Oh, FP! Yes. You speak the truth!

So we'll DO THE WORK, then? I think so.

Meticulous food, challenging workouts....repeat.....and don't slip cause then you pop right back to where you started. Actually I'm feeling really optimistic. I've decided to play with some primal principles again...mainly cause when I overeat, it's grains. I'll stick with yams, beans, dairy though so not truly primal.

I feel like one big salty meal slips me right back to where I started, forget about it if I toss in something like ice cream or a hershey's kiss...

I've made it through the weekend, didn't do too terribly on food, am committed to keep food in line this week and do all the exercise I can do safely. Legs still nicely sore from the race on Sunday, so will take it easy on them.

Bleagh. Had a fabulous weekend, but had only a dinner choice of a hot dog on Sunday. Do people really consider a hot dog, Doritos, and a Coke as a meal??? Salad? Grilled chicken? No. Still up 3# from that this morning (didn't even bother with the scale on Mon). I have a wedding to go to in a month - it's a casual outdoor affair and good grief, I'm wearing a dress. A rather short dress. So ... good behavior going forward.

Heat advisory index in place til late tomorrow night. Wednesday's the pool night (yay!), and tonight will probably involve moving the treadmill from one end of the basement to the other, cleaning it up and lubing the belt ... and then draping laundry over it. (Just kidding!) :P I even finally have a "Treadmill Playlist" on my iPod. Now I have to get busy and establish a new habit.

FatPants - right on re the work. It'd sure be nice if weight would fall off by itself. I never quite understood the phrase "lost the weight." There's nothing "lost" about it - it's always lurking close by and waiting for an opportunity to slither back on.

Indeed, SB! I'm ready to buckle down and do some work. Can't I do that for one week? I surely can.

Check out our perspectives. We are highly successful at maintaining... Maintaining for me looks like: eat meticulously well all week, exercise some, get down to 132. Then comes Fri-Sat-Sun, and on Monday I'm back up to 135. Rinse, repeat. On the one hand I suppose we should be patting ourselves on the back for being so successful at maintaining. On other hand, it's not so great when you really would like to be maintaining about 5-10 lbs lower than your current weight.

And Shannon, that's my experience, too... one discretion does a lot more damage now than it did at my higher weights.

FP - your perspective looks just like mine....

Hey, everyone, is it hot where you are? It's sweltering in NY. Reminds me of preheating my gas oven to 450 before roasting vegetables, and the blast of heat I feel on my face when I open the door & quickly slide the tray inside. This makes me stay inside & I get cabin fever, exactly as I do when I'm waiting out a snowstorm.

These various medications I'm taking have done a number on my gut. Let's just say that I didn't want to be very far from a bathroom for all of yesterday. I cannot possibly weigh more this Friday than I did last Friday, unless the prednisone effect has already kicked in.

As for the @#$%&~! inner ear infection, it continues, though the vertigo has become tidal in its manifestations: Worst in the early morning, almost normal after dinner. But I remain deaf in my left ear & am experiencing life as a half-deaf person. No one can talk to me while standing on my left side & expect to be understood. I miss things people say. I have vowed to be more patient now whenever someone asks me to repeat something when I think I've spoken clearly.

Today I went to the hospital for bloodwork & to have an MRI done of my head. The latter was a deeply weird experience. I breathed like in yoga class, to be still & calm; nevertheless, I felt like someone in a Kubrick movie, in some kind of pod or capsule in a spaceship. The noises of the magnetic resonance traveling all over my skull sounded like a neighbor's house renovation from ****. At other times I felt like a mouse trapped deep inside a grand piano being played by a furious modernist very fond of strident diissonance. But most worrisome to me is that through that whole onslaught, nothing came through my left ear. No sounds, just occasional vibrations.

The good thing is, I've kept up my gym-going. This remains an infallible way to work off tension, and also, to say "hi" to the rest of my body, & celebrate its functionality -- though I'm not on speaking terms with parts of it, that really shouldn't affect my relationship with the rest of it.

As far as doing the work, hmmm, I've had thoughts on this.

