Okay, that's just sooooooo opposite from the experience that I have had with BistroMD. I'm baffled. :?:

In 18+ weeks with BistroMD, I've probably called twice. Via email, I've been able to:

* receive my nutrition and ingredients attachments
* modify my weekly menu several times
* change from the 7-days w/ snacks to the 5-days w/o snacks program
* change the credit card they bill
* request and receive credits for mistakes they've made

...and on and on. I'm just SHOCKED at what an exact OPPOSITE experience you and I are having!! Wow!

Clearly, my experience shows that they absolutely DO allow for transactions and business to be dealt with entirely online... so, I HEAR you. I know you're not having the same experience. No question about it--and if I were going through what YOU were going through, I'd be ticked off too because I really love the convenience of online.

But I've just had nowhere close to the experience you're describing. You must be SO frustrated!! :hug: That's a bummer.

Of course! :) Yay! :carrot: Happily, I have nothing to vent about. I had a very good week with both a weight loss on the scale and an inch loss on the waist measurement, so I'm very very very pleased. :D

Actually, that's not possible, since the diet is set to ship "blue" or "yellow" or "green" or "red" or whatever color based on when you sign up. You join in on "purple" week and that's the first shipment you'll get. They don't create the same first week for everyone. The first week is whatever it is that's in the cycle for everyone that week.

(Except for me, since I only get the exact same menu every week due to my food sensitivities.)

Still, I'm excited about your rice and potatoes. ;) One of my favorite dishes is the Turkey Cranberry dish which comes with rosemary potatoes. Eesh, that's some yummy stuff!! :D I also love the Mahi Mahi Caribbean, which comes with rice. Like you, I really dig that stuff and enjoy that I can still have it on this diet. ;)

Just had my Pork with Apples meal and am feeling good about today and this week ahead! I'm really looking forward to hitting 205 and below... man, when I hit the 100s I'm going to be in heaven!! :carrot: So, I'm trying to be extra-good and extra-disciplined here lately, just because I can almost TASTE that 199 reading on the scale and I really, really want it!!!! :flow1:

Hope you're having a good weekend!!!! Enjoy Week 2. :D

Congratulations! You should be very pleased - you're doing great!

Interesting! And here I thought the veggie thing was very clever of them. :)
Well, I guess I joined at a good time, since I think the idea of having lots more vegetables and less other stuff helped mentally in trying to change the way I eat.

That one's in my freezer waiting for me. Last night I had the chicken Cordon Blue...I have to say, I thought that was delicious!

Today I only had the breakfast. I had to be out all afternoon, and was planning to have dinner home, but my plans got all turned around. I had to grab a very quick lunch, which would have been something frightening a few weeks ago as I only had about 15 minutes. Instead of the fast food thing, I grabbed a fruit salad and a luna bar at a deli.

Then I was getting nervous, because I was still out at 7 PM, and I'm trying hard not to eat after 8 PM, and I was nowhere near home. So I opted for a "create your own salad" bar, and just had a spinach salad with all healthy ingredients, and a piece of multi-grain bread. So it was a really good day, despite not being completely on plan.

Whoo hoo! You're getting close! That will be a big celebration day!

You too! Keep up the good work!

Aw, thanks. One day at a time, y'know? Had some cocktails and popcorn last night, so my fingers are all puffy this morning and I know better than to go anywhere near the scale today. ;) But I'm back on track for today and didn't go too far over my calories yesterday, so the "damage" was minimal and I didn't feel deprived last night, which tends to be one of the best ways for me to stay on track. ;)

Hey, it would be!! :D Send you stuff that makes it easier to start on good habits while you're super-enthusiastic about a new diet. Great idea!

They sent that one--I think--by mistake once. It's chicken stuffed with mushrooms and bacon and cheese, right? If that's the same one, I really enjoyed what I could eat of that one (had to scoop out most of the stuffing due to bread crumbs).

Honestly, of what I tried, there are only a couple of the dishes that I full-on DON'T like. Thai Chicken is too dry, Blackened Chicken is too dry, Santa Barbara Chicken is just too weird. ;) For me, anyway.

Isn't it awesome when that feels less scary? :D :carrot: I'm so glad that you were able to make a good choice and feel good about it! That's awesome!!

Sounds REALLY good to me. And that's kind of why I changed from the 7-day plan to the 5-day plan, eventually. I realized that it's very important that I learn how to modify my eating FOREVER and the only way to succeed doing that is to have meals "off plan" while still losing weight, so I don't see those off-plan meals as an excuse to binge or have all of the foods I usually "can't" have or whatever.

