Saef, on days you don't mention dinner (some days no lunch as well), does that mean you skipped those meals? Or just didn't log them? And what the heck is "EAS"?

Dagmar, that's a lot of alcohol! But I assume your clients would notice (and, you could convince yourself, be displeased) if you polished off whole bottles of wine/partial cases of beer. Good for you taking your scale and log book; it shows your commitment to the process.

I just made myself hugely nauseous with a home-made chocolate-peanut-butter protein pudding that uses only 3 packets of splenda for sweetening, and substitutes PB2/cocoa powder for actual peanut butter and chocolate. I suppose it's a good thing in a way, since I really didn't need to eat any more food tonight, and l ended up leaving at least 1/2 of the 200 calorie serving. Teaches me (yet again) not to replace too many "real food" ingredients with pseudo.

Hi Andrea! Nope, I never skip meals. But I do update each day's entry throughout the day. If you don't see lunch or dinner, it's due to the timing of your visits to the thread -- it means I hadn't entered those meals yet at the time of your visit. Like yesterday, work was hectic and I didn't have any breaks to hang out at 3FC. If you scroll backward through the old entries, you'll see plenty of lunches and dinners. Heck, I can't even skip snacks sometimes without getting ravenous.

Oh, and EAS is a product, a brand of protein powder & protein drink. EAS Myoplex, actually. What happened is that I bought a six-pack of premade protein drink, to try it, but decided it was too rich for me. I am using it up slowly by making muffin batter out of it.

On a Tuesday, in the dark, hearing robins singing, thinking my calendar being nearly clear meant this day was nearly open for work, rather than meetings -- but already I've got lots of emails overnight that I'll need to answer.

Weigh in: 140.1, down just a bit more.

Meals for Today:

Breakfast: EAS Protein muffin with cacao nibs embedded in it; egg bake with spinach, artichoke hearts and sun-dried tomatoes; blueberries with cinnamon and yogurt
Snack: Huge organic Bartlett pear, juicy and flavorful
Lunch: Spring mix salad with roasted vegetables, almonds, goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and guacamole
Snack: The bigger, 180-calorie Bare Fruit Fuji apple chips bag
Dinner: Ground beef and sauerkraut soup
Dessert: Chocolate chip cookie dough Quest bar

Exercise:

At the gym: 20 minutes on the recumbent bike, then Workout 11C of Strong Curves Beginners Program. I can hip-thrust a 100-lb barbell now. Probably I could go higher -- I've just been using the fixed barbells rather than the assemble-your-own with clips and plates.

Last night was quite overwhelming. I finally got everything done (I thought) around 8, walked the dogs quickly (we do 15 minutes in the evening), and came back expecting to have a long hot shower, a San Pellegrino with lots of ice (they have an automatic ice maker in their freezer) and to settle in with a book until bedtime.

Then I smelled the cat poop. SIGH. And it wasn't just all over the basement floor. I cleaned it all up and wiped down the cat best I could. Then I caved and had a beer and a small bowl of chips. At least it was a compromise. Usually I have 2-3 beers and about 1/2 of the large bag of chips.

The rest of the chips will go into the master bedroom, along with the crackers, this morning and the beer will go into the beer fridge in the basement.

Good Tuesday all!

Dagmar :strong:

Dagmar-- I hope Tuesday goes more smoothly for you!!

I count it as a lucky day if I don't have extra poop or puke to clean up... the joys of pet ownership.... I was going to say I haven't cleaned any today but there was something suspicious in the yard (from a stray cat perhaps) that I cleaned before Ellie could vacuum it up.

Dd is arriving tomorrow from Houston. I hope the tropical storm isn't too severe there and she gets out on time. Next week should be very interesting for dh when I'm on the cruise with dd. He will have full time pet duty plus one-- she is bringing her service dog (a Lab) and leaving him with us-- so dh will have the Lab, our dachshund and Dobie puppy plus two cats. I wake up easily when Ellie stirs-- he is a light sleeper so I hope he sets an alarm so she doesn't mess in her crate. She's doing very well with house training so I hope that doesn't take a step backwards....

Three more days of work for me.... not that I'm counting...

