You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.
Edwin Louis Cole

Sorry, gang--

TOM, vacation, and a root canal led to too much pizza and chocolate. I posted a .5 pound gain this week.

Next week will be better.

Hey black team!! Just checking in for the weekend. We are leaving out of town this morning, but I have already got in my workout for the day and had a great walk last night. My goal is to stay OP this weekend so I can see a good loss on Wednesday, otherwise I am changing my weigh ins to Monday maybe that will help my weekends!

Have a HAPPY MOTHERS DAY tomorrow ladies!

See you on Monday!

Purplefirefly: you made it to the beach, yay! That's a lot of exercise minutes. I didn't do make it this week, and I decided not to get into that challenge until I have the time to dedicate to it...it's just a little demoralizing when there is no possible way to make it there.

I weighed in today and lost 1.9 lbs from last week. It's less than last week but still within a healthy amount of weight to lose per week, so I am very happy. I am well on my way to my goal of losing 20lbs on the challenge. Now to stay consistent! As I said, we are going up to my m-i-ls today and she is probably going to cook us lunch or we will go out for lunch. No way to control it if she makes lunch but if we go out, I can atleast make the best possible choice. I'm not going to stress about it though because I've been averaging 1750 cals and my limit is 1800. I am not going to go hog wild or anything, but I am not going to beat myself up if I eat what she makes. She usually makes fairly healthy things, though.

I will try to get on later tonight, but if not, have a great day!

Hey all,

Just stopping by to say hi. Going to be a busy weekend for me. I'm going on vacation in a week and for all the work that has to be done just to get ready to go away I sometimes wonder if it's worth it. In any event I will get alot of movement in this weekend which hopefully will help with weigh in and challenge minutes.

I am starting to think that you should never weigh in on a rainy day, seems like the body absorbs the extra moisture in the air

Have a good weekend and Happy Mother's Day to you moms out there.

Stopping in to say HEY! I have one more final to go ... it's due in by 10 PM tonight... it's in History... it's open book... I should do fairly well on it.

After that - I'll be done with school until the fall. I'd love to do summer classes, but apparently because I dropped a couple of classes to be sure that financial aid would cover all my classes... it put me in a different " student status" so I owe the school money and can't enroll in anymore classes until that is paid off. Funny thing is, for the next year, I have over $14,000 in financial aid available to me...whereas for this semester I only had $2,000. But I don't have access to any of that $ until I pay the school off. FRUSTRATION!!! (it's over $500 that I owe them..ugh)

anyway - I'm off to study and get started on the final.

Hope you all have a great day!!!

HI ALL BLACK TEAM MEMBERS
Another rainy cold saturday, I'm never going to get my garden in. The tradition of the 3 Frozen Kings says it should warm up on the 15th so I'm waiting for that, we had to get more lp and run the furnace today, can you believe it.
For those who were interested, the mushrooms I hunt are Morels, they are pretty distinctive and grow in the woods in the early spring if we have warm weather. I'm not finding many, but it is a good excuse to go walking in the woods and see all the wildflowers and just have fun.
Mother's Day Plans are going to a local Chinese restaurant good food and lots of veges included. I'll probibly eat shrimp with deluxe veges, steamed rice, egg drop soup, and yes a crab ragoon. Not the worse meal.
Hope everyone has a great weekend and agood week.

It's great to read everyone's posts. Happy Mother's Day weekend. Have a wonderful time, whatever you're doing. I'm looking forward to going to a concert my husband is singing in tonight and our 2 sons will be joining us. Then we're going to go out to eat afterwards...after I finish here, I'm going to see if I can find the menu to the place we'll be going so I can figure out what will work for me foodwise. It will be a lot of fun, we'll be going into San Francisco for the concert and dinner. Tomorrow morning my husband flies to LA on business, but my sons and I will be going to the Stanford Pow Wow (we're part Native American - Chickasaw).

I'm almost to the next beach (I just started this week) (hope it's OK I'm borrowing the swim graemlin idea from you, Purplefirefly!!). That beach challenge is really helping me to get in more exercise (which I really needed).

RealCdn (Anne) , thank you again so much...you are a wealth of information. I'm really going to work on the protein intake for sure. What you shared is extremely helpful. I did go to John Berardi's website (or was it a blog) and saw his Precision Nutrition for $79...might be a good investment some day after I have some of the basics down and get my eating to where it's helping me put on muscle mass (in addition to the weight lifting). I was disappointed our library didn't have a copy of "The New Rules of Lifting for Women" to check out, so I may bite the bullet and order that one from Amazon (or some place else if I can find it at a better price). It sounds like you are doing so great with your weight lifting and losing weight!! Congrats to you. Oh yeah, and the Diet Coke. I'm starting to have days where I don't even have one, nor do I even think about it!! So, that's progress. Those days I do have one, it's only one (and a lot of times I don't even finish it.) I hope to make it ZERO (especially since I'm doing very well in avoiding all artificial sweeteners in general.)

