'Twas the week before Christmas and outside of the house ... it's too cold to go out, for even a mouse!

I'm trying to pysch myself up to jump into gym clothes, go out into the driveway and clean the snow off my car, and get myself up to the gym.

Let's try some enthusiastic smilies:

:

OK, here we go!!!!!!!!!!! Back later to report!

Good luck with getting all psyched.

I did my cardio this morning by taking my bike and pedalling to and from our 'mirror town' in Germany. It seemed like nothing at first, but with two long bridges to cross (and same on the way back home), combined to the puny 0°C we had at 8:30 am, it was quite intense all the same. I don't know what got's got into me, I didn't even have to depart that early. Meh. At least now it's done. And the Rhine a little after dawn is such a nice view.

Now of course I'm all cold and tired and miffed because I ate a little too much at lunch. On the other hand, I suppose that keeping to 1200 calories a day in such a temperature and a not-so-heated room would be pushing it a little far. (No kidding, do low temperatures also make you folks feel ravenous?)

Meg -- I'm right there with you. My workouts this weekend consisted of shoveling, shoveling, and more shoveling. We have about 300 feet of sidewalk, because we (stupidly) bought a corner lot. And Saturday night's "snow" was a mixture of sleet, ice pellets, and soggy wet snow. Yuck!

The good news is that we also got to do a little bit of sledding. We just went to the little hill next door because we didn't want to drive to the "real" sledding hill. So, not even much cardio there. But, it was still fun. (Snowball fights, too!)

I'm trying to recommit this week. I feel like things are getting out of control, and the scale is starting to creep up. NOT GOOD! I *so* wanted this year's resolutions to be to maintain instead of lose, for the first time in about 20 years.

Off to the gym.

Have a great day, all.
Kim

Good early morning to everyone. My new 'med 3' has my sleeping schedule all wacked out and I woke up 4 hours early than I normally get up. Yesterday night, I hardly slept at all and had to take naps through out the day to catch up on enough sleep so I didn't slip toward a hypomanic episode. Also, yesterday night and day I had strong tremors in all limbs, but today my hands and legs are rock steady. I'm going to track the tremors and see if there's any corelationship to the amount and quality of sleep that I get.

Friday night we went out to dinner at one of our favorite local to our house restuarants. It's an Italian place that serves humongus portions. We eat our normal size and bring the rest home and get 2 more meals out of every delicious dish. I had chicken francaise and DH had chicken saltumboca which has way to many calories for me with it's mozeralla and prosciutto.

Then we went to a dance party and had a great time. It's so good to have DH dancing again. It makes him happy because he loves it so much. It makes me happy because I get to dance almost every dance by dancing one with him and then one with someone else and so on. Usually, I've been wearing skirts or dresses to the dance parties cause I like to feel really feminine. Most women who West Coast Swing wear jeans or long black pants. It's just the style. On Friday, I wore my low rise jeans and a chocolate brown tank top. Then I put on a leather belt in the shape of a folded shawl tied around my waist. On the 'shawl' end, it is long strips of camel colored 1/4" leather that criss-crossed each other to make open 1" squares that ended with 6" long leather stripped 'fringe' with a brown wooden bead at each end. The lowest strip & bead came to about my knee on my left side and then they decreased diagonally across my front and back until they met at my right hip and were tied with several 1.5' long 1/4" strips that hung down to my right knee. When I danced (especially if I rotated my hips) the long strips would flare out sort of like a dress flares when I spin. It was a lot of fun to wear.

This Wednesday, if I'm home, I'll go to the weekly dance party. We're going to have a "You Sweet Talker Betty Crocker Christmas Cookie Bake Off". I'll make my husband's favorite butterscotch cookies. I modify the recipe on the back of the Toll House bag of butterscoth bits and people go crazy for them. They're way too sweet for me. Thank goodness I'm still on enough of Med 2 that makes sweets taste bad to me. It's been very easy to resist all the holiday baked goods at the parties we've been going to.

