I joke that I never missed a meal and usually it was my body telling me I needed to eat. I think for me, I need to make sure I always have protein and don't go more then 3-4 hours without eating. I now feel the carbs are evil but if I can figure out using he IP maintenance tools to add them maybe I'll be okay. Like you said, it's a new pattern.

darthkitten - I hope your mom sticks with it. It's hard to see people you love going through health concerns and not being able to do anything to help. My mom is doing IP right now with me too! She has no health concerns from her weight but it lights me up to see how excited she is when she's losing weight, she's just glowing all the time now and feels so great. Gotta love IP!

Grateful4Health - My name is Kira and it's in my signature, that's where you got that from! I'm definitely going to be a lifelong food weigher now. I try to do it at home and portion things out in advance so nobody sees me do it...the comments aren't worth it! Like you, I feel like sugar and flours will be bad for me going forward, I'm not sure how alcohol is for me. I'm going to try to stay as low carb and gluten free as possible in maintenance because I know that I don't feel great when I have those things...and they open the floodgates to a binge. I found a great food blog with amazing recipes called I breathe...I'm hungry. I made a few things from there pre IP and they were great. You may be interested in those too? PS: Beautiful pic!!

shasta - I'm with you. If you're going to eat bread you darn well better have the good stuff! I'm picking up my favourite gluten free bread for P3. Very excited! I already bought some muesli and granola while I was shopping yesterday. I get a little ahead of myself sometimes, could you tell?

After a few weeks of no scale movement I finally lost again! I also switched my ticker to my home scale weight as this is the scale I will be using in maintenance. Looks like I might get close to my goal on IP!

That is a nice loss, Kimo! W2G!

Hi everyone.... lurking mainly. In pain due to fibromyalgia - not getting enough magnesium (my mess-up - see Maintainers What Are You Eating thread for explanation). Couldn't even get the gumption to do much of anything on the computer. Mainly just watching old favorite BBC shows on DVD and binge reading while I 'recover'. At least I should be able to patrol at work tonight since I am 'recovering.'

Keep up the good work!

Liana

Hi all - I've been MIA for a couple of weeks. Need to get back to at least reading the forum daily. I am incredibly stressed at work. I've lost about 5 lbs in the past 5 weeks from the stress. Very odd not to be happy about that. In my head I'm following maintenance, but I'm not eating enough, planning well enough and having 2 fun days a week. I don't have food as my coping mechanism anymore...the stress is much harder to deal with. I'm really struggling.

I am filling up the fridge tomorrow with the right food and cooking as well. Might work on resume too.

Looking forward to catching up on the posts. I hope everyone is well.

Happy Saturday!

Liana hope your feeling better and your pain goes away soon.

Rayze sounds like you've got a lot going on. Good plan filling your fridge today and prepping your meals. Hope things calm for you soon. Good for you for not coping by over eating but what else can you do that could be helpful? Do you have time for exercise or going for a short walk to de stress?

In reading the posts it looks like everyone is doing so well. Friday's WI had me at the top of scram weight and inches still at low of scream weight so I'm doing well. Really trying to eat clean this week and watch my evening meals which seems to have helped.

Hi to everyone

Liana: Hope you are feeling better today.

Rayze: Sorry to hear about the stress.

Jenny: Yay for doing well!

In one of the videos I got from IP, Dr. Wilkinson talked about thinking of weight in terms of stop light colors: Green for your ideal weight, yellow exercise caution, red STOP and get on P1. Each color has 5 lbs between them. This morning I was at my yellow. # which is 5 lbs. more than where I started maintenance. I'm not sure what is happening. Maybe the upping of the calories/carbs/fats is catching up with me. I'm officially freaked out. I looked back over my menus for the last few weeks and see that I am over my fat grams most days but within my calorie range. Yesterday's sodium intake was high. Bragg's Liquid Amino's does it to me every time. Because of the knee injury I haven't been exercising as much. I think this may be a factor. I will try dialing back the fat/calories for a few days and increasing the exercise (as much as I can) and see what happens. If I go another week with no losses it may be P1 time.

On a happier note, I'm going to a free concert at the art museum with friends today and afterwards I'm going on what's called an Urban hike. It's downtown, where I'll be anyway, and it hits some interesting spots with a dinner afterwards. It will be about 3.5 miles and it will be a beautiful sunny 80 degree day here. I hope the knee holds out. I'll probably pass on the dinner given my stats this morning.

Concert & Urban Hike sound awesome, Andrea! I am jealous about the 80F weather, although the trees are starting to bud out here and we had 17C and sun yesterday. Dh & I had a little campfire after dinner (before I had to run off to work). Very pleasant listening to the frogs waking up in the pond and robins getting ready for roosting.

Liana

hello everyone, happy Saturday. I'm just taking a break from gardening.

catlady, I hope you don't get too stressed out about your weight gain. since I started maintaining, I first put on about 3 pounds right after I started and then I gradually added another 2.
I just went to see my naturopath and talked with her about it. she has recommended ip to a lot of people and seen a lot of people be successful on it. she said it was completely normal to have gained 5 pounds of glycogen back.
now that I'm at this weight I do not have hardly any fluctuation from day to day even though I might have a couple of glasses of wine at dinner or a small treat of dessert every now and again. I'm just staying within a 1 pound range. I hope that helps reduce your stress.
Rayze I hope you're job gets better and you're feeling better soon.
slip congratulations on the win.

Liana I hope you are feeling better too.
everyone else a big shout out...now back to gardening.

Hi all, a belated happy spring to everyone! Just got home this afternoon from my trip to Kentucky touring the bourbon trail. Had a great time, but nervous to step on the scale Tuesday. Was doing P3 pretty solidly, took vacation off and indulged in a lot of southern food and old fashioneds (yum). Going to "whole food" low carb it this week, have an off day on Easter, and then make another go at P1 from Easter to Memorial Day. I want to break this cycle of being noncommittal...gotta find my motivation and focus again.

I am on my week 6 of reboot. Last time I lost weight I did not phase off correctly. I plan to be successful this time around. It is a little scary to think about adding carbs back into my diet.