The whole reason I keep working out like a crazy woman is the food on Red. The Carb Craver Cereal on it's own is two whole cups of cheerios! I toss in some strawberries and coconut to work as a fruit and fat, and I'm full for hours on end. (which in turn has me lower on the rest of my exchanges for the day ;) )

The massive serving sizes can totally be a bummer sometimes. I mean if I didn't do 8 mini meals a day, I would never ever get the food in. Amazingly, I've gotten used to eating 2 Turkey Burgers at once.

Now with stabilzation it's 6 Veggies a Day! I've officially given up lettuce, there's no way I could fit them all in if I ate lettuce. Next week I get to add a 1/2 Protein, with the massive protein portions, it's going to be a challenge.


If I could only do a CC piza three times a week. :devil: That would solve all my fitting in the stupid extra food problem. ;)

One of the main reasons I didn't go for red is because I just can't handle all of the proteins. Even my precious peanut butter; 3 tablespoons can be pretty tough to swallow, quite literally. And I don't know what I'd do with all of that food after stabilization!

On the flipside though, and I agree with you, Megan, is the pizza problem. I could spend an entire day eating pizza. I would have no problem getting my proteins in if carb cravers, especially the pizza and cereal, were allowed all the time! I've actually decided to stay away from the carb cravers altogether at least until I'm on stabilization, because I found it's just too hard to stop at the allowed amount. Even when I was on purple, 2 slices of pizza somehow became 4 or 5. Pizza is definitely a problem food for me :p

In any case, I don't intend to keep up the huge amount of exercise I've been doing lately forever; I don't want to be stuck on red for stabilization, and then find that it's waaay too much once I start cutting back a bit on the exercise.

Nicole- my surgery is May 22nd, 19 days! I have my Pre-op appointment tomorrow. Last minute instructions, prescriptions for the heavenly pain killers,etc....I'll take some before pics and figure out how to post them and I'll get afters as soon as I can stand up LOL

Wow - Congrats on your loss MomofThree. I was just reading this thread and saw that - awesome. And good luck with your surgery. I think it is great that you are doing that - I am hoping I lose enough to do that too :)

You might want to re-read your contract on the Lites. They are usually required for "guaranteed weight loss" and to get your rebate but they should NOT be mandatory for the program in itself.

I did re-read my contract....heh...my job is all about contracts :D

It states you MUST purchase the lites as a part of the plan, and NOWHERE on my contract is there a guarantee

I just wanted to post and say that I'm also in the Dallas area - I signed up in Mesquite (east of Dallas) - and my contract has the guarantee if you buy lites, but there was definitely the option to not do lites (and lose the guarantee). They didn't push this, of course... And - I did sign up in early 2005 - so I guess it's possible that times have changed...

From all of the posts here, it has pretty much been determined that the purchase of lites as a requirement varies from center to center and area to area. Just read your contracts and you'll know what the correct answer is for you.