Oh, aleka, I am so sorry about your mother-in-law! She along with the rest of your family is in my thoughts and prayers. What a horrible disease it is, so unpredictable. My dearly departed mother-in-law had gall bladder/liver cancer two years ago- she put up such a fight to beat it, but unfortunately, it was too far advanced and too late to help her. I hope your mother-in-law will be ok. Hang in there!

I brought home the pamphlet that has the memberships to the pool and of course, I left it out in the car- too dark out right now to go get it, but I will tomorrow and share the other prices with you.

We got a family pass for $500.00 per year, and they give what they call a "baker's dozen", in other words, you get 13 months instead of 12. Also, if they have to close down the pool for any reason, they add on the amount of days to your account.

You and hubby could get a pass for $400.00 per year. I don't know how old you both are, but my sister is a Senior and had she taken out the pass, she would have been given a senior discount. Also, even though the $400.00 membership is for one person, you are allowed to bring a guest for free, so it would be for the both of you, or if you wanted to bring a friend instead of hubby some day, you could. They are very very nice there! My family loves it there. They said that the mornings have an older crowd that love to exercise in the pool. They also let you get their continental breakfast for $5.00, if you wish, if you have a membership. Because we got a family pass, my sister didn't have to pay anything since she lives with me. We've never gone in the morning, some day, we want to try and see what it's like.

For just the day, it costs $7.00 per person- not sure if there is a senior discount or not, we never thought to ask for my sister. You and hubby should just try it for a day and see what you think.

Helpful hints- they close the pool down at 1 PM to 2:30 PM for cleaning. It's open from the early morning until midnight, except during the cleaning time. You might want to try the morning or after 4:30 PM- a lot of kids have therapy in the pool Mon- Fri- you can still use the pool, but it's very crowded at that time. Sister and I go after 4 PM ourselves and stay for a couple of hours. She loves the hot tub and will talk your ear off if you go in it with her. Also, on the weekends, they do have birthday parties there- call ahead to ask if they are having any and what time. They do allow members and others to still swim in the pool, but it can get pretty rowdy some days during those parties. It's best to go in the AM or after 5 PM on the weekends. Oh, and they let you bring your lunch if you want to eat it in their small cafe which is right as you walk in, next to the registration desk.

We really love the pool, 99.8 percent of the time, it is nice and warm. The hot tub is small, but still awesome, especially if you have back or knee problems- it feels really good before and after working out. I try to work out at least 2 hours, with ten minute spurts in the hot tub, so we're there for two and a half hours every time we go. We grab a coffee on the way out for the ride home, too.

Oh, and the only downside to the membership is that you have to pay it all at once for the 3 months, 6 months, or the entire year. I forget the cost of the 3 and 6 month memberships- for us, this is much more economical as a family. If my sister and I go three times a week for three months, it will have paid for itself. We were paying $42.00 dollars a week for the both of us to go- in twelve weeks time, the membership is paid for, and the 40 weeks left in the year are free! If we kept paying the $7.00 per day per person, we would have ended up paying $2184.00 per year just for the two of us. This way, my whole family gets to go whenever they want. Can't beat that price, lol!

I will share the recipes for OMM and mug cake tomorrow. Time for bed, my eyes are starting to go googley. Thinking of you and your hubby, hope your mom-in-law will be ok. Big hugs to you.

All right, can someone please summarise CAD for me, if you get a chance. The words are going round and round and not making any sense to me.

I'm just curious.

Thank you for your kind words re: my MIL. She is in her 80's and has decided not to do anything about it Other than having difficulty swallowing, she says she feels good.

Last night I watched a movie on Amazon, "Hungry for Change". It's about all the ways the food industry tricks us into eating things and what's really in food that we don't know about. It also talks about the diet industry. It was eye opening.

Pattience, I haven't read the CAD book in a long time, and I think the gist of it is, you eat 2 low-carb meals and a reward meal where you can have whatever you want, but you have to eat it within a certain time frame. I hope I have that right....as I said, it's been a long time since I read the book.

Pattygirl, the book you're thinking of where you eat your reward meal at breakfast is called, Big Breakfast Diet. I have the book and was thinking of doing it because I love eating a big breakfast. After reading it, I figured I'd gain weight rather than lose it and have a hard enough time losing as it is.

Steelslady, thank you so much for all the info about the membership at the pool. It was so helpful and I am a senior. DH & I will have to stop in and pick up a pamphlet. It sounds like a nice place to go. I looked into the YMCA and there was a start up fee for around $30.00 (forget the exact amount) and $36.00 a month. It's the senior price and for only 1 person.

Lilliann, you are doing great with your walking, 90 miles is fantastic! I subscribed to a thread where they picked a destination on a map and charted the miles they either walked or cycled.

Hope everyone has a great day.

Aleka I tried eating the big breakfast too and then eating lowcarb the rest of the day and ended up eating 2 reward meals. So I gave up on it too. However, I do remember my doctor telling me to eat my carby foods earlier in the day, but that didn't work great for me either.

I'm looking into the Dr. Anderson's Simple Diet. I don't want to follow it exactly because I don't think I could do 3 shakes a day, but I sure could do 2 shakes, one balanced meal when DH and I eat our main meal together and then do one healthy tv dinner each day. What I liked about what I read yesterday is that you are required to eat 5 vegetable and fruits along with it each day. So not as unhealthy as you would think. I wouldn't do it long term, but maybe to get a jump start so I can start losing again. I figured I would use the low carb shakes of Atkins and while the diet allows you to eat bars, I can't handle the sugar alcohol so that wouldn't work for me at all.

On the run today... beauty shop and grocery shopping. Hope everyone has a good weekend.

Hello All...

Trish...I see on your ticker 14 Lbs bye bye..wonderful!!

Aleka....A few months back,,I watched Hungry For Change on Netflix..It was a eye opener..Some I already knew from books...but do like watching documentries on stuff like these..I gotten some tips out of it.

I am doing good...My fiber for today is 30 ish...

Hoping all enjoying the weekend..

Thanks for the info Aleka

Lilliann Thanks, I'm actually up a little but haven't changed my ticker. Hoping that The Simple Diet plan will help bring it back down.

Pattience I am so sorry I forgot to answer your question about CAD. Basically it is like Aleka said. It is 2 low carb meals and low carb snacks which are called Complimentary meals and then one meal called Reward Meal where you can have your carbs. Actually during the Reward Meal, you are supposed to visualize your plate divided into thirds and have 1/3 protein, 1/3 low carb vegetable and 1/3 starchy carb and you are to start with a 2 c salad before eating from your plate. You are welcome to go back for seconds as long as you balance the plate 1/3,1/3,