Saturday night after driving an hour and a half to the beach to see our niece before her custody is switched to her future adoptive parents, we then drove 2 hours to north western NJ for our friends' of friends annual Christmas Party. They're wonderful and have invited us every year since we met them 16 years ago. We seem to go every 5 years since we really don't know anyone else at the party and it's usually the same night as DH's sister's annual terrific party. This year worked out for us and our mutual friend flew up from Atlanta for it. It was so great to see him again. DH and he have known each other since high school. The last time we saw him was last summer for DH's father's funeral. I had lost 30 pounds by then, but he didn't notice. Now that I've lost the additional 20, he was shocked. He kept starring at me in amazement and complimenting me saying, "You look fantastic!" It was so nice to hear.

Now that the heavy rain has cleared out, we're going to shop for our Christmas tree. We need to get a small one because DH's collarbone isn't strong enough to manuever a medium or big one around. So far, I've only put out my collection of Christmas trees on the mantel and DH has hung our huge wreath on the front bay windows. It's lit with blue and white lights and has red ribbons on it.

This morning, I ordered DH Spamalot tickets for January. He's been saying it's the only Broadway musical he's ever been interested in going to. I love musicals and plays, but he won't go. He's also been saying he doesn't want to pay the big dollars for tickets so I got us the first row of the 3rd tier bacony.

Kery - that's so cool that you live close enough to bike to another country!

Shane - great dream. I have an extremely active dream life. I have 4 or 5 serial dreams - kind of like watching a tv series - that have been going on for years and years. Sometimes they merge. I wonder if I'll have a dream about 3FCers some day.

Kery! That's just what it's like here. I have just taken off my hat after about three hours. I do jumping jacks to keep the circulation going.

Hi everyone!!

I was busy travelling around for job interviews last week and then went to have Christmas with my friends in Athens over the weekend, so it was difficult to keep up. Hope you all had wonderful weekends!

Ugh, last week was no good in terms of exercise. I didn't make it to the gym once! I did do a couple of videos. I'm going today even though I have a cold. Probably nothing crazy--walking on the treadill, I think.

Have a great Monday!

DG, I'm going to assume you mean Athens, Georgia, because a trip to Greece would warrant more than just a passing mention!!

Hope everyone's doing ok in the cold weather. It's not so bad here -- it was just really windy yesterday. On my run, the wind was actually knocking me around. I guess that's because I'm lighter than I used to be!

The students are seriously unruly today, and I know it's just because they're excited that this is their last week before Christmas break. I'm excited too but they are working my nerves. I think I'm getting too old for this, even though I'm 36 and it's only my 3rd year of teaching!!

I'm still STARVING all the time, and I'm not sure why. Could be the cold weather, I guess, but I wish it would stop! I could eat the paint off the walls.

Hi everyone!

Kery - LOL, you have no idea of the expression on my face when I read that you biked to Germany! I am guessing you must live near the border or something. I'm imagining biking just one state over to Ohio or something. It's a 2.5 hour car drive! Do you need a passport to do that? (I've never been to mainland Europe so I don't know how it works, esp. with the EU.)

Carolyn - glad to hear your tremors are better today.

Well, I ate a lot of crap this week. My meals were actually not bad, but this week I ate cookies, cake, brownies, ice cream, and cheesecake. What happened to my old rule of dessert only once a week? In any case the scale is up and I can't blame this one on my thyroid. :P Only made it to the gym three times, and didn't do much because the first day my toe hurt, the second one I was exhausted, and the third one my knee and calf and ankle were killing me.

No gym today either because DH has some health screening blood tests at work and they told him "no strenuous activities" for some time period before the test. I'm planning to do a workout DVD at home though, and not cook any more junk food this week! Next week we'll be in LA at my parents' house eating tons of junk so this week I need to keep it in check.

I am on day three of taking thyroid medicine. Too soon to really see any changes, but I wasn't quite so freezing at work this morning and I'm not wearing my coat. I do have a cup of hot cocoa though to help me stay warm. Trying to get the hang of how to take this medicine . . . take it an hour before breakfast, don't take calcium supplements for at least 4 hours afterwards, don't take it with dietary fiber. That's what the instructions say. However, if I take it 1.5 hours before breakfast and then have bran and milk for breakfast is that okay? It has calcium and fiber. I can't imagine a daily breakfast that wasn't cereal and milk. Also, it says to take it at the same time every day. How critical is that really? Is within 2 hours okay?