So, even when I don't eat a BistroMD meal, I'm (hopefully, most of the time) making really good choices that don't throw me so far off track that I start beating myself up or spiral off into some binge cycle or whatever.

Sounds like you did a really good job of making great choices. I'm inspired!!!! :D

Well, I lose veeerrrrrrrrrrry slowly, so I really am looking at this as: 2008, the year I did BistroMD. And hopefully, I'll be able to call it: 2008, the year I lost 50 pounds too. ;)

So far, TECHNICALLY, I'm down 30-something pounds since late 2007 (I didn't own a scale then, but at my last doctor visit in late 2007, I was 240 on their scale). But when I started BistroMD and bought a scale for home use, I was around 225 and so that's from what point I'm hoping to lose 50 pounds or so.

If I continue to lose one pound per week from here, I'll be at 179 by the first of 2009, and that's a huge change from the 240 I was a year before that. :carrot: Slooooooooooow, but that's progress that I know I can keep making. And hopefully, I'll have a few weeks here and there during which I do even better than a pound a week.

(I know, I have to get my butt to the gym and really get more committed to cutting out alcohol if I'm really gonna make that work. I can't just wish it. *sigh*)

Thank you, thank you! I'm feeling really good today, despite the HEAT here in Southern California this weekend. :p I think they're predicting a break in the weather tomorrow, so that'll be nice.

Hope you continue to have an amazing weekend and I look forward to hearing how things are going with you into Week 2. So far, my Week 19 is pretty dang good. :D Yay, us! :hug:

Just wanted to report that after two days of wine and a meal "off plan" each day, I'm finally back on track with a 100% day today. :D

Yay! Phew!

Hopefully I'll have another one tomorrow. :D And the next day. :D And the next. :D

Okay, okay... one meal at a time, Grace. ;)

That's good! I did pretty well over the weekend, though yesterday I was just hungry ALL the time, no matter what I ate! Today was much better though.

I'm having trouble with doing three meals a day. I think I'm going to just do the three meals on days I'm not working. It's just not convenient to me to bring two meals a day with me, to poke holes in pouches, etc. at work. I'm so used to picking up something on my way in, and something for lunch. I've been really good about what I've been eating, so I'm going to see how that goes. Maybe at some point soon I'll ask them to send a package every two weeks if that's possible. The dinners are a perfect fit for me.

You go Grace! It does seem really simple to get back on this plan if you fall off.

Yep. Same here. Good days and bad days. ;) Yesterday was a little "off plan" but still within the right calorie range. Today looks to be another 100% day. Yay!

Just really want to/need to UP the exercise now. So, I'm drinking lots of water today and plan to have a really great walk tonight after sunset.

Wish me luck!! :carrot:

I think that's a part of why I switched to the five-day/no snacks plan after awhile. Once I learned how my "average day" was supposed to feel and how the portions were supposed to look, how many veggies I was supposed to have, etc., I got a little better with figuring out how to work things "on my own."

And really, that's the bottom line as far as "succeeding at this diet" goes, for me. It's gotta be something I can understand how to do on my own. It's gotta be a lifestyle that makes sense in my life. It's gotta feel good in my life, every day. Otherwise, there's no chance of it working, even in the short-term.

That's for sure! I've definitely experienced that!! No matter how wildly "off plan" I go, I can always get right back on the BistroMD plan the next day and have a really good, 100% (or even 95%) day. And that's awesome, to me.

I've been on diets before where it's soooooo hard to recover from a binge or an off-day or an off-week due to vacation or whatever! It really does seem that BistroMD fits into my lifestyle very well, for the most part. Certainly better than any other diet I've tried (and I've tried 'em all, it seems). :D :p

Hope you're having a wonderful day today!! Looking forward to hearing from you, as always! :hug:

How's it going Grace? Things here are OK. Been a good few days for sticking with it.

I had to laugh, because yet again, I got an email on Tuesday about a FedEx package coming from BistroMD. I figured I would just wait, and see if eventually the actual package info got in there. So last night I checked to see if my delivery was coming today, and it had never been updated.

I did send them an email last night when I saw that...they answered me first thing this morning, at least. They said there were two different tracking numbers for some reason, and the one I had was wrong (OK....?), but they gave me the right one and told me they'd checked and it was on the truck for delivery, and I did get it this afternoon, so all is well. And I was happy that they answered this time, and answered a second email about next week's shipment, since it's the 4th of July. So things are looking up in the customer service area.

Pretty good, Carrie. :D Glad things are going well for you too.

