Jessica, I feel you on the yuck of tepid tea water!
Midwife, hope SIL's procedure goes well. *hugs* Just keep fighting the OP fight!!!
ICU, I took a look at the first menu and started drooling. Keep us informed...I think the food color thing sensitivity is a good discovery. Was it just with careful tracking that you made the observations?
Sliver, sounds like you are hanging in there and fighting a good op fight!
Megan, I have not lost my 5-10 and am agreeing with Jessica that this thread is truly helpful in maintenance keeping me at least stable and not upswinging!! How's the play going?
Losermom, Hi! :) I agree with your outlook, it is reasonable and positive :)


Dinner did not incite a riot as I had feared but i am still not clear on where things went wrong. I regularly make turkey chili. It is pretty simple. My sitter generally is aroud and observing (she likes to cook) when I make it. Last night DH came home early and he and I took my 4 boys to a local school for H1N1 vaccinations. I left my sitter with a pot, the ground turkey, the other ingred. and what I thought were pretty clear directions. It just didn't come out tasting good. I doctored it as best as I could using cheese melted into it(not a standard ingr.) lots o salsa, ketchup. I then made white rice ( a not eaten often favorite of the guys) and served it with choice of rice or ww tortilla and it was tolerated. Nobody asked for seconds.... but nobody screamed either....

I am at work hearing many rumors, some substantiated, about plans to close my clinic. Prob one day but I will not hit the panic button just yet.

later chicks! Happy Holidays :):):)

Yes. I'm feeling quite tough today! Ate a large piece of leftover salmon with a lot of veg for lunch. No other starch. There were, er, quite a lot of raw carrots and I am feeling rather full, several hours afterwards. I think that's good. :cool: I am watching out to see whether I change colour.

As Shannon says, quite a few of us are under stress and strain at the moment. Hanging in there is Very Very Good.

Kittycat - ignore those rumours if you can. :hug:

Wrapping presents secretly at the office before going home. :wave: to everyone! Keep strong. You know you can do it. :yes:

(SO is making tea. I hear that it is spicy delicious chickpeas and sausages. I'm certain there will also be greens of some kind and potatoes for the others. I shall only eat a modest portion ...:angel: naturally.)

kitty - yep, thanks to food journals! One of the things I tried a couple of years ago was a full-blown allergen elimination diet. It was pretty miserable for 3 weeks - no gluten, no eggs, no dairy, no peanuts, no shellfish, no meat except free-range organic chicken and lamb, and no soy. But within about 5 days of starting it, I could see a drastic change in my eyelids, hands, and how my joints felt. My nose cleared up, and I also dropped 11 pounds in 5 days. Sure - it's all water ... but what's water? Water retention is inflammation. I started to add the "forbidden foods" back in per the diet, and nothing worth noting happened until I got to soy. Turns out that unfermented soy "reacts". No great loss there - I'm not a big fan of any soy products except miso anyway.

I wasn't ready to commit to weight loss back then and I got sloppy with processed food. The 11 pounds came back on and brought a few friends with them. :) About a year ago, I hit my highest weight and started lurking here regularly. I started my own journey on Feb 1, with a food journal, an Excel spreadsheet, and calorie counting.

Somewhere between the food journal and the spreadsheet, I noticed a pattern in the spring. Many 3FCers report a "sawtooth" shaped downward slope with little spikes that tend to correspond to TOM, and sodium. I could find TOM on the chart, but that was always a specific 1.5lb spike. A couple of times a month, at no predictable point, there'd be a big 3-4#. By early summer, I was noticing that the day before one of those big spikes, I would have eaten something processed. I was hunting for MSG, sulfites, nitrites and any of the other million "approved" ingredients. It's really tough to sort one out, because most packaged crap food will have multiples.

I was losing hope in the fall - stalled right around the 150 mark - and then I had a handful of M&Ms. I had the "bloom" within hours this time - I could FEEL it. Read the label, and wouldn't you know it, I had experimentally eliminated everything except colors. The only bad news is that M&Ms have a longggg list of colors and they're not called out by the color of M&M. :lol: I couldn't get that lucky! But I wrote down the whole list.

Entirely possible that it might be all of them - and to find the culprit(s) I have to go out of my way to eat artificially colored foods, which after a year is really losing its appeal.