Anyway I saw an article about hypothyroidism and tendinitis. It was a case study of a 40-something man who was a triathlete. He started having tendinitis in his knee, and later in his shoulder as well (and I think somewhere else). He was treated with all the usual -- NSAIDs, ice, rest, splints, injections, but didn't get better. Eventually they diagnosed him with fibromyalgia. However, at some point they did a thyroid test because of his fatigue and other symptoms, and it turned out he was hypothyroid. Within four months of treatment he was doing triathlons again with no more tendinitis!

Anyway I am looking at it hopefully and praying that this treatment will fix my tendon problems, which just seem to be spreading (my ankle's trying to get in on the action too). I'd take hypothyroidism over inflammatory arthritis any day.

Unrelated -- dude, the Viactiv caramel-flavored calcium supplements are YUMMY. I can't bring myself to take regular vitamins or supplements, but if it tastes vaguely like candy and is chewable, I am all over it.

One more thing: I am going to go right now and change my profile stats to show my current weight. It's really embarrassing. I am now 11 lbs over maintenance weight. But, I have to be accountable!

Hi everyone,

My cough seems a little better today. I had planned on staying totally indoors, but find I must go to the Pharmacy for my routine med's.

Lacy had school today because she had a speech to give. Shelbey is in bed cause she is finished up until after the new year.

My oldest SD called last night to see if I would go with her today to her divorce attorney. I know he wants to ask me some questions about her suit to try to regain custody of her kids. I really, really , really want to be totally left out of this whole mess. Any testimony they get from me would not be at all beneficial to her case. Am I the only one that thinks that her moving in with her boyfriend last week (while still married) could be detrimental to her cutody battle?

The stew I made last night was really good and we have so much left it will probably be dinner for tonite.

I am seriously hoping to be completely well soon , so I can start working out at the gym. Right now though, I'd like it if I could just walk a mile on my treadmill without a coughing fit.

Morning! It's COLD here (0 F at 6:30 am) but no new snow.

I'm not sure where the weekend went! I didn't get half the stuff done I wanted to. Boo. We did get the tree up and decorated, so we look a little more festive now. Now I'm back at work where I won't finish everything I want to either.

Jessica - it would wonderful if the thyroid medication helped all of your ailments! I made another great dish from the Nov Cooking Light. It's a pasta dish with leeks and prosciutto (which I left out). Very tasty.

Today's excitement is some interval cardio and UB weights after work.

Jessica~I guess I should update my ticker as well.....while I've never gotten to goal, I'm way over ticker weight. I'm on track this week though. I foresee a change for the good in the scale department this week.

Carolyn~SPAMALOT!!! I would so love to see that! DD and I were going to go to NYC this spring and I was going to try and get tickets, but the trip fell through. I could get tickets for the show in Vegas but they shortened it quite a bit and I hear it isn't as good. We're big Monty Python fans!!! I hope you are able to figure out your sleep/tremors patterns. Good luck.

Lily~glad you're starting to feel better (but tell SD you're too sick to go to the lawyer!).

All this talk of snow! I'm so glad I don't live where it snows (anymore--I had 27 years of it and that's enough!). Although the sun is out it's still only 51 right now and I'm in my office with a coat on (66 inside). I much prefer our normal winter time temperatures of 70-75.

Okay, so I'm back to being on plan this week. Tonight is a chicken and vegetable dinner. Tomorrow is homemade turkey soup. I made the stock yesterday and separated out the meat from the stock and am chilling the stock so I can pick off the fat before I make soup. I was so amazed at how much meat I got off the bones. Since I had 2 turkeys for Thanksgiving, I cut off as much meat as I could and then froze the carcasses in 5 ziplock bags. I used 2 bagsful yesterday and easily got 4 cups of turkey meat! The soup will be good and we'll have leftovers for lunch and another dinner.

Everyone have a great week!

Jessica, I know how complicated it can be to figure out when to take your thyroid meds. What works for me is to take it as soon as I wake up (with my mug of coffee ), go work out at the gym and then eat breakfast, which is usually egg whites and oatmeal.

The sticker on the side of my bottle says: "Do not take this medication within 4 hours of taking antacids, iron, or vitamin/mineral supplements." It doesn't say anything about drinking milk (or eating dairy products), so I think you're OK with your cereal and milk. But you could check with your pharmacist or doctor to be sure.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if it's the answer to your tendon problems? I've got my fingers crossed for you. Regardless, I know you'll be feeling better as the weeks go on.