Our cat Happy is at the vet's with pancreatitis and elevated liver enzymes. He didn't come in Saturday night, then he came out from under the deck Sunday night when I called him. I put him in his condo, where he panted a bit (not normal) and wasn't interested in food or water. So off he went to the vet on Monday, got a blood test, and there he will stay getting fluid and whatever else he needs. He's probably about 6 and we've had him four years. He showed up on our porch one New Year's Day (hence the name). He has been very healthy and is normal weight. I always wonder if pesticide poisoning is involved since we live in a farm area. Prognosis is guarded, although my vet is encouraged that he didn't act very sick.

DH is leaving Friday for a four-day trip to Virginia to visit our son and his new wife. I'll spend the weekend getting ready for a 5 day backpack the following week. I'm stressed about the backpack because next Thursday I'll have to drive my car 4 hours over to the east side of the Sierras, park it at Horseshoe Meadow, then ride back 5 or 6 hours with another backpacker to get to the trailhead on the west side, then hopefully have enough daylight left to get about 2 or 3 miles up the trail before camping. A VERY long day. I'm also worrying about whether my knee will be up for this trip - after a tough 16 mile day hike on Saturday it is still a little sore (although not enough to take anything).

I'm starting to obsess over the menus - don't want to carry too much or too little food. I think about 2800 calories a day will do it. I have to start calculating out the meals. So far I dehydrated some sweet potato/chard bark, now working on pumpkin pie bark and kale powder, and I'll also have standard dehydrated backpacking meals. Breakfast will be fancied up oatmeal with coconut cream powder, milk powder, coconut, brown sugar, nuts, freeze dried fruit and flax meal added. I'd love to try some new homemade dehydrated meals but it's always better to pre-test them at home and I don't think I'll have time.

Michele, it is always a concern to hand over housetraining to another person. Good luck with that! A crate is such a great tool, though, so it should go okay.

Saef, I sympathize with your stress about work. Is there any facet of your job that you enjoy? I like programming reports the best, but it seems like 95% of my job is doing other stuff that is not fun.

Dagmar, what's with that cat? How did it manage to get poop all over itself? I've had cats with diarrhea but they always got it in the cat box. Hope it was a one-time event!!

Andrea, I might actually like that pudding :) I have been using pb2 quite a lot - in smoothies and just to make peanut butter to put on toast.

Alice,
Praying for your kitty cat! How scary! I hope he's okay....

Good luck packing all your food stuff. If I were eating 2800 calories a day, I'd like it to be a tad more decadent than yours sounds....

Alice Poor Hugo weighs at least 22 lbs. and has long hair. He can't flex enough in the midsection to squat properly. My clients have always liked to have hugely overweight cats. The first cat I looked after weighed over 24 lbs.. He broke things whenever the food bowl was empty so it was never empty. And he was indoors so he never got any exercise.

My clients started letting the second big fat cat out when they moved to the current house and put him on diet food. He was a little slimmer for some years but now I think an old injury, his obesity, and his age are all working against him.

I feel really sad for him. He's a really nice cat - very snuggly and friendly with me. I groom him a lot which he really loves so he gets lots of love from me that way.

I think he's in pain probably from arthritis. My client now says she will take him in to get checked out once they return. A couple of years ago he almost died from pancreatitis. If they had left him for one more day the vet said he would have died.

I hope your kitty Happy will be OK.

And here are two of my roomies now, looking for their dinners. Good evening all!

Dagmar :beach:

I hope your kitty will be okay, Alice!

Why do people let their animals get fat? I don't understand it. I have three cats, all within normal weight for their size (11 to 14 pounds) and two normal sized dogs (about 70 pounds each). The only one on a "diet" is Bogey because he's not been getting enough exercise due to the heat and he seems to be a bit heavy (but maybe it's just the shepherd in him).

I used to think my in-laws cats were getting fat. Turns out they're Maine Coon mixes and are supposed to over 16 pounds.

Got on my client's scale this morning. I t weighs about the same as mine at home. I'll take the number here and keep track and then adjust when I get back home.

