If you use bottled lemon juice instead of fresh lemons, how much do you use per cup????

There is no "formal" recipe for HLW. Everybody does it different. Just use as much as you can tolerate-that's my best advice . . . .Lemon juice is just a mild diurectic-not the cure-all for a binge or anything.

Thanks Julie! I'm not trying to cure anything LOL Just ate something salty yesterday and my fingers feel "puffy" today, just trying to get some relief. Still praying for your adoption situation, hope you hear something soon!

Oh-that cure-all comment wasn't necessarily directed at you . . .I just think we all (me included) are using the lemon water (and TO quite frankly) for purposes other than it's really intended.

on the soapbox-

Guys (and this is a reminder for me too-trust me)-I think we are using TO and the HLW as a remedy for cheating too much. TO is meant as a plateau buster-and as a method of restarting when you've been off-plan awhile. And if we eat out (on-plan) at a restaurant where the meals are generally a bit salty-then the HLW is great . . .I know some folks do it daily for other reasons and that's cool too . .

But the constant mention of cheating followed up with chugging HLW and the folks who do TO on a regular basis to undo a cheat is disturbing. We need to get honest with ourselves and get back on program for more than a couple days at a time. I've personally been bouncing around the same weight for months now and I'm sick of it.

Just something to think about . .



okay-I'm off the box now Hopefully I didn't offend anyone.

Thanks, JM...you're right. I'm on Day 4 of my SlimDown days for the 16-day challenge, and so far, I've blown it every single night. I feel like substituting the SlimDown for a real meal is throwing me all off-kilter, and I miss the days of sticking to plan, cooking from the cookbook, and getting a real, honest-to-goodness loss out of it all. I'm thinking that tomorrow, I'm going to ditch the challenge and just go back to being POP the normal way. Even if no one else sees this, your words were meant for me.

Megan-they were meant for me as well, sadly.

I also had a problem with the slimdown challenge. It made me feel deprived and i ended up cheating after a couple of days. The meal replacements are handy during busy days on occaison-but I just can't do them several days in a row like that, especially when I have time to make a real meal.
Good luck!

Julie, get back on that soapbox girlie, your slim self looks so cute standing up there :-) And yes, I agree that its easy to cheat and then look for a quick fix, but those small cheats can eventually add up to big problems, reverting back to old habits where "just one bite" cant be all that bad. And it isnt, until one bite happens several times a day, several days a week. And we wonder sometimes why our weight loss slows down? Sheesh, Preaching to myself here too guys and girls! Everybody hang in there, we can do this, one day at a time, one pound at a time, or even a 1/10 of a pound at a time, hey its still a loss! :-)

JulieMarie-
That was a great post.

It is good for a lot of women here at 3FC, not just LAWL members. You are correct in what you are saying-it isn't healthy to go on an ice cream binge, and then do TO to try and make up for it. TO is supposed to be used occasionally with your food plan, not on a regular basis.

Similar things happen all over the forum like this...it's the "I ate pizza and ice cream yesterday, so today I am going to eat only fruit and go to the gym for 3 hours".

Moderation in our diets and exercise is the key...not the eating binge/purge the body cycles. Our ultimate goals here are weight loss and maintenance, but also better health. Being healthy should be just as important as fitting into a pair of jeans, or a number on the scale.

Now if we could just have one of you in every section of the forum

Take Care,
Aphil

JM - You got a gold star today!

And, on a more serious note, your advice was right on. Right after the holidays I didn't want to do a new years TO just because it was new years. I spent two weeks getting my body back on plan. And then to push it to Onederland I did the 16 day challenge. But that was because I spent so many years between 200-220 my body was really struggling through that phase since it was really comfortable there.

Our program isn't a crash diet to be followed when we binge, it's a way learning to eat for a lifetime of healthiness!

Thanks for the TO reminder, JulieMarie. I really needed that too.

I'm with you JM.......and I have a lot of respect for you. You, along with many others, have been doing this for a long time, and have had MUCH success. This is good, clear, meaningful advice that we all need to hear now and then. You rock!!!