Carolyn, you will LOVE Spamalot, especially if you're a Monty Python fan. What a great gift for DH!

I made it to the gym, and felt fabulous afterwards, of course. It's just so hard to get out the door on these dark and icy mornings! But I made a deal with one of my gym buddies this morning that we'll both be there every morning this week at 5:30 am or else the one who misses has to buy breakfast for the other.

Jessica, it's ok - join the club - you can keep me company! (Alright, I don't know how that will make you feel better, but it makes me feel better ). I hope the medication helps sort things out.

Carolyn, I also hope that your medicational transition/switching calms down and works itself out for the best too. I'm glad DH is healing!

Meg, I'll bet you did shovel off the car and go to the gym, because you're always so good. Kudos to you!

I've heard our bodies burn more energy keeping us warm in the winter when it's so cold, but then "we" (humans in general, not us here in the forum, of course!) eat more to compensate than we should - hence the winter layer of fat! I always crave "heartier" foods in winter, so I have to switch around my eating a bit.

Speaking of cold, there is a freeze warning here in NoFlo tonight so I will be one of "those Floridians" draping sheets over my vegetable garden to protect it. The snow peas are just starting to blossom. Must protect the babies! I'm going to go out in my tackiest robe, curlers, and bedroom slippers just to entertain anyone driving by.

Our Christmas party Saturday night was a lot of fun. About 40 friends came, and almost everyone brought food, and many people told us it was the best Christmas party in the past few years. Ahem. I ate badly, and ate badly yesterday too. I'm trying to get it back on track.

Howdy!

I thought I was maintaining, but it turns out that I'm still losing! I stepped on the scale both yesterday and the day before and saw 131, but I thought it was a fluke. Today, I stepped on it again and figured, "I'm sore, so I'll probably be back at 135 like I always am," but STILL saw 131 instead. I'm actually kind of happy about it, because I'm pretty sure that I'm not losing muscle.

I'm sore as **** from my workout yesterday and I just got back from the grocery store. I saw a skinny mini in front of me buying all kinds of crap food (Doritos, full-fat frozen dinners, ready-to-eat burritos, regular soda, Haagan Dazs) and for a moment, a feeling of envy swept over me. "WHAT? she's eating all that junk and still gets to be THIN? " until I came to my senses and thought, "Well, she may be thin, but that doesn't make her healthy, and her body is probably suffering on the inside from being treated like crap." Then, I felt a little better, knowing that even if I have to be cautious about my food choices to stay slim, I'm still treating my body the way it wants to be treated.

I slept most of the day today. My girlfriend has a black shade installed in our room because light is bad for her migranes, so since today was my day off, after I initially woke up, I went back to sleep and stayed there for awhile.

Meg, Kim, and Allison, I can't say I miss snow at all - especially not digging out my car! I DO miss knowing that despite being a pain, it's probably a great full body workout. And Kim, you've been VERY determined thus far - I know you can continue to maintain and remember... you're the super 8 pack woman.

Carolyn - Spamalot is awesome. I, too, am a big fan of broadway plays... another one you should watch out for is "The Great American Trailer Park Musical" - if it comes anywhere NEAR your area, you MUST see it. It's hilarious - the GF and I saw it on the 4th of July in 2006... what a quintessentially American way to spend the 4th, right?
I, too, have a very active dream life. I have tons of interesting/weird dreams and can remember most of them. I've actually heard that people who have vivid dreams and remember them are more creative than the ones who don't.

Lisa - cold weather makes you hungrier. I've also heard that you can eat more when it's cold, but I'm not sure about the reasoning behind that (or if it's even true - it could just be another diet/weight loss myth). It MAY hold SOME truth, though.

Jessica - I hope your thyroid is to blame for your tendon problems and that it will be fixed after you get it regulated. ALSO, you know, I've heard losing weight with hypothyroid is extra difficult, so more kudos to you for losing and maintaining, even IF you had to shift your ticker a little

Megan - it's cool right now in my part of NoFlo, so I know it'll be super cold (by Florida standards ) at night. I have a feeling that tomorrow on my way to work, I'm going to do my usual "cold" weather bundling up (you know, hoodie, jacket, gloves, hoodie sleeves over my gloves, beanie hat under my hoodie, two layers of socks... yeeeeeah). I think living in Florida thins out your blood or something...