[madamwu]

Today we leave our borrowed vacation cottage on the St. Lawrence. Not much to do, pretty quiet, but relaxed a lot. I did make the mistake of bringing too much left-over food from the wedding to eat, but once the fritos were gone, I was able to get back more control. Still ate too many sweets. But you know, I'm okay with that.
I restarted WW last August, and in the past year have lost 30 pounds. Its been slow, and it stalled when they switched us to Points Plus, but once I switched back to Momentum several months ago I have done better.
I was reading an article on Salon.com on obesity, and one of the comments was that weightloss is simple, just count your calories, limit them to 1800 per day and you will lose weight. One of the writers replied: "I have a suggestion for those who want obese people to simply count calories. Count them yourself. All day. Every day. I'm not talking about changing what you eat. Just get a calorie book and write down everything you eat. Every piece of bread. Every stick of gum. Every dab of butter. If you cook something, figure out the number of calories in the entire thing, then divide by the number of servings. For fast food places, go online to get calorie counts. Good luck with restaurants. At the end of the day, add up the calories. Now do it for five years. Then ten years. Then tell me again how simple it is and how anyone can do it."
Reflecting on my vacation eating behavior, I realise that is how I felt. I just needed a break from all the counting and keeping track. I' m ready to begin anew, and get back to the planning, tracking, and exercising I need to do to lose the last 40 pounds.
Now some may say I should have made more of an effort to "be good." But when I had twinges of "I should be eating better", I did. I ate a salad, bought some fruit, put away the cookies. In the end, I feel rested, refreshed, and ready to return to the challenges of my work, my life, and my food consumption.
So I guess I have had a good vacation. Hope you all enjoy whats left of the summer also!

[dixiecool]

I love your post! I've been going through a similar issue. Been on Points Plus since February 14th of this year. Dropped 22 lbs. by May and the scale has completed stalled since then. So here I am now over 25 weeks into WW and my brain is totally exhausted. I've also decided to take a mental break. This is my second week. And it's important that I see how I do on my own - in 2 weeks my husband and I leave for 2-1/2 weeks to Scotland and I have no idea what to expect there. All I can think of is fish and chips - neither of which I want!

I believe a mental break is ok if I'm using WW the way it was meant to be used. That is to say as a lifestyle change and not as a diet! That would come out to eating clean/right 90% of the time and 10% for real life and still maintain where I am right now until I get back and continue my WW journey.

[madamwu]

Well, I gained 7.2 pounds in 10 days. Hopefully, some of it is water weight. I did go to my meeting yesterday and that helped me get a little more motivated to get back on track.
One of the new members mentioned that the low point soup has helped her alot. So when I woke up a hour before the alarm, I decided to go downstairs and salvage the leftover crudites from the wedding and filled my large crockpot with vegetable soup makings.
And I threw out the very delicious leftover Italian cookies. Boy was that an act of will. They went in the garbage and the garbage to the curb. I did freeze some of the other leftover goodies, but figure there was no time soon that those would be a good idea...