Megan, that is so cool about your mom! If she doesn't buy herself a copy of NRLW, please buy her one as an early Mother's Day gift. Your mom is probably around my age and I really, truly believe that weightlifting is the Fountain of Youth for women my age. It has tremendous benefits for all women, but for those of us in our 50s +, it's positively lifechanging. Good for you for being such a shining example for your mom! :carrot:

Hello, everyone!

Congrats to those who have conquered the red line. I still haven't weighed :(. But my clothes fit. But I was looking at myself after the shower and just thought "ugh!" I'm not ready for a bathing suit. I really need to kick myself into high gear; Not necessarily to lose weight, but to tone up. That means eating better, upping my cardio(even if I'm not feeling it), and focusing on weights. I feel like the eating part will clean up once I move and control all the food that comes into the apartment.

To those that are sick--get well!

It is my last weekend in Georgia. I was planning on going down to Macon to see one of my best friends/old roommate for the day and then driving up to Athens for the night to see the other 2 best friends. However, the Athens girls(well, one imparticular) aren't returning phone calls, so I don't know if they are busy! I mean, She called me on Tuesday while I was at the gym and, no joke, I have called at least a half dozen times, texted, AND emailed her and gotten no response. ::sigh:: And I want to hang out with the BFF who lives here. So I'm hanging with her this weekend. We MAY go to Athens for the day tomorrow. And then Tuesday I'm driving down to Macon to see the other one(she's in law school, thus not working all day). I don't have a lot to pack up, so my last week is pretty open.

It is so difficult getting ready to move! Furniture hunting has been a pain. I've been scouring Craigs List. I mean, I don't want anything fancy! Just simple and basic. The big thing is delivery--they can't get me an exact date! I start work the 17th, my apt ready the 20th. I can't just sit around and wait on them to bring my stuff!

On that note, I'm off to look for some cheap furniture around here. Putting my gym clothes in the car! Have a great day everyone.

Hi everyone, thanks for the well-wishes for me and Lacy. She wants me to take her to the mall today to get some jewelry accessories for her prom dress. I'm thinking it will be a very quick trip. I think this Tamiflu is what is making me sick at my stomach but I need to finish the prescription to keep from having the full-blown Flu. Other than the nausea, I feel OK except for being more tired than usual.

We got about 7 inches of snow yesterday but it's sunny and melting right now.

elisa, my DD hid how sick she was last Thurs. so she could go to a religious concert on a church bus with 29 other kids. Now, they've all been exposed to the Flu. Of course, she ended up in the hospital the next morning.

Mel, sometimes I use my jeans meter to measure how well I'm doing at maintaining my weight too. Right now, they are loose so this much is good.

Megan, your dinner sounds very good.

Jessica, good luck with the taxes. I'm happy that we have already gotten ours done this year.

This evening I will spend helping Lacy do a weeks worth of 10th grade Algebra. Wish me luck. She is mathematically challenged to say the least, LOL.

Lily - yeah, I never said it was a smart thing to do! ;) It's hard to convince a teenager that something like that isn't the most important thing ever! I really hope everyone is better soon.

ETA...Megan/Meg/Mel - are all these lovely recipes in one spot. I'm a big fan of the protein pancakes but I love muffins and would be thrilled for a protein version! I see the fibre muffin recipe in the sticky but if anyone wants to share the recipe for, or a link to, the protein muffins, that would be great! TIA.

Since my DD is trying to lose weight, I turned her onto the protein pancakes as well. I make up a batch of batter on Monday morning and it lasts her all week--she usually fixes 2 medium sized pancakes and eats them with SF maple syrup. This is a radical change from her usual--whole bagel with cream cheese and a large glass of FF milk. At first I didn't think she'd want to try them because of the ingredients (she claims to hate oats and cottage cheese and I know she hates eggs). But she can't tell the difference between that and Bisquick (and neither can I for that matter).

Elisa, I'm hoping to do a reorganization of the Maintainers forum, starting next week (got to survive my party tomorrow night first!) and one of the things to tackle will be recipes. It would be great to pull them all together in one place and have them organized! I'm going to be looking for input from everyone for ideas to make our little Internet home here as supportive and user-friendly as possible. So stay tuned for Monday, think of ways to improve our forum, and look for a thread called "Suggestion Box". I'll throw out some ideas that I've come up with and am hoping that all of you will have some ideas for improvements too. Don't be afraid to think big or outside of the box! :)

:wave: Hi! It's 45 and raining here! Yikes. Because the ground is still frozen solid, all the water (and melting snow) is sitting in huge puddles, heck, some of them are nearly lakes! My backyard is completely under water.

Rabbit - I'm ready to move to stage 2 of NRLW but I need to make my little cheat sheets for my notebook. I've been concentrating more on cardio for my hiking trip, so it took me a little longer to finish the stage 1 workouts. Good for you on building muscles. :strong:

The scale is driving me nuts lately, and I'm thinking of dropping WW membership for awhile again. I never quit the program, just quit paying them to weigh me once a week. I know I'm moving in the right direction, and today I'm wearing pants I removed from the "too small" box when I cleaned out my closet a few weeks ago. I actually had 3 pairs of the same brand/style - in 3 colors (tan, black, navy). No matter what size I am, I always have trouble finding pants that fit, so when I do I buy them in all the colors available! Of course, if they're black, I might buy two of those! :lol: I hate it when black pants fade.

I have a lunch to go to today. Our church women are hosting the luncheon after the World Day of Prayer service. I made some awesome orange bars (according to DH - I didn't taste) that are soooo not low-cal. I cut them into small pieces though, 24 instead of 12. The rest of the lunch will be chicken casserole and salad. Since I'm helping, I may or may not get to eat. If not, I'll pick up a salad at the grocery store before heading back to work.

