I ate horrible at school also! I would eat bfast at home and then get a chocolate covered donut and chocolate milk at the bfast bar in home room. THen at luch my friends and I all got the same thing almost every day. The "cheese burger bar"! We would all load our burers with tomatos, pickle letuce and enough ketchup and mayo that it would be dripping. It came with fries (of course!) and we would make this huge pile of mayo/ketchup dip that every fry was drenched in!! Then wash it down with 2 chocolate milks. Yes, go home and have some kind of chip and mountain dew! I don't know how I wasn't fatter in high school! It makes me sick now just to think about eating that way. Jelly

:lol: I went to middle school (except they still called it Junior High) from 1956-59 (grades 7-9) and we just had school lunches, no vending machines, no choices other than "bring it" or "buy it." All you could buy besides lunch was milk and ice cream sandwiches. School lunches were marginally healthier than they are now, but then no one worried about fried foods, or low fat stuff in general. Once we got to high school, we could buy an extra burger on Thursdays, the only day they served them. And, oh yeah, lunch cost a whopping 25 cents! :rofl: Gotta love the "good ol' days."

Pat~it was junior high for me, too. My kids go to middle school, though. Mine was 7-9 and the kids' schools are 6-8. I guess that's why the terminology difference???

Breakfast growing up? Cold cereal. Every day. Usually the really high sugar stuff (cocoa krispies, froot loops, etc). I try to get my kids to eat better. DD has a banana most every morning and alternates between a bagel with cream cheese or cereal (she prefers raisin bran). DS has a banana or melon (I've always called him a melon-head because he loves melon so much) and either an egg dish or cereal (he prefers the sweet stuff, but will eat just about anything I put in front of him at that time of morning!).

We didn't have either junior high OR middle school in my town. We had a high school that went from 7th to 12th grade (and only had about 400 kids total). Regardless, the school lunches were NOT healthy, but I was very picky anyway, so from 7th to 12th I pretty much just drank a carton of chocolate milk every day instead of eating. Then I would go home and eat Doritos and stuff after school! I stayed thin until I put on weight in my junior and senior years, but I put on most of my weight in college and beyond. I had horrible eating habits most of my life!!

I just finished doing prenatal yoga. It felt good while I was doing it but now I'm SERIOUSLY nauseous. I'm not sure why!

Junior high ~ 1966-68

Instant Breakfast (mom always wanted us to have a healthy...wink...breakfast before we left for school)...do they still have that stuff?

Lunch was those little pizzas wrapped in plastic wrap...warm...not crisp...but hey it was the 60's...we still had black and white TV! Unless HOT LUNCH was tacos or burgers!

Gary, yes Instant Breakfast is still being sold here. I had to get it for Lacy after her stomach surgery a while back when she couldn't eat solid food for a while.

My breakfast in high school was usually a chocolate covered longjohn or a bearclaw and I was healthy and had 2 glasses of whole milk with it, LOL.

I had a decent workout again tonite. There sure must have been a lot of new gym members after the holidays. The gym parking lot was full and I had to park 2 blocks away. Aha, even more exercise for me!

I asked the gym staff about having my body fat percentage done. They do the 3 point caliper testing. My trainer said it may not be very accurate on me since I have loose skin from my weight loss. I may have it done this week anyway to just give me a guideline and then retest after 3 months of working out. Would it be useful for me to go ahead and have it tested?

I don't even remember what I ate in high school. I never ate breakfast, but I would often buy a candy bar in the vending machine at the train station and eat it on the way to school. Sandwiches and fruit for lunch, no doubt (I grew up in a place without cafeteria lunches, unless you wanted to buy a meat pie or sausage roll, but we almost all always brought our lunches.). My great downfall was after-school eating. My sister and I would eat absolutely everything in sight once we got home--frozen meat pies, corn on the cob...or I'd bake a chocolate cake and we'd devour the whole thing with whipped cream.

<sighs> Those were the days. I had a fabulous metabolism... I was skinny during high school (until I spent a year in Germany and added goulash with spaetzle to my diet. And pastries. And intense comfort eating. That lead to rapid weight gain, and so my troubles began...)

Poor Lisa! Your body is playing mean tricks on you!!! Hope you feel better soon! :hug:

Lily, you and I were posting at the same time. Go ahead and get the caliper test done. Even if it isn't totally accurate, it will still give you some measure by which to gauge your success. Do it!

What is an instant breakfast??!?!

Baff, think SlimFast in powdered form. About the same calories and delicious taste - NOT! Mix this powder into milk, and it becomes chocolate gloppy milk. Never dissolves completely I swear! Of course now you could do it with an immersion blender....

When my DH was having cancer treatments and couldn't keep much down he drank a product called Boost, which is similar to Ensure, all the necessary vitamins, etc. and about 300 calories in a 6-8 oz serving. It was all he could manage. And the only way I could get him to eat much at all was to remind him of how much he hated having IV nutrition.... Bad times and I'm so glad they're over.

Lily, I agree with Baff - do the caliper test. I tracked my BF with calipers when I had all my excess skin and think the results were still pretty accurate. An experienced caliper operator can distinguish skin and fat. And, as the wise Baff said, all that really matters is getting a baseline for comparison purposes. :)

Just when I started to feel better, my cold moved south into my chest. Whenever I lay down, I cough, so sleeping didn't work so well. :p I'll drag out the back rest and try to sleep sitting up tonight.

