It has been 1 year since my weight loss started and 8 months since I reached goal.Since it was Halloween,I celebrated with a small pack of cheezies(150 cal).My daily total was still around 1700 cal.I seem to be able to maintain by not snacking.That way I can eat 3 fairly large meals and still be in my calorie budget.Timing my meals and eating low carb seems to be successful for me.I find I am not as ravenous as I was when I snacked constantly on carby snacks.I seem to be able to wait till my next meal and if I feel like eating I drink water.So far so good.Everyone has to find their own way.

Michelle, that does sound like a good plan and one that I could likely adhere to - albeit with more advance work and planning than I'm doing currently, so that I am prepared with enough appropriate food when a 14-hour workday transpires. I think what I'm not pleased about is how anti-social it feels to prepare a separate dinner from my husband. Granted, we're only recently married so that probably has a lot to do with it feeling wrong. I just can't help feeling guilty since he's happy to eat anything I make but I am so reluctant to eat the high-calorie meals he prepares. And what I make is usually not filling enough for him and he has to make a bunch of toast afterward. I have a "bad-wife" complex - how non-liberated of me!!!

JZJ, just keep in mind that marriage does not make you cojoined twins...

Michele, can I ask if this carb-cycling plan is written down someplace with specifics (like a website or a book)? If not, can you provide some more details, like how many grams of carbs count as a low-carb day vs.a high (normal?) carb day, and what total daily calorie count you aim for? Are low carb days also low calorie days (aka, calorie zig-zagging), or do you keep calorie count the same every day?

JZJ, I have your dilemma every day because I have 3 kids to feed. Of course, they're also picky (about different foods; yay) so I ALWAYS make multiple foods - that's just a normal dinner. In this way, I will eat the broccoli and chicken with a 1/2 c. of brown rice, while the kids eat token amounts of broccoli, the nonvegetarians eat some chicken, and there is mac-n-cheese for all 3 to eat instead of (or in addition to) the brown rice. This makes for leftovers, but so what? Makes lunch for DH the next day easier (or the next night's extra calories at dinner). You're sort of eating together, and sort of not. JUST DON'T EAT THE MAC-N-CHEESE :>)

I am fortunate in that DH will eat anything I cook. He not a fan of any type of squash but that's pretty much it as far as food he doesn't want to eat. If it's something new and doesn't turn out he can and does offer constructive criticism about how to make it better next time. His thing is eating late in the day. He would prefer dinner be at 8 p.m. I am starving from the time I step in the door at around 4 p.m. I have found a snack of cheese or other protein (shared with the pets) plus mint tea while I'm making the food tides me over quite well.

We have compromised at 6 p.m. as dinner time. If he's hungry later he makes himself something or has another helping of dinner cold.

Where we fall down is that if one of us suggest beer or chips or ice cream after dinner the other usually says yes. DH is very willing to go to the store to get it too. That is what we have to stop in order to lose weight/maintain healthier weights.

Time to cook dinner.

Dagmar

JayZeeJay~when DH and I were first married I'd fix a good meal and within a couple of hours DH was making two PB&J sandwiches for "dessert." Thankfully I didn't give into that! I'd maybe have a bite of one and be satisfied. He was working a very labor intensive job and needed the calories (and he was a guy). These days he's very happy with a salad for dinner (thankfully!!).

And I am happy that the kids are out of the house (for the most part). I do tend to cook to please my son more than anything and that's not good. He's 6' tall and maybe 135 pounds so I make things to "put a little meat on his bones." Not good for me obviously.

Jayzeejay... My thoughts are you can make a lean protein and veggies for you. Then add starch for him, like pasta, rice or a baked potato.

Carb cycling is pretty easy to follow so far. It requires some planning and prep work but then the meals are done and it's easy. It is the program that Chris Powell uses with his clients on extreme weigh loss. I bought his book: choose to lose: the 7 day carb cycle solution. He also has a website which explains the program: chrispowell.com

Ha! If life was like the Harry Potter books, I would have a fork that screamed that at me every time I picked it up.

Thanks for the good advice, all. Dinner is such a minor issue in the grand scheme of things but it still makes me feel guilty, with the added issue of being vegetarian and never cooking meat of any sort for my omnivore DH. I need to step out of the box I was raised in, where sit-down family dinner was mandatory and consisted of one meal that everyone was required to eat with no substitutions or exceptions.

^This^ Or, at least a much smaller starchy serving. A choice of leftovers also works, with different people choosing different things.

Apo, I tried for years to maintain with the "several small meals a day" approach and never had any luck at it. So far I'm actually having a lot more luck with just one meal a day!

I indulged a bit at the family gathering, and was surprised to see it only climb 0.2 lb from yesterday (to 139.6). Not bad, but hoping to see the numbers head lower again soon.

Ok; I downloaded the Carb Cycling book that Michele is following, and I plan to try it myself, since what I've been doing is not working well. It is, predictably, not just a low/high carb cycle but a low/lower calorie zig-zag as well (the carb restriction is mainly a means to the end of calorie restriction). For women my size and age, he advises eating 1200 cal on low-carb days, and a whopping 1500 cal on high-carb ones, though once a week on a high-carb day you can eat "whatever you want" (with all sorts of caveats thrown in). I think I can do this without suffering greatly, as long as I ignore his injunction to drink a gallon (!!!) of water a day. That's 128 ounces, which IMHO is just insane. But it does remind me to drink more water in general, which I have been admittedly quite lax with, since I hate running to the toilet every hour. With any luck, I too will finally see my goal weight for more than one day every other month.

I'm excited you're going to give it a try, Andrea. I start week two tomorrow. I food prepped today and it took me much less time than last week.

I had my Sunday Funday today by having a small chocolate ice cream with a brownie mixed in for approx 500 calories. I'm excited to see what week two brings.

However, I'm already thinking ahead and worrying a bit. I'm going to see dd in Arizona for this weekend-- I'm leaving Saturday and returning Tuesday. I don't want to go off the rails or drive her crazy with my eating, so I'll try to moderate. However, I won't have time to meal prep Tuesday night so I may make extra meals this week to freeze.

This was a tough weekend because I was hungrier than usual and actually had seconds on Saturday.We had chinese food delivered and I filled my plate twice.Although I only ate 2 meals Saturday my supper was way over budget and the scale told me so.It was up 1 pound to 136.Back to limiting myself.At least I did not eat the candy left over from Halloween.I am taking it to the food bank.Sigh..It is a constant battle.

Apo, I love Chinese food; I would have a tough time limiting myself to one serving. But there's so much sodium in it that the extra weight is probably just water.

Good luck with the carb cycling, Andrea! I hope it works well for you.

I'm thinking of adding two starch-serving-free days, in order to actually nudge the scale downwards. Inspired by the carb-cycling or 5:2, but making it work for me. One day would be Wednesday; the other might vary depending on circumstances.

It got a lot colder the past few days and the crisp weather makes me want to snuggle under a blanket instead of getting outside to walk. Luckily, my dog motivated me to get in gear yesterday before the rain came so I did get some exercise. Today is sunny so I'm going to wait until it warms up a bit before talking the dog for her walk in the woods.

The scale has backed off a little to 138.8. I'd like to have 139.0 be my red line instead of my baseline.

During the month of October I managed to exercise 6 of 7 days each week, stay below 1600 calories per day and lose a couple of pounds. Okay, so it's slow going but it's better to lose than to be stagnant as I have been for the past couple of years.

I bought a little pink notebook over the weekend and I have started writing down everything I eat. I'm not counting calories, just noting what my intake is.

I have a physical at 4 PM today and fully expect my doctor to tell me to lose weight.