Good Morning! Back to work today. And ... ahem ... back to work today. Praise the Lord that ice cream cake is gone.

Up and at'em for a nice short week folks!

Lisa - Congratulations!

SusanB - And a thought of hope for the ice-cream cake being gone. We're having croissants and stuff again at the office today (how original), but I'll say that eating those is too tiring, so I'll be lazy and won't even bother.

Congratulations, Lisa, to you & your growing family!

My own family, DH and The Boy, age 5, are coming home today. They've been gone for 10 days on a jaunt back west to see G-ma & G-pa, go to 2 baseball games, and, in DH's case, celebrate the 40th b-day of his best friend from college. I'm so excited to see them -- it's been great to have a bit of "me" time, but I'm ready for some company. I didn't say a word out loud, except once to yell at the BadCat for scratching the couch, between Friday evening and Monday morning.

Went shopping last night. Found a great pair of pants -- size 4L -- at Banana Republic for $14. They're tan/khaki. Granted, I have plenty of tan/khaki pants already, but most are size 10 and now ride so low that the top of the inseam falls closer to my knees than to my crotch. Besides, I couldn't pass up $14 pants that (a) fit and (b) aren't fugly!

A great day to you all! Kim

My, we are busy here this week! I keep waiting to have enough energy to properly read and digest this week's thread, and find out what is going on with everyone, but it keeps getting longer and longer, and well, I'm tired. So I officially give up.

Hi everyone!

I'm here, doing OK. DD tells me the house is infested with sea horses, and they are NOT to be touched. So I'm not touching them. Interesting how the mind works. I wonder what "sea horses" I have in my own life. Maybe I'll touch them and find out.

Anne

Anne~kids have such great imaginations!

Lisa~congratulations on #7!

kaw~you talk about your DS like I do ('the boy')!! LOL. It was back to school for him today. I don't know if he was looking forward to it or not. DD sure was!

Remember those cookies? They got the best of me last night. It was probably due to the fact that the weekend started off so poorly (blackout) and I convinced myself that due to the holiday, I should be rewarded with some wine. A couple glasses with dinner out on Friday SHOULD have been enough, but oh, no, I had to go buy a couple bottles at Costco! So last night, the wine made me not think clearly and I ended up eating 6 of those cookies! Aaargh! My weight is back up today. When will I learn?

Everyone have a great day!

Hi everyone,

My, my, the thread's hopping! I had a very nice 3 day weekend. Saturday evening we had our beer tasting which was a rousing success (we do make some yummy Porter and Honey Mead). I treated myself to a few beers and admittedly ate too many crackers, but I made all the dips with light sour cream and cream cheese (and nobody even knew!), had veggie & fruit platters, boiled shrimp, and tried to limit my eating. I went to bed full but not FULL, so I am making progress with parties (usually I end up binging). And I DIDN'T eat the leftovers, left them for the roommates. Had good long workouts at the gym Saturday & Monday, and had a nice bike ride Sunday, stayed on food plan. Of course whenever I say that I've kept in line for a few days I'm just setting myself up for a fall, so...

I also didn't eat any of the !@#$ food at the staff meeting this morning. My office usually is only this bad around the holidays, but we have become a dumping ground (or should I say mine field?) for junk food lately. At least I've convinced everyone to put it down the hall in the kitchen instead of on the table in the common area 5 feet from my desk.

Lisa, congratulations!!!

The thread is way too long for me to try to respond to everyone right now. So, just saying hello to everyone!

Wonderful news Lisa! How many boys and how many girls do you have now?

Friday night I finally got to see DH since his bike accident where he broke his collarbone and 2 ribs. He's going to need a metal plate screwed on the collarbone so that it will set. He's waiting to get his insurance card in the mail before he makes an appointment with a surgeon. In the mean time, the bones are moving around on him and causing a lot of pain. It's hard to see him in pain.

Over the long weekend, we went out to dinner, out to lunch, to one BBQ, to one cocktail/buffet party, and a luncheon, but I didn't eat out of control. Even though I still don't have much of an appetite from the medicine, I can always eat what's put in front of me. The key for me is to only take small portions when it's a BBQ or buffet.

Sunday afternoon, I took our 5-year-old niece out on the Hobie Wave. She had a great time stearing the boat this way and that. She's just learning how that turning the tiller turns the boat, but hasn't quite figured out how to make it go in the direction she wants. We were out for at least 2 hours including beaching the boat over by a playground so she could go on the swings and climb up the jungle gyms. That was a very exciting adventure for her.

The couple who are going to adopt her came for a visit on Saturday. They've been going through the process of adoption since March 1st and have been told by the state of NJ that it may take between 8 months to a year still. They're also in the process of adopting a child from the Ukraine so Jillian will have a sibling.

I'm having difficulting finding a lawyer who is willing to take my case. Apparently, none of them want to deal with private insurance companies.

Hi maintaineres,

Lisa - congratulations on the new baby ! I hope your computer is up soon so we can hear all off the baby news.

its getting difficult to respond to all the posters .. hi to everyone, and good luck to all off you where school is starting again.

DS and DD are already into the swing of things, including difficulty in gettin up in the morning etc etc.