So the gym is questionable, after two great workouts so far this week. I am (good) sore after missing a few days last week! It's cold and snowy here, so maybe I'll hibernate and start working on taxes. Ugh. We found out that because DH spent more than ten days on business in New York City last year, we owe NY state income tax. Honestly, I don't think we'll have any money left when we're done paying everything we owe! :dizzy:

Stay warm and healthy and here's a special :grouphug: for our preggos and our new moms.

Good morning. I'm so addicted to 3FC that it's one of the first things I will go to once I am out of bed! ;)

Yesterday, I found out that my interview DID go well and I am one of the top two choices. I'll most likely find out later this week whether I was their final selection.

I feel like I have been fighting a cold since last month. The cold has never fully developed, but I'll get little symptoms here and there like the sniffles, periodical coughing (it never lasts long), the chills, and dark circles under my eyes indicative of sinus issues. I'm glad I'm just "fighting" the cold instead of "having" the cold, but I wish it would go away entirely.

That sucks that your cold keeps lurking around, Meg :( Are you taking anything for it?

Gary, I always thought those "instant breakfast" things were disgusting and undrinkable. All those nutrition shakes -Boost, Slim Fast, Ensure, Glucerna, Carnation, yup I tried 'em all at my highest weight in hopes to get a head start on shedding the pounds - are just chalky and disgusting to me. :barf: It's about as pleasant as swallowing a shot of McCormick ;) Wait... I correct myself... I like McCormick more...

Pat, that's cool but crazy how no one worried about things being low fat or calorically dense back in your day... yet there was MUCH less obesity back then. My dad blames the abundance of fast food for obesity these days and says that when he was in high school, going to Burger King was an *event* as opposed to something people did frequently. He also says the significantly smaller obesity rate was because people went out to eat a whole lot less in general. However... I think home-cooked meals can still be fattening... I didn't actually get fat from fast food... I got fat from too much food, in general... so... hmmmmm... it is an interesting theory, though!

Shane: I agree completely that you can still get fat on home-cooked meals.
Part of what's happened in the past 30 years, though, is that "normal" portions at restaurants AND home have gotten larger and larger. So, even people who don't eat at McWendysKing or at all-u-can-eat buffets regularly have a skewed sense of how much food they "need" to feel satisfied. Couple this with less exercise and (my pet theory) boring service sector jobs and, on the other end of the labor market, higher-stress professional jobs and you've got a recipe for obesity.

Why the increasing portion sizes? I think it's because of (a) competition between restaurants to provide the most food for the cheapest price, which in turn is supported by (b) a screwy and highly politicized system of government subsidies that makes nutrition-poor foods (corn & its byproducts like corn syrup) & beef much, much cheaper than nutrition-rich foods. Ever heard of a broccoli subsidy? I thought not...

A lot of these ideas are kicking around the academic literature & popular press alike, so I can't claim originality. The truth of the matter, though, is that there probably isn't a single "smoking gun" to account for the obesity trend, so the best we can do is identify (and try to remedy, though this can be hard politically) the factors that do matter.

Fun to think about, at any rate.
Kim

:coffee:Good Morning!
Meg-sorry to hear you still don't feel well. My dd(4yo) was up all last night with the croup and a fever. I tried to be loving and comforting and still not get TOO close.

Shane-good luck on the job chances.

Pat-the pictures of your yard were beautiful.

Ah teen eating habits. Mine weren't so bad in Jr High but in High school, eeek! I either cookies or a burger and ate junk when I got home. My mom did 'farm cooking' which was good and nutritious but not low fat. I really didn't gain weight though until college when fast food entered the picture. I think Shane's dad may be right. Of course that was coupled with a dramatic drop in activity. Oh well.... on to today. I'm staying home since dd is ill so no excuse not to get on the treadmill or do my yoga. Have a great day all.

My mom made my lunch when I was in school, and there was a long period where every day it was a tuna sandwich. I like tuna, but after awhile you begin to feel like you have fins and gills...

I just never thought much about food back then. We ate good food--maybe now and then on a Saturday night we'd go to a "hamburger drive-in," but there was none of this "Let's get out of school and eat a lot of food for fun"--not that I can remember...

But I gained weight later on anyway.

It's true that the portions have gotten totally nuts. It wasn't like that when I was younger.

Jay

Kim, your theories are very interesting - I, too, have heard that portions have gotten larger over the years, but I like your theories as to why, even if you say you can't take credit for them ;) The job market IS quite stressful these days, which not only contributes to obesity because of emotional/stress eating and lack of time, but also because sleep deprivation is clinically proven as a factor linking to obesity.

Jay - WOW, no "let's get out of school and eat for fun"? :eek: :lol: I've been getting out of school and eating for fun since middle school. My friends and I would immediately go to this little place called Foster's Grill after school and eat cheese fries together. Heck, even as a cheerleader in high school (yes, yes, I was a cheerleader in 10th grade :dizzy:), after practice, we would either go to McDonalds or Cold Stone... now, there *WAS* an influx of girls immediately running to the bathroom after these events, but that's another story...