That's my color story! What I do know is that the further I get away from them, the shorter the "teeth in my sawtooth" get. :D

Aw! Yeah I'm definitely going to have a long time as a 20-something maintainer, because I'm only 20 now, and I am NOT gaining my weight back (*is determined not to be just another dieting statistic*). I guess I just need to get to know you guys better.
Maybe you can answer a question of mine... I had 3 finals back to back today starting at 7:30AM, on top of having a huge project due at 1PM today... so I pulled an all-nighter. I'd eaten dinner about 6PM that day, so I thought it'd be good to eat something at midnight since I was going to be up for the next 7 hours... so I got a sandwich and yogurt (about 500 calories combined). Now... should I have counted that on yesterday's calories, or today's calories, or does the fact that I wasn't sleeping change things completely?
I HATE pulling all-nighters and am looking forward to lots of sleep tonight (:)), but it does make me wonder where to count those calories.

Still going strong here. I really wanted to stay in bed instead of go to the gym this morning, but I dragged myself up and out the door and had a good workout. Now I'm ignoring the new batch of Christmas cookies that appeared in the office this AM. Lalalalala.... Food & exercise POP.

megwini, I suppose I would count the calories for the night before, or split them between the two days. Wow, you're still counting calories during finals? Color me impressed. By the time I got to the pulling all-nighters to get through finals week in school, I was so far past caring what I ate, skipping the gym entirely, etc. let alone writing down calories. Good job! (But go study! Check in with us after finals. And after a nap. And good luck! :p)

ICU, what a process to figure out what was bothering your body. Glad you've almost got it narrowed down now, though.

Silver, I can assure you, if one turned colors from overloading on carrots, I would have turned long ago. I haven't. Hopefully that means we're all safe.

Kitty, the play is going well, thanks for asking. At first my character was tough for me to get into/relate to, but I think I'm doing better now. We've dubbed her "the ditz with the heart of gold". I've got to learn my lines over Christmas, yikes! I hope your clinic hangs in there!

Losermom, 1-2 lbs in a holiday month is great. Keep it up! I haven't lost much more than that but I know if I wasn't so committed right now my weight would be going up, up and away with all the holiday treats.

Stay strong everyone! :cheer2:

ICU - that is fascinating about the colors. I had a similar result with my Splenda and other artifical sweeteners experiment. I never even thought about colors....

Shannon, ordinarily I wouldn't have either. Our neighbors have an adopted son who's my son's age - they're good buddies. They have explored every avenue in trying to get their hands around this kid's behavior - he can be like Jekyll and Hyde. Long story short, through the Feingold diet and its support, they found out he's violently sensitive (literally) to one of the artificial Yellows. When he eats right, he's a happy, normal little kid. When he gets into that Yellow (#5, I think it is), I'm seriously afraid of him.

One of the gals who works for me has a son with bad reactions to one of the red dyes - more along the allergy type though than violent behavior. Now he's a teen-ager he monitors his own intake and has been very compliant. :)

But I know that babies can definitely get an orange cast to their skin if they get too many carrots or other yellow/orange veggies (usually in breastmilk). It's a condition called Carotenemia. In reading some entries found when searching, some adults also eat enough to have the condition as well. Usually those who drink carrot juice from my unscientific scan. :lol:

I'm hanging in there, though it's still snowing. It stopped long enough yesterday afternoon that the plows caught up at least on the main roads. No school closures though the AF base had a delayed start for workers today.

I've had two of my swimming coaching sessions, with the 3rd tonight. I'm getting some help, esp with my breathing, but there are several needier folks there - like they can't swim a length yet - so those of us needing minor tweaks are not getting as much attention. To be honest though, once she's told me what I need to do, a few laps of practice and then another review is what I need, not someone watching every stroke. :)

LOL Silver, Pat is right, you can actually change colors from too many carrots but it's usually from drinking carrot juice. Did you know that it takes a whole pound of carrots to make 1C of juice? So you get a lot more carrot per volume from drinking the juice.

ICU (everytime I type that I think Intesive Care Unit), that is really fascinating about the dyes, especially about your neighbor's kid. My slope has spikes pretty much every Monday, because I have a cheat meal on the weekend which usually has more sodium than usual, and I drink less water. However, it's been headed up the past three days for no obvious reason at all. I'm crossing my fingers weight will go down again soon, but it will be hard to tell since I go on vacation next week. If it continues to go up when I get back it will be time for another thyroid test.

