Good morning! Well, afternoon by now I guess...

Mel - those statistics scare me a lot less than they used to, at least when it comes to me, though they do keep me aware and on my toes. I still go over the edge sometimes, but I'm getting a decent routine down I think. They make me worry about DH, as I have already seen him fluctuate several times in the last few years, but he has to learn his own way to lose and maintain. I've pushed him for a while, and I have to step back to keep from making myself crazy. :)

Dagmar - Belgian chocolates are evil... though, maybe next time you find yourself in the same place you will remember feeling ooky after these and be able to eat just one or two? (Not like that ever works for me, but I figured it was worth saying! :) )

Kery - ooo, I want a cute little black belt with a bottle to carry more water! :) Someone on my facebook put up a link today to a British article with this tagline: "Psychologists believe shopping could be a way for premenstrual women to deal with the negative emotions created by their hormonal changes." Hmm...

Ward - hope you feel better!

Thighs be gone - I upped the HIIT pretty heavy during the last ten pounds, but I know you already do a good bit of exercise with HIIT... Hm... How many calories do you eat per day now?

Heather - be careful with yourself. Make sure you are fully recovered before diving back into everything, you don't want to knock yourself back down again! :hug:

Bill - I had to turn off one-click on Amazon because it started to get me into trouble... :(

Jessica - funny story about your dog! My parents live in the country with a big yard that borders a cow pasture - their Rottweiler always runs right up to the fence and stares at the cows when they are out, until they moo at her and she runs scared!

Allison - I can't imagine a pedicure would feel good right now with your foot the way it is... :( Enjoy the week with DD!

Pat - Tax refund, what is that? You mean some people actually get money back? :rofl:

Robin - love love love your post!

Shanna - Almost a year, wow! Congrats!

Michele - I had no idea that WW had a minimum weight to work for them. Interesting... Congrats on the weight loss, and I hear you on the balance. I haven't really maintained yet, I've gained some, lost some, gained some, lost some, but not stayed in the same +/- 1 yet. I'm thinking that is my maintenance. :)

I ordered a treadmill last week and it came in on Thursday. I'm really hoping to find some time to get it assembled this week. Of course, now that I have it, the weather is supposed to be mostly sunny instead of the downpours of the last week! :dizzy:
I'm almost done with my staff accountant search I think - what ended up at 711 resumes has been filtered down to three final interviews with the owners, one candidate significantly better than the other two. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it goes okay. I really don't want to have to repost and start over...

Good day all!

Shannon-- 711 resumes. That is scary! Were most of those looking unemployed or just looking for something better? It scares me to think of so many unemployed people looking for work.

Yes, WW has a minimum weight that is the lowest healthy weight for your height and BMI. I guess they've had problems in the past with members losing too much weight and becoming anorexic.

OMG Shannon. I though wading through 50+ applications was bad! But over 700 - yikes!

The snow has stopped and have about 2" which is already melting. Just made things look cleaner. :)

Michele- funny about the Amazon addiction. I used to buy tons of boooks, but since I've become the library director and order all the books for the library, I seldom buy any fiction for myself, and find that mostly I buy cookbooks, quilting books, and some related to weight loss. I still read a lot, it's just that I read library books. :lol: Selecting books for the library is the funnest part of my job, and what I go to whenever I want to destress.

:( I'm feeling very fat all of the sudden. I am trying very hard (and succeeding too well) at avoiding getting any real work done today (which I'll regret the rest of the week) so I was reading some pinned threads.

The "Some Answers About Genes, Environment, Obesity and Maintenance" was fabulous! I still really want to know if yo-yo-ing causes even more damage to non-resting EE?

Anyhow, there's some discussion about what constitutes "reduced obese", which led me to go look up some BMI and ideal weight charts. I know I was well into the obese range at 178, and that, based on height alone, I'm within the healthy BMI range now but then I started looking for charts that incorporate body frame size into the formula. That's where I got depressed.

Based on having a small frame (wrist size, elbow width, however you want to measure I have a small frame), my highest healthy weight would only be about 127, so according to that I'm still overweight! is there a :POUT: smiley? Probably not, but I want one right now. How about this one :tantrum:

I know that this is irrelvent in the bigger picture - my logical mind knows I'm playing games with myself. I knew when I chose 135 as my red-line weight that it's at the high end of what is healthy for me. I chose it b/c I had been down to 120 twice then gained it all back plus some very quickly. I also know that for me it was the right choice at the time b/c I never gave myself permission to consider myself "done" and "stop dieting" (which is why I've maintained). I told myself before that if I could stay under 135 for (well, I said 6 months) then I would give myself permission to try and lose more. At the 6 month mark I was at 128, that's not bad I just need to get back there. Pouting about it is silly and uselss, but I still feel fat after reading that and I want to pout and cry and throw a tantrum.

Deep breath..... breath in... breath out....

breath in... breath out....

Okay, so... my anniversary is still an amazing accomplishment for me. I'm not going to let this ruin that for me. However, I'm more determined than ever to get below and stay below 130. Once I get below this time, 130 will be my new red-line and 118-125 my desired range.

I'm realistic about what my body can and will shed at this point (and how many hours I'm willing to exercise per week), and I don't expect to lose more than .5 to 1 lb a week max, so that means that I could realistically get to 123 by (10 bls = 10 to 12 weeks or so), I'll say by July 1st.