Had my first bowl of fresh cherries for 2015 last night. YUM!! :drool: The first of as many bowls as I can eat during their brief season here.

But one bowl per night and that's 1 1/2 cups - yes I did measure. :lol:

Dagmar :beach:

Alice-- how's the kitty doing??

Dagmar-- LOVE cherries!! The season here is already over though! We are getting some from Washington State and I'm enjoying them but they are pricey.

Fat cats... one of ours was obese years ago. His name was Oliver. He had a little head on a giant body and we tried.... tried diet foods.... tried to make him exercise.... very hard to make a cat exercise. When he started peeing in the house for no reason, we tried everything. We eventually and reluctantly put him in the backyard. He is the only outside cat I've ever had, but it was that or euthanasia. We were very worried about him because he was declawed on the front paws and not sure if he would adapt. Did he? Oh yes... somehow he managed to kill birds! We joked that he sat on them and squashed them to death because we found him sitting on one. He also managed to jump over our fence to the neighbor's yard and eat their kitty food. So, he never lost an ounce...

My current kitties are just perfect-- little hanging belly but they are middle aged to geriatric-- almost 14 years old...

Saying lots of prayers today that dd gets out of Houston okay with her flight. Dh is flying back from Washington DC so we will see if their paths cross.... Then, lots of prayers that the two girls get along as they never have but I keep hoping. And that her service dog, Owen, gets along with Ellie-- think they will be fast friends as Dewey is a little too small to roughhouse!

Saef, I want to start a more structured workout approach again. Which do you like better, NROLW or StrongCurves and why? Does one focus more on body weight training and endurance than the other?

Alice, what's it like to backpack 14-16 miles in a day? Over what kind of terrain are you walking? Are you focused enough on the scenery that the hours pass easily? Or is it a grueling test of will and endurance?

Count me among the cherry fans, though my favorite fruit to eat frozen are blueberries (no pits to spit out). Has anyone here made "watermelon pops" by just freezing chunks of melon? I'm thinking of trying it but worried that they'll dry out on the outside even if I freeze them inside of a ziplock. Does that happen?

As for personal news and accountabiity, I'm back from my mini-vacation to see my parents and survived without a weight gain, though also haven't seen a loss. I remain stubbornly in the 130 range because of portion sizes, even though I've (temporarily, I'm sure) conquered the evening snacking beast. I am using as many volumetric tricks as I can, but my mind just isn't fooled by copious quantities of spinach, mushrooms and miracle noodles. And my experiment with using splenda for more than slight sweetening was a complete failure - artificial sweeteners all taste nasty to me (including stevia).

Wednesday, with me managing to do three slight chin-ups after jumping up to the bar & holding tight there. But I had to place a bench underneath the thing first, because I'm too short. The tall guys just hop a little & grab on.

The brutal part of the day came late. One of my direct reports had requested formal "work from home" privileges. Under my old department, she'd already been doing so, informally, and we attempted to formalize it. Well, that completely backfired. Now, according to upper management's dictates, she'll have to drive in twice weekly. She's nearly hysterical because she can't seem to imagine arranging childcare. Which sounds extreme till you realize she lives in Newtown, CT, just a couple miles from a rather famous school, since torn down, and some of her son's friends were gunned down in grade school while her son cowered in an adjacent elementary school that was in lockdown that day.

Weigh in: 140.2, up "just a smidge"

Meals for Today:

Breakfast: EAS Protein muffin with cacao nibs embedded in it; egg bake with baby kale and sun-dried tomatoes; strawberries with yogurt
Snack: An organic Bartlett pear that resembled the Venus of Willendorf
Lunch: Spring mix salad with beans, peas, cabbage, edamame and sweet n' sour tofu
Snack: Small peach
Dinner: Ground beef and sauerkraut soup
Dessert: Chocolate chip cookie dough Quest bar


Exercise:

At the gym: 20 minutes on the Cybex arc trainer, then Workout 11A2 of Strong Curves Beginners Program. Now up to deadlifting 100 lbs for 15x3. Not as strong as before the accident, but better than just two months ago.

Andrea,

After the initial phases, the NROLW program has you doing cardio interval training to finish off some of the workouts. Strong Curves suggests cardio on off-days, if you wish.