I hope all Black Team members have a great 2nd week weigh-in! We can do this!!!

Bette K - I love to hunt for Morels!! It's how I spend every Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day everybody!!

Hi everyone
Just checking in had a great week hope everyone else did also! Have a Happy Mothers Day!!!!!!

Just a very brief HI! I made it to the beach!!!!! I'm too sore to do anything but flop on the sand for the next 24 hours, but I made it! I don't think I have exercised 6 days in a row since about 2004! It feels good (tho my muscles are screaming this week) it feels like "me"...the me I used to be and the me I want to be!

DH went with me today for a 4 mile walk/jog in the park, and while we were walking he asked, "why did you stop exercising?" and "why did you start back then?" I had to think, but I started back then to lose weight, feel better, look good in clothes and "catch a man" (frankly)...So I did that from 2001 to 2004... dating lots, and met my catch (eventual DH) in 2004...and my exercise dwindled down to 3 times a week and then 2 and then 1 and then some weeks not at all. Why DID I stop?? I'm not sure. But I think I need to figure it out and get to the bottom of it! Happiness/laziness for one...but that is not a good reason. I am not happy with myself when I am fat, yet I know what it takes NOT to be fat but I stopped doing it. Ah, the big WHY?

Anyhoo...guess this is what I will contemplate on my day OFF from exercise tomorrow!

Well I made it to the next beach, it's almost getting to the point that there's too many threads to keep up with - what goes where again? But I found it and got it all updated.

Manick - I can relate to what you're saying about stopping the exercise. For me, sometimes life gets frantic at times - either personally or at work and there's a tendency to shove the exercise to the side for lack of time. One of the things someone said here a while back that stuck was that you have to accept it's a change of lifestyle and just as you will always make time to do things like brush your teeth, so you have to do with healthy eating and moving your body. I also had to give up the mentality that it only counted if I did a hard core sweaty 90 minute session. While that's always a good thing, if I'm pressed for time, I revert to grabbing 10 or 15 minutes through out the day. I actually think I work more in that way. The only thing that gets shortchanged when I'm short on time is the fat burning cardio but at least I continue to burn calories and build calorie burning muscle. And some sort of exercise each day is an engrained habit now.

I do agree with everyone that having the challenges does motivate me to push myself further, be a little more mindful of things. And that's worth the time to search for the right thread to post in.

Happy Mother's Day to all!

I didn't make it to the beach but I was closer than I thought I'd be. I wish I would have checked on my progress earlier b/c I think I would have tried harder to fit a workout in yesterday.

Why do we exercise sometimes and then quit for months? I have no idea. I always feel better if I do it, even if my eating is out of control. I even like it, so why do I quit? If I had the answer and knew how to prevent it I guess I'd be rich.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!!!

Well hope eveyones day is going great and that each and everyone of you are getting spoiled like we should be.....

It is suppose to be nice finally today and tomorrow after just having rain again for 2 days

Post my weight today and down .6 pounds so I will take it I see we have quite a few that have already posted and boy do we have some big numbers out there that is
AWESOME!!! I have been walking on TM everyday and I have stayed OP everyday except yesterday and still only lost .6 but like I said that is fine maybe next week will be the big lossssssss.

Well I have my grocery list ready and going to do the Sunday ritual shopping, boy I hate this duty because it keeps getting more and more expensive.

I did find a new way to save some money at my WW meeting yesterday if you are a popcorn lover and maybe most already know this.
You can buy the brown paper sacks (lunch bag size)and
buy your bulk popcorn and put 2 TBSPS in the sack put in microwave for I believe it was 1.5 minutes (just listen and when done popping it is done) and wa la you have microwave popcorn at a huge fraction of the cost of convient store bought microwave popcorn with NO oil. Then you can use your spray on butter and salt.

Tried it and it is great and only 2 points and there is alot there more than I can usually eat.

Well that was my tid bit for the day better go get shopping done so I can enjoy the rest of the day!

Well, this has been an okay week. I believe I am down about 3 pounds. My scale broke, this new one is a little different but I think it will be okay. I had forgotten to record the decimal so I am not exactly sure on the number...I will get used to it!

So, what does it mean to 'make it to the beach'? Do I need to go through all of the posts to figure that one out? I get it that it has something to do with exercise....I have been attending this community boot camp I talked about last week and I really enjoy it - but it is kicking my butt!!! I have been more sore than ever until yesterday but it is a wonderful feeling. I planned on increasing my cardio on my off days but I was so sore that I couldn't/wouldn't even attempt going to the gym!

My calories have also been okay this week ... a day or two where I was a little over but mostly under my daily allowed. Honestly, I was a little dissapointed I only lost three pounds...