Overweight indeed.... humph! :mad:

Michele & Pat - Yep, 700+. I thought I was going to drown. I'd say about 85% of them were unemployed, the others were looking for something different or better. I had a surprisingly high number whose companies had relocated farther out of the city who wanted to find somewhere closer to home, or vice versa - they had moved out of the city but still drove downtown every day.

Shana - :hug:

My cat does that on purpose, he loves his bags (the plastic grocery ones). He naps with them around his neck. We call him super-kitty when goes around with his cape.

We had a cat accidentally suffocate in a plastic bag and I'm now absolutely paranoid about keeping bags away from the cats. It was a heartwrenching tragedy. :( I thought that my family's experience was a fluke, but the same thing happened to one of the other mod's (Meowee) cats about two years ago.

That's awful Meg! I'll be extra careful to keep bags away from my kitty (and dog)!

On another note, once many years ago one of our now grown kids tied a helium balloon to the cat's tail. The cat absolutely FREAKED and went running outside and through the neighborhood in panic mode trying to get away from her own tail. Not funny if she would have gotten hurt, but she eventually calmed down and I got the balloon off... poor kitty.... but I still laugh when I think about it.

That reminds me of when my son dropped his lollipop and it landed on the cat. The cat freaked out and ran around the house with the pop stuck in her fur. She wouldn't let us near her to get it out but I finally cornered her. My son just wanted his candy back. :lol:

Mudpie (the cat, not me) loves her plastic bags too. When I'm folding them for work (for the doggie doo) she tries to get them away from me. I give her all the ones with holes in them and she puts them on her head, runs inside the bigger ones, and just rips 'em to shreds. She gets the handles stuck on her head, flips over, and eviscerates the rest of the bag with her claws.

No chance of suffocation there. I don't let Mishka near the bags (although he's nver shown an interest) because he's the sweet (animal handler code word for dumb) one. I suspect, if he got inside a bag or got one stuck on his head he'd have a nervous breakdown.

Dagmar

My cat is a little high strung, to say the least. Gracie is her name - the most talkative cat I have ever seen... She got caught in a plastic bag once, I have no idea where she got it as I'm really careful to keep them away from her. I think she snatched it and hid it one day while I was putting stuff up - she used to love her 'rattle sack' until she tore a hole in it. When she got caught in the bag she ran all over the house going absolutely crazy thinking something was chasing her, we had to pin her under the end table to get it off of her. Now, every time she hears anything with a similar noise she jumps up and runs and hides, I usually find her shaking somewhere after it is all over. It makes me sad - she was neurotic enough before that. I'm afraid she is going to have a heart attack every time I bring home groceries... :(

wow, long thread already! i'm a part of the group trying to pick myself back up from some plans I strayed verrrrrry far from. Things are not going my way with work and school, and rather than dealing with that I've been eating. Which does NOT make me feel better in the long run.

I'll try to catch up later.

My younger cat got into a plastic bag of my knitting one time. She was after the yarn, but got her head caught in the handles (this was a dept store type rather than grocery one) and I had to chase her around the house to catch her. Otherwise she's never bothered bags - I'm sure it was the yarn. However, she's never met a box she didn't immediately love, no matter what was in it. :) She also comes running when I turn on the water in the tub and skids to a stop and jumps onto the edge. You know what's coming - yep one day she "overjumped" and got quite wet! Didn't stop her fascination though.

:lol: We have cats who will try to wedge themselves into any box, no matter how small. When the kids were little and got out a game to play, inevitably a cat would end up in the box, often splitting the sides.

And we have one who will only drink from a dripping faucet. I bought a kitty water fountain, thinking he'd be attracted to the running water but nope, all the other cats love it and he won't touch it. When we go away and have a cat sitter, she knows to run the water in the sink or tub for him. Since he's almost 18, I don't think he's going to change. Gosh, do we all have cats? :D

It's back to work for me today. I didn't get quite as much accomplished on my two days off that I hoped, but plan to vacuum up the cat fur accumulation and mop the floors before I leave this morning.

I lost two pounds of my soy-sauce induced water weight gain overnight. Hopefully the other .8 pound will leave today!

Oh and Jessica, the reason that doctors tell you to take antibiotics before dental cleaning is indeed the risk of infection. Apparently whenever you have foreign objects in your body, there's a higher risk of infection. So antibiotics for a whole list of medical/dental procedures are in my future as well as the "special treatment" I get from the TSA whenever I go through airport security. Wouldn't you think that there would be a way to pre-clear people with metal joint replacements so that they don't get pulled aside every time? Even showing them the scars on my knees doesn't get me off the hook. I'm all for security but ... every time? :shrug: And I discovered that it's a good idea NOT to wear jeans if you're going to get special handling. The metal buttons and studs will set off the handheld metal detectors (more sensitive than the ones you walk through) and then you get patted down -- inside the waistband of your jeans. :fr:

How's that for a digression? :rofl:

:lol: The cat stories are funny! When our dog sees a plastic bag he just thinks it's time to go for a walk (we always have a poop bag ready). He LOVES boxes though -- but not to climb in, he likes to tear them to shreds! He's also a big fan of empty toilet paper rolls. Cheapest dog toy around. He doesn't eat them, he just gets himself comfy then tears them up.