I had a not-good weigh-in yesterday morning (booooooo!) and I blogged about that (plus, at my blog--linked in the left margin and in my signature file--I linked to the cross-post in the CHICKS IN CONTROL forum) and decided that alcohol indulgence had a lot to do with it. So, I'm on track with the help of some wonderful suggestions from members of this board (so awesome, here) and hoping to STAY on track for the weekend. :D

One day at a time, of course. ;) Sometimes... one BITE at a time.

Ooh, that's why I always check about 24 hours after that email arrives, just to be sure it's en route. Only once have they had to express-send another package. Two other times it's been that they sent two tracking numbers or didn't send the right one after having sent the wrong one... whatever.

Yeah, that can be frustrating. So glad you chose to laugh!!!!! :D

WONDERFUL! So glad they answered your emails in a timely fashion and with good answers too. Yay! I love improvements in customer service! Always makes me feel good about sticking with it, when things start to look up. ;)

So, yay!

Just finished my Turkey in Apple Cider Sauce meal and am trying to really keep the water intake up today. A little warm, so it's important to stay hydrated. Hope to go for another nice walk tonight. The one I took Wednesday night was very nice. No *major* exercise yesterday, but I did make a few active choices (like parking far away from my destination, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, etc.), so I'm pleased about that.

And now that I've started a plan (see this post for the nitty-gritty, if you're interested) to "earn" cocktails by banking exercise, I think I might be really back on track to have a nice weigh-in next week, which will be wonderful.

:D

Hope you have a lovely weekend and know that I'm thinking of you, hoping things are going just GREAT! :cool:

Have you tried just making drinking part of your night where anything is allowed, and really trying to stick to that?

I read the post in your link, and the ones that followed. I would never say (without knowing a lot more details!) that you were sabotaging your life with drinking. But you could be sabotaging (or just not doing any favors for) your weight loss. If you made it a "treat" as opposed to a regular thing, maybe it would help. Of course, if it's enough to motivate you to exercise in "exchange" for a drink, then that's great.

Let me know how it's working.

Outside of this one week in particular, I have been very good about keeping my drinking to one or two nights per week, and that seems to have been okay (and yes, I always work it into my calories, so I'll not have snacks on the day I'm going to have drinks instead, etc.).

So, in general, YES. In that one particular week, NO. ;) Obviously. ;)

Cool. :carrot: So far, so good... as they say.

The tips shared in that thread have been very helpful for me thus far and that's awesome. :D

I agree about it being more of a treat, and now that I've become aware that I can have a week like the one I've just experienced and really cause a shift in the wrong direction with my weight, I'm very hopeful that I'll be back on track for it being exactly that--more of a treat!

We'll see!

Definitely, I'll keep you posted!

How are things going for you, this weekend? GREAT I hope!!!!!!!! :cool:

So far, so good this weekend. I really accomplished some things around the apartment...some big clean-up projects that really needed doing. I worked out a bit this morning, I've stayed on plan despite really feeling like binge-ing here and there, AND the scale finally moved a bit!!

Not sure what I'm going to do today. I still have some cleaning to do, but I hope to work in something fun too.

How you doin', Carrie?

Just checkin' in.

Having a great week so far! :carrot:

Flipped my drink days and only had two. Same as my "off plan" days, and all calories were accounted for, plus added in exercise to make up for the lack of nutrients in those calories (vs. "real food" choices).

Weigh-in is tomorrow, but I'm premenstrual, so I'm expecting a "same as last week" number. That's standard, for me, then followed by the week after being a much bigger dip. :D

Good to know the pattern/timing of it all and brace myself accordingly. ;)

How you doin'?

Hi Carrie!

How you doin'? Great I hope. :D

My last weigh-in was awesome and I'm pumped!!! Yay!

Hope you're having a great run!

I'm doing a different home delivery plan (Pure Foods Fresh Start -- 28.5 pounds so far! Hooray!), but I just wanted to weigh in here and say -- WOW, GRACE, you're so close to ONEDERLAND!!!! I'm so excited for you! Way go go! :carrot:

Lauren, I am GIDDY thinking about hitting Onederland!!! :carrot:

When I did my weigh-in today, I nearly cried. I'm down over 20 pounds now (actually, over 35, if you count the 15 pounds I lost before going on BistroMD) and so close to Onederland I can taste it! :D

I am very excited to be there!! SOON!!!!!!!!! :D

Thanks for saying hello and congrats on your awesome weight loss! PurFoods looked great to me so I'm so glad to know it's working so well for you! Nearly 30 pounds!! Awesome! :)

Yay you! Yay me! Yay all of us! ;)