For a time when the scale doesn't move much, or tiny losses are continually reversed by tiny gains, I think: "Oh, I'm just not adhering to my routine PERFECTLY ENOUGH." It's life that's the problem, getting in the way of a completely orderly & measured routine. And so I just try to be meticulous & perfectly literal. And hope life cooperates better. And weeks can pass like that. Weeks.

When am I going to learn that it isn't usually that I'm not being meticulous enough about the same old, same old.

Life never really cooperates. Not for long anyway.

More often, I have to consider giving up the same old, same old & really SHAKING THINGS UP. I have to remind myself, if the same old, same old really works so magically well when done perfectly (as it never can be, or not for long), then why am I still dissatisfied.

I need to make more room for change in my life, and not always think change endangers all my hard-won gains.

Hi guys. I am hoping to join your group. I lost 90lbs (225 to 135) but got off track after only a few months in maintenance. I am back up to 145 but determined to turn things around. Today is my first day back on plan. I am going back into losing mode until I get below 140 again. I'm shooting for 1200 calories a day and doing the c25k program alternating with Leslie Sansone's walking DVD.

I hope you all had a great 4th of July weekend. My parents visited me and we took the kids to Topsail beach in NC. We had the best time ever!

And mine!

Welcome K!

Can I join at this late date? I met my New Year's Resolution goal of weighing 168. Now I'd like to set another goal to lose five more pounds, that would put me on the upper end of the healthy weight range.

I'm in! Having lots of trouble biking in this triple digit weather, so I'll be going to the gym, or biking as the sun is going down.

Good luck to all!

K and Mahalia!



I did very well when I was away, planned out the food, was fairly hardline at my friends (they know what I can be like) but my iron will collapsed rather tonight. This usually seems to happen, however ready for it I am. I think it's a combo of tiredness, need to shop for fruit and veg which takes up time, and probably a hefty dose of that resentment I mentioned a while ago. Not enough time, too many balls in the air.

Tomorrow is another day.

Trudging onward - have had too many of those episodes of standing in the pantry or in front of the open refrigerator, just "looking, looking, looking." I went back and reread some of the Goal threads from our marvelous maintainers, and it brightened the day tremendously. So I cleared out the LoseIt history and started anew. 1471 calorie avg per day, write it THEN bite it.

Trudging here too, Becky. Drizzly weather (we have lit the fire), end of term, lots of demands on my time. Food is not the solution.

Think I'm going to check in every day.

Weigh-in this morning. I'm actually down 4.5 pounds since last week. All these meds caused havoc in my gut a couple days ago & I suspect that's why.

If it holds, just two pounds to go, to make my ticker honest, or six to go, to equal the lowest weight that I attained last summer. (This reminds me horribly of the famous quote in "The Devil Wears Prada": "I'm just one stomach flu away from my goal weight.")

Today I learned I don't have any tumors growing inside my skull & contributing to my inner-ear problems & the deafness in my left ear. That's what the MRI said, anyway. I have a normally aging brain. (I'm not sure I like hearing that, really, but hey, it's better than a tumor.) So now I've been referred to another specialist, this one near Montefiore Hospital. I can't get in to see him for two weeks but I'll keep checking for a cancellation.

I have some shaky moments in the gym occasionally from the vertigo, usually from rising or sitting. But I had an unusual one in Pilates the other day. We did a manuever that resembled the side blank. I shook & shook & kept falling over. I just do not have the balance to do this (sadly, I did two months ago) because of the inner-ear problem & the instructor had to come over & steady me. I felt like launching into an explanation right there in class with everyone on the mats around me listening in, but I didn't. It's weird to now have a disability which was not there so very recently.

Keep trudging everyone. Keep shouldering those backpacks we all have.

ICUWishing, your "looking, looking, looking" reminds me of a very resonant post by RockinRobin back a few months ago. I've never forgotten it, because it finally described a feeling that I know really well. For me, it's a feeling of needing something, of trying to nurture myself & to give myself something, but it's scarily compulsive & it's all blurry & not well-thought-out, and I don't know what it is that I feel or need, or if I do, it's something so enormous that a mouthful of food cannot take care of it. I tell myself: "Stop looking. It's not there." But then I practically have to strap myself down to keep from doing it again.