See, I make cookies (and muffins) pretty regularly. At least once a month each. I usually eat a bit of dough, and one or maybe two when they're fresh from the oven. But I can stop at that. If I were to buy cookies at the store, I'd open the bag to give a couple to the kids and grab another one or two each time I went into the kitchen unitl the bag is empty. It's been months since I bought a bag of cookies, and neither the kids nor I miss them when I don't buy them.

When I make cookies at home, I can make chocolate chip cookies with whole wheat flour and lots of rolled oats, so I know there is some nutrition in them too. Muffins I make lower fat, whole wheat flour, often sub some flour for rolled oats, and mostly make them with some sort of fruit or veg. Most recently I made mini pumpkin muffins. Only 1/2 cup sugar, 1/4 cup canola oil, with 2 cups pumpkin in them--I got 3.5 doz mini muffins and the kids don't realize they're eating a veg. Before that I was making a big batch of zuchinni muffins every 2 or 3 weeks--no temptation to eat the batter there (yummy sweetness mixed with crunchy raw zuch, yuck).

Of course, if I didn't have to feed a 2 year old, and a 5 year old who is both picky and mostly uninterested in food, I'd be much less likely to bake. I let both kids pick out 5 pieces of their hallowe'en candy each day. Today ds has 3 pieces left in his bowl (he's in bed already), and he wanted 2 mini pumpkin muffins as an afterschool snack rather than the candy. Dd, on the other hand, had finished her 5 pieces by noon.

I'm a bit torn as to what to do about my usual Christmas baking this year. I think I'll stick to smaller batches of a few family favourites.

I've never baked pies though. I don't like pie crust, so I've never bothered to learn how.

That's when you need a couple of guys in the office with bottomless pit stomachs and be sure to tell them there are goodies. By the time you have to walk past them, they're all gone. LOL

One of our owner's wife works with a gal who's husband runs a bakery. He gives her stuff, she takes it to work, they don't eat it there, then our owner's wife gives it to him to bring to us...sloppy seconds.

Mennie! .... I work a week of nights and always lose weight that week. It's not a permanent loss. I usually level out in the couple of days after. Maybe we should compare notes.

I do bake but not for myself. If I try to bake for the house then I will eat more then I should so my technique is to bake for the office, leave my husband a taste and then I don't have them teasing me at home. I'm fortunate enough to work in the facilities department with 20 men and one other woman. The guys love it when I bring in goodies, but then they are on their feet moving all day unlike me.

Fortunately I have over come the desire to taste while I'm cooking. When I first started loosing I was shocked at how difficult it was to cook without tasting but now I don' give it a second thought.

Halloween candy??? Already gone.

Hi all,

The last two days have been very good for me, good food (in all senses), good exercise, even a slight loss on the scale this morning. Besides winning the lottery, who could ask for more?

It was raining here today so I tuned in Oprah. Boy has she continued to lose weight. Although I watch her periodically, I was surprised when she walked out today and realized just how much smaller she is these days.

Jan

Jan - I don't watch Oprah but have seen how good she's looking - has she said how she lost weight this time? I'm curious about what kind of plan she's on?

TGIF! How'd it get to be Friday so fast? What's everyone doing this weekend?

Boy, do I have a challenge coming up on Sunday: we're having a dinner party for a guest visiting from London and decided to make him the most American dinner that we could think of - turkey with all the trimmings. Basically, it's going to be a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, so I'm going to be cooking what's probably my favorite meal in the world in all its carbohydrate glory. :lol: With three kinds of pie - apple, pumpkin, and pecan. :faint: I've visualized the whole dinner, thought it through, and made up my mind about what I'll eat and won't ... now to stick to it ... :D

Food and exercise have been great this week - I love the feeling of being in the groove.

I've been radically scaling back on the holiday baking over the past few years. No more gifts of cookie platters. :p Only Me - my plan for holiday baking sounds like yours. This year I'm asking DH what three kinds of cookies he just can't live without, making only those, and putting them in the garage. That way he still gets his goodies and I'm not too tempted.

Only Me, taking care of yourself sounds like a pretty good goal to have. That's what I do when that kind of time comes round, and it seems to help. Every kind of luck!

Love, Silverbirch.

Such good advice. I've had one bad day food-wise this week, granted it was a really bad day involving an obscene number of pop-tarts my husband left lying around (I don't even really like pop-tarts!). I keep beating myself up over it. I need to remember that while eating like that isn't the best way to take care of myself, neither is refusing to let it go and move on.

It's actually not been too bad a week other than that. Miss my husband, who's out of town and ran out of dental floss (so much for my 'easy' goal of flossing every day), but have stuck to my food and exercise plan rather well, pop-tart incident notwithstanding. I need to work on taking some mental credit.

Several years ago Christiane Northrup, physican specializing in women's stuff, said one of the things we all need to do is periodically take inventory and realize what we have actually completed. All too often we think in terms of setting up, working towards, then meeting goals, and then immediately moving on to the next set of goals instead of taking enough credit, mental credit, for what we have accomplished and rejoying in having met our goals. She suggested taking inventory about every 6 months in order to gain a complete sense of completion and satisfaction.

As to what Oprah is doing, I really dont know. But I do recall her saying something about giving up bread, and of course she exercises alot. I suspect, without knowing for sure, that she has just really cut back on food in general, and perhaps lower refined carbs????

Good luck on your dinner Meg. Roast turkey is my favorite meal. I also choose only afew of my absolute favorites to eat, thigh meat, mashed potatoes and gravy, and stuffing. Nothing else. These are not the most healthy of course, LOL, but its what satisfies me. I used to try to eat only the more healthy thing, but ended up eating way too much. This has worked for me for several years.

Jan