Megwini, does it really matter which day you put it on? I would put it on whichever day had lower calories from everything else. :)

Megan, did you avoid the cookies? Great job on being so POP lately!

Pat - :brr: I hate temperatures that low! After living in colder climates for the past five years I'm okay with temperatures down to about 20 now. Any colder than 20 though and I do not want to leave my house! :lol: When it's below 20 we even put a coat on our dog.

Thanks, all. I think I made this remark because I had this info lurking in the back of my mind from when I was feeding (nursing) the DB. And some other dimly remembered stuff about vitamin A, betacarotene and tinies. If Midwife could call in for a moment? Thank you.


Not a bad today but formal exercise is being pushed out with pressure to meet deadlines. Only a few more days like this.

Good to see so many people checking in.

Good night, all.

Wow, glad I eat my carrots in carrot form. I eat 2 carrots every day with my lunch. My co-workers make fun of me for all the carrots I eat. One of them was a "chaperone" on BF and my first um, group activity. He was taking us fishing, it was our job to bring lunch. We started to get out the food and he said "hey, did you bring carrots?" I thought he was teasing me - I glared at my friend and said "what did you tell him?!" He said "no, she said you eat lots of veggies and carrots, I really like carrots!" It took me a few months to believe it... at this point if he's lying he's kept up the facade for over 4 years! He really loves salad and carrots, more than any man I've ever met. See, it's fate. :carrot:

Yup, Jessica, I avoided the cookies, though there are still some left today. I feel better about ignoring them today, though, b/c I got some more sleep last night (sleep = willpower). I was a bit tired yesterday. I don't have rehearsal tonight, so I can go to the gym after work, so I got to sleep an extra hour. It was nice. I'm oddly excited about doing HIIT on the stairmaster this afternoon. I'm not going to question it, just go with it, lol.

Pat, glad you're enjoying the swim classes.

What are everyone's weekend plans? Any big food events?

Good morning chicks! I am posting from California. I flew from NJ yesterday afternoon and am waiting around until it is 6am so I can go for a run. I am here to take a course. So far so good. Yesterday and the night before there was much grabby
and carby eating but last night was smooth smooth smooth.
Poor exercise so far this week d/t stress of holidays and knowing I will be gone until very late Sunday night. This is the first time i will be away from my kids for so long. Dh and I have been separated for a few days here and there but not me and the kiddles.

On the carrot thing; my mom did have carroteinemia when she was a younger woman. She had married young and divorced. As a mid twenties single woman she traveled to Egypt and was so nervous about the food she mostly ate carrots. Thru the trip she thought she had a great tan but when she returned home she realized the color was from carrotein! :)

Have a great day chicks :)

WaterRat - Glad to hear you're enjoying the lessons! I'm sure it's a little aggravating to have to wait on the less-skilled. You might find that once you're down to tiny details in technique, it may be worth it to get a private lesson or two. I know I was helped most by underwater videotaping - there's something about getting to actually see what I'm doing that makes it much easier to fix problems. Another drill that will help you really be in tune with your relationship to the water is to swim with your hands balled up into fists - you'll feel like you're at a dead stop in the water, but you'll be able to concentrate on the force the rest of your arm is generating.

paperclippy - you're more than welcome to just call me Becky! :) I agree with you there - wonder why that never occurred to me when I set up my username? I've been ridiculously lucky with my thyroid - have never had to have my prescription adjusted. Mine's just an "underperformer" and my doc, who's a thyroid specialist, says he thinks there's a chance we might be able to wake it up with time, nutrients and toxin reductions.

Phew - a week til Christmas. This weekend is the 1913 Room dinner. I'm planning on wearing a dress that I have not fit into in NINE years (yes, I was always an optimist, even if it marks me as a lousy closet-shuffler). There's one more, that's even older (and smaller), that if I ever put on and get zipped, will cause a total meltdown ... and I think I'm almost brave enough to try it. :)

Thanks, Becky! I was remarking to DH last night that I can easily see what others are doing wrong, and I'd like to see myself swimming. I can always tell I have my head to high to breathe by the fact that my legs are too deep. :lol: I didn't go tonight as I was in Anchorage all day, and I have my next-to-next-to-last Christmas event tonight. (One quick stop at an open house tomorrow night on our way to a play, then a brunch on Sunday and I'm done til the actual day).

The sweets have landed. DH is on vacation and is baking....Plan what I eat, eat what I plan....holiDAY, holiDAY! How are all of you?