I am tired again today, stayed late at work for a meeting. But i crammed biking to work and power class into 1 day yesterday, becaue i knwe i would not make it today. Tomorrow its biking to work again for me, and tmaybe I'll be able to squeeze a c25k session on the elliptical into this evening. I have to be off to the school to hear all about DS class.

Have a great day all,
Rabbit

Morning everyone! My gym re-opened today after a looonnnnnggggg break and I finally got to go and workout properly without students buzzing around. Hooray!!!

Congrats Lisa! I'm goggling at the prospect of *7* children! You should get some kind of medal.

Re cookies and wine and meeting junk: I think it's important to remember that there is room for some junk in a balanced maintenance diet. If you eat really healthily 80% of the time, the occasional cookie or extra glass (or, in the case of Allison and myself, bottle) of wine probably won't kill you.

By the same token, there is some sort of deadly beginning-of-the-semester junk fest going on in my building at the moment. Every time I go into the faculty lounge there are piles of baked goods from students, candy bars set out by the support staff and leftover chips and brownies from meetings. It's DEADLY. I can't keep away from those mini-snickers. They look so harmless, the tricky little devils. The only good thing is that one of the department secretaries has a very large and very productive veggie garden. Each day she lays out buckets of tomatoes and cukes and melons and whatnot for us to take home. It's great! I actually snacked on a handful of cherry tomatoes along with my snickers yesterday. Aren't I just the healthiest. :P

Howdy everyone!

As I mentioned in a different thread on this forum, I'm not a *Complete* maintainer yet, as I am still losing, but I *have* met my mini goal (20 pounds - I've lost 26 now) and sure as **** don't plan on gaining it back! My weight is taking longer to come off now that I'm closer to goal, which I've heard is typical. Anyway, I've actually accomplished many milestones on my journey, so I feel like I can post here... riiiiiiight?

I actually wanted to be 135 by Labor Day, but it looks like that was a pretty irrational goal, considering I started losing weight in June, coming down from 175.

Meg - do you have glucogen shots around for your son? They can absorb pretty quickly and really aren't throw-up-able since they're not being digested. The only time they don't properly absorb is while intoxicated, and I'm assuming your son wasn't Also: I actually think it might be easier than you would suspect to get your insurance to cover constant glucose monitoring, though you will probably still have to nag them a bit.

Lisa- Congrats! That's awesome All those kids must keep you super busy, huh? Looks like you're going to have to change your username.

Welcome Shane!

We like new maintainers even if they still have more to lose. Besides, I like to think of losing weight as training for maintenance, so it's good to be thoughtful about it.

There must be something in the water: soooo many new maintainers recently. It's great, unwieldy threads or no!

Lisa, congrat's on the new baby. Thanks for sharing the good news with us.

Hi everyone!

Lisa - Congrats!!!

Lily - I was LOL about your DD's date! I think a supervised date to the mall at age 15 is pretty safe. I personally didn't go out on dates when I was 15 (but it wasn't because of my parents or because I didn't want to, I just couldn't attract any guys! ), but I remember there being a whole lot of making out going on at school.

I am already losing track of everybody's posts even though I just read them so I'll just say hi everyone!

We had a good weekend, with surprisingly few food screw-ups. Friday afternoon the weather was so nice that we took a walk around town for about 1-1.5 hours. Then, luckily Ben talked me out of going to a restaurant for dinner and we went home and ate leftovers. Saturday we went for a walk in the morning, then went to the library, bought me some new running shoes, and went to a pick-your-own farm! We did end up having lunch at Chipotle and ice cream later in the afternoon, so that counts as my treat meal for the week. Saturday night I cooked dinner at home (chili and corn casserole, both from cooking light), but had a couple glasses of wine.

Sunday I got a workout before the day even really got started, just from going up and down the stairs getting the laundry going at home! Other than that it was a lazy day, just doing household chores. I went down to our subdivision's pool for the first time (one day before it closed for the season!) and swam a few laps.

Labor day was excellent. We drove out to a state park and went hiking for a few hours, which was great! Good exercise and really neat scenery. Plus for a while on one trail we were behind this family who had an adorable golden retriever puppy with them (he must have been maybe 8-10 weeks old). So cute! I cooked our own personal labor day cookout without cooking out. Flank steak sandwiches using our new grill pan, potato wedges, broccoli, zucchini chips, and baked beans. Mmmmm.

Anyway today I am back at work. It's almost 5:00 though! My weight has been pretty consistent around 134.5 on my new scale. I'd like to get it down to 130 on this scale, but we'll see.

These days, I tell myself that if given that choice, I'd prefer to maintain the weight I am now at for the rest of my life, rather than reach goal but then failing to maintain...

Welcome, Shane! You absolutely belong here in Maintainers! Congratulations on your weight loss! I think many of us aren't exactly where we'd like to end up, weight-wise, but we're all focused on keeping off what we've lost so far. And you sound determined!

Re Glucagon -- good suggestion. We keep several of the kits in the house and ended up using 5 units when DS couldn't keep anything down. I hope you're right about the continuous glucose monitoring and insurance. DS's going to try the free two week trial and then we'll evaluate.

I was woken up way too early by the Cat Alarm Clock set on "Loud Purr". Ugh! Off to the gym when it opens in 26 minutes.

Hope you all have a wonderful day! I'm completely confused about what day it is due to the three-day weekend.