I'm at 157.9, so I basically maintained this week, in spite of the stress of this Japanese-English rewrite, due tonight, which I've worked on for seven straight days now, on top of my usual managerial duties. I have not slept enough, I'm drinking coffee like it's water. I have kept up my exercise schedule. But I know I'm always crunching on some food or another, even if it's apples or a handful of almonds. So maintaining for a week did not disappoint me.

I'm hovering at 160 myself. I've exercised 6/7 days a week for over a month. I've cut back to just one alcoholic beverage per night for the past month. I eat well--keeping my calories under 1600 (usually around 1400). And yet I don't lose.

apo9-- awesome! Great feeling!!

Jessica-- hang in there!! All weeks won't be stellar. You've lost a bunch of the baby weight already!

I'm updating my ticker. Barely under my redline for now. I'm going to start carb cycling on Monday. My dd is doing it and having great success (she has a great deal of weight to lose). I was debating trying it then I thought it would be a good example to her-- that once she is at her goal weight, if a few pounds creep on, you can get them off again before things get out of hand. It's basically a low carb day, then a higher carb day, then repeat. I'll see how it goes!

Yesterday for my birthday we went to see a South African adaptation of The Magic Flute. It was wild! Had dinner out and some cake & ice cream but still came in at 138.2 this morning, which was another great present.

Traveling Michele, I think having a tight redline is a good idea for me too. Frankly it takes me two months to budge 3 pounds, and that's if I really put my mind to it. Good luck with the carb cycling.

Alinnel, sorry you're not losing on the scale. Sometimes it just takes a while to show up. Not gaining is a terrific victory in itself!

Saef, congrats for maintaining with all that stress (and for continuing to exercise!). I know stress at work gives me the munchies. I turn to coffee these days, but I still know the urges.

Congrats apo! This time I chose to maintain 10 lbs higher than previous times, and I do sometimes think fondly of some clothes that are too tight now.

A week ago, I shot up 3 pounds in 2 days (truly: 127.4 on 10/14 to 130.2 on 10/16) without changing my diet, and it hasn't disappeared. At all. Despite a single dessert all week (a tablespoon of choc. chips + tablespoon of pb melted onto 2 graham crackers). Allison, I have also been aiming for 1400-1600 each day (1700 on the day with dessert), so you're in good company. I'm hoping it's only because I only exercised once all week (I was on hospital duty), and the weight will magically melt off again once I'm back to my regular workout schedule. I will never understand how I can gain 3 pounds in 2 days but take a months to lose it again.

I'm in the group of currently living an unsustainable lifestyle as far as my work goes. Teaching full time and then two adjunct professor jobs. Yep, it's insanity. I'm going to quit one of the two adjunct jobs probably in March after the Jan- March semester ends. It's a long story how I ended up with two adjuncts. The money is good and it is very fulfilling to be helping people, but it is just too much. The first adjunct job I have had for almost 10 years and it is all online. I can easily teach two classes there and my FT job. But that 3rd job just put me over the top!

I think because I am so busy my weight is maintaining pretty well. DH and I have been bike riding on the weekends about 25 miles each day so I eat a lot of food on those days. Mondays I am always up 2-3 pounds. But by Friday it comes off. Plus I'm running 3x a week and strength training 2x a week. As I type it all I really wonder -- how the heck I am doing it all!

Tomorrow I'm running my 2nd 5K at Universal Studios. I'm excited (who am I?) and hope to beat my first 5K that I ran in Sept. Plus the race takes you through or by Diagon Alley (part of Harry Potter exhibit) and I haven't seen that yet. I love HP, lol. The only thing is it starts at 6:50am... and you have to arrive early and it's about 40 minutes away from me.

Thanks and praise be, my weight was back down to 127.8 this morning. I guess the stress of being on hospital duty really shows. The number is still too high, but I can stop flagellating myself over what I ate in my sleep that mysteriously made it jump up like that.

My work feels nearly unsustainable. We have a newish electronic medical record system in the office that is a travesty- completely dysfunctional, with unpredictable crashing and hanging, general slowness of response, and numerous bugs that make doing basic doctor-things (like refilling prescriptions) a painfully prolonged exercise in frustration, and ultimately means that a full day of clinic patients adds an extra 2 hours to the end of the day in order to finish notes. This is on top of my research agenda that requires supervising grad students (one of whom is defending his dissertation in early December), analyzing data, writing papers, and starting work on my next, undoubtedly not-to-be-funded-anyway NIH grant proposal. And, oh yes, in my free time I'm supposed to be our dept's Quality and Peer Review chair, so I get to review my colleagues' charts for "avoidable errors" and write up reports on how to avoid them in the future. You can imagine how popular that makes me.

I'm seriously considering quitting my job and making a move into the Pharma industry as a medical research scientist, just so I don't have to split my time and energy between so many incompatible tasks.

The part about quitting your job and moving into Pharma sounds very sensible, compared to what you're doing now. And on top of work you have a spouse and kids too, right? Quite overwhelming.

Dagmar

DH & DD went to a fencing tournament out of town this weekend. I guess quiet is nice, but it really meant just getting housework and paperwork done. Plus cleaning up all the leftovers. There's always more to do, but I usually just ignore the stuff that hasn't gone critical.

At least I got in a couple walks with the dog in the woods. The colorful foliage has mostly fallen to the ground and it's starting to get nippy, but the day was sunny and it's nice to get out of the house. My 12 1/2 year old keeshond (very heavily furred) loves the chill and zipped ahead like she was a puppy again.

I am still hanging out at 138.2 on the scale.

I can be gone from work for as little as a long weekend and lose 2-3 pounds as a result, without doing anything differently in terms of net calorie intake.

And I am also considering the idea of leaving the academic world for industry. I would love to have a job that aligns with the overall mission of a company, instead of having 5 jobs that I frantically bounce back and forth between, feeling guilty all the while. For example, it feels selfish when I am writing a manuscript that is necessary to my own career but doesn't help my coworkers, while they struggle with our core lab, etc. It's a lose-lose most of the time, with everything done in a rush and no feeling of satisfaction.

JayZeeJay-- so you would go back to being a vet??? I could come with my animals and visit if you aren't too far from me!

Hey, maintainers! I'm officially at (and below) goal as of this week, so I'm switching into maintenance at the end of the week.

I'm really focused on becoming more fit, so I'm trying something a bit different and doing a Pack Up the Scale challenge, which I posted about here in anyone else wants to play.

I'm going on vacation for a few days, but when I get back I'll be sticking my scale in a closet and not touching it again until December 1. Meanwhile I'm going to keep working out the same way I have been and just see what happens.

Michele, I could... but I've been away from practice for 10 years so there would be a lot of brain-refreshing needed. Plus, it would be a waste of 7 years of extra education. But I could deal with that. More than anything, I would dread going back to the grind of dealing with all of the non-paying clients, angry and aggressive clients, drunk and high clients, animal-abusing clients, etc.

"It's not the animals that are the problem, it's the people" - said by probably every vet ever at some point.

Oh, yes, I worked for vets for 15 years and we had some doozy clients. I promise-- I'm a non-drinker, I don't do drugs, and I always pay my bills.

Welcome under analysis!!

Welcome, underanalysis.

The plan sounds good. Did you know that for most of human history, people didn't weigh themselves? The only time people got weighed was at the doctor's office, and that's fairly recent history.