Have a great day!

I'm a bit behind...........

Lily, I'm glad to hear both you and Lacy are doing better.

Allison, I've yet to make those protein pancakes. I keep forgetting about them. I think I can use something new. Any one wanna steer me in the right direction for a recipe??????? I'm glad your DD is enjoying them.

Meg, hope your party went well. And I'm real excited to hear about the changes you will be making to this forum.

DDAwg, Good luck with the move!

That NRLW book sounds like something I myself should pick up. Maybe 2, one for me and one for my Mom. I am headed to Target later, maybe they will have it. This has been a pretty good week for me. MAde it nicely through last night and am hoping to stay on target through tonight. Yup, we're probably going out to dinner tonight with friends. But, I've got it all mapped out in my head. Just have to see it through :crossed:. I am getting very, very close to my "red line" once again. VERY. But, I think once I get past this maintenance blip, I am moving that red line down.


I hope you all have a great Saturday and weekend.

Hi maintainers,

Drive through post from me because i am very tired.
I took DD to the cardiologist yesterday for her checkup and ALL WAS WELL. I was expecting this of course, but i still am very much relieved. The ladies of the heart echo machine were very kind and gave her a picture of the inside of her heart, showing the "umbrella" that was put in to close the hole in her heart in 1999.

Getting to the hospital and back took about 5 hours of driving, some of it in the dark , with rain and heavy traffic. but we made it home safely. Today I am taking a rest. No lifting, no cardio, no nothing as I am dead tired. But I made it. Who knew that mothers have magical abilities ??? I associate mine with my handbag. If I carry that i am in serious mother mode.

I am off to a nap.

Have a great day all,
Rabbit

It's snowing, again. My walks have been more like carefuly crawl with the snow and ice. I wanna take a nice walk. Whine over.

Rabbit, so glad the check up went well :carrot:. Sounds like the magical mom in you could really use a day just to chill. So please, DO ENJOY. :hug:

joyofsix, whine away, whine away. No snow here, but lots of rain. It's enough already - BRING ON SPRING!!!!

Alison- I eat the protein pancakes a few times a week, but I now make it as more of a "sheet cake" in the oven, bcut it into individual portions and freeze. It saves a lot of time. The recipe is buried somewhere in the Weight Training forum- I;ll look for it later.

I'm right on my red line weight and my clothes are NOT tight. Inadvertently, I built MORE muscle I'm guessing. My jackets slightly tight across the back, so I know where it is....gee, who would have thought I'd ever be complaining about too much muscle!

Meg- If you need help with reorganization tomorrow, let me know. Have a great dinner!

Mel

Food wasn't great yesterday so I am, as I often due on the weekends, avoiding the scale for now. Maybe since I lost a few pounds I have to just settle into this new 128-130 range for a while before I can drop any more. Or, as I keep wondering, maybe that's it for me. Although I do, I know I shouldn't stress about the 2 or 3 lbs. as long as I keep it to just that.

Protein Pancake Recipe - everyone has a slightly different variation but I stick with the starting point of equal amounts of oats, cottage cheese and egg whites and then go from there. If usually do one cup of each (and that's for more than one meal!) then I also add a bit of splenda, cinammon and vanilla. Makes them so yummy and then I can eat them plain if I want. Although they're delicious with a bit of syrup or jam. I put everything in a blender and whip it up until it's smooth. I let that sit while I warm up the pan. (the batter seems to thicken as it sits). If you use a non stick pan then just a bit of Pam is all you need. Cook like any pancakes and enjoy. And they do re-warm nicely in the microwave.

Trying to have a better food day today but the snowstorm seems to mean that I will be spending the day on the couch...except for the shovelling part.

Don't forget to turn your clocks ahead tonight!

:D

Thanks for the recipe elisa.

Mel, I didn't even know you guys had your own recipe section! I'll have to look further. I found this on page 2. Is this a typical recipe? And this is for one serving? And who's Mrs. Jim?

Protein Pancakes

1/3 cup cottage cheese
3 egg whites
1/3 cup oatmeal
a little vanilla
a little cinnamon

Blend together and pour into hot non-stick pan sprayed with Pam. You can make one big pancake or several smaller pancakes. I have also found that if you let the batter sit for a few minutes (like while the pan is heating up), the pancakes don't run together.

And Mel, you are something. I mean, you've built even MORE muscle? :carrot:

Yeah, I definitely need to buy that book. And of course get back to MY red line. I'm so close, I can taste it. All right, maybe that's not the right expression to use, but you know what I mean. ;)

Morning everyone!

Rabbit, glad to hear that everything is ok with dd!

Robin, I'm having lots of fun with the NROLW book. The workouts are intense, but the exercises also tend to focus on complex, functional movements more than just hefting sheer weight, so it actually seems like a great program for improving 'every day' strength and functionality. Very fountain-of-youthy, as Meg would have it. :) I'm loving it.

Today is the beginning of spring break! Hooray! Bf and I are going to spend a couple of days next week in Portland and then drive down to spend a day or two at some hot springs and maybe do a little hiking. The drive from Portland to where the hot springs are takes one past an outlet mall that, if I remember correctly, has outlet stores for Nike, Puma & Adidas! New gym clothes! Yay!

Mel, I'm starting to wonder whether I haven't gained a bit of muscle as well as a bit of fat. I'm feeling a little poochier in the lower tummy, but all my clothes fit perfectly, in spite of the 5lb gain (including a pair of jeans that are very tight at the best of times). I might get a bf test next week. I still desperately need to get my eating (and drinking) under control and I want to get back below 140, but if some of it is muscle, I'd like to know about it. :)