The start of the Beginners program in Strong Curves has a lot of bodyweight exercises, which worked well for me, as I am still rehabbing my weakened left leg and have a noticeable imbalance to work with. The NROLW program puts you on weights right away.

I think NROLW is more balanced and it's a whole body program. I felt like my arms and chest were the strongest they've ever been when I finished it. Strong Curves is more whole-body than you'd think -- I mean, I am doing chin-ups -- but it's more butt-focused, as you might imagine. My butt is the best it's ever been. (Even at that level, it's nowhere near many untrained butts -- I have a genetically deficient posterior -- oh great, what fun to talk about my assets on a public forum.)


Weigh in: 139.5, going low as I usually do near the end of the week

Meals for Today:

Breakfast: EAS Protein muffin with cacao nibs embedded in it; egg bake with baby kale, mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes; strawberries with yogurt
Snack: An organic Bartlett pear, quite obese
Lunch: Spring mix salad with beans, peas, roasted fennel and grilled chicken breast
Snack: Small peach
Dinner: Ground beef and sauerkraut soup
Dessert: Cookies n' cream Quest bar

Exercise:

At the gym: 30 minutes on the recumbent bike, and then I managed six consecutive chinups
Disappointed that I worked too late and missed out on my usual Thursday night Pilates class

Saef, 3 chin ups, no matter how slight, is to be greatly commended!! Congrats!

Happy the Cat is still in hospital but today's report was hopeful - he refused canned food in the morning but scarfed down some cat treats this afternoon. He may just be extra finicky - we give him cat treats at home sometimes but never canned. I was instructed to call in the morning for another status update. They'll do another blood panel too.

Dagmar, yum to cherries and boo to owners who create obese pets.

Michele, I hope your DD got home okay.

Andrea, hiking is my favorite way to spend the day. There are a few extreme hikes I've done which I considered grueling (such as Mt Whitney in a day, the Bataan Death March I did in March with a 40 lb pack), but most seem very relaxing with plenty of time to enjoy the beauty. Hiking with a day pack is of course much easier than with a 30 pound backpack. I will routinely do 15-20 miles on a day hike (and feel wiped out the next day). On a backpack, I try to keep the daily mileage lower (10-14). I like to get to the night's camping spot around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, set up the tent and relax for the rest of the day.

I'm so accustomed to walking that it seems like I'm barely doing anything if I walk on a relatively flat, clear trail. If there's a lot of up and down involved I seem to get tired around mile 14. If we have to climb up boulders and cliffs, cross talus, etc, the daily mileage will be much reduced and my knees will be much crankier, although I really enjoy that type of hiking.

We have 3 fat cats and 4 normal weight cats. The biggest one was 18.5 lbs but I think he has lost a bit on the measured diet food I finally got DH to cooperate with. I told him if the cat got diabetes, I would not be the one giving him his daily insulin shots!

Saef and Alice, thank you for answering my questions.

Since joining my new gym a few weeks ago, I have attended a number of different group classes, and I have to say, my endurance for higher-intensity/longer duration exercise seems to me to be quite low. I'm so used to a weight-training approach (a la NROLW) that anything more than 12 reps of a movement feels excessive: I did a kettlebell class 2 days ago that had us using an preposterously tiny 'bell (12 pounds) for several HUNDRED swings, each of them done from a full squat, and I don't think my thighs have been in this much pain in over a year (yet I can squat 165 pounds for 5 reps x 5 sets). And I tried a "bootcamp" class that had us do 100 burpees that took me 8 minutes - I was one of the last people finished, and so sweaty I couldn't see from the water in eyes. All the classes I've taken seem to emphasize endless reps of things that seem really easy at first, but become brutally difficult by virtue of the number of times you do them/the series of moves that come one after the other, all stressing the same muscle group (like, 50 crunches, then V-sits, then Swiss ball passes between arms and legs, and then Russian twists with a dumbbell). For those of you who go to such classes (Michele- I think you've written that you enjoy Body Pump), do your instructors favor 20+ reps of every move, done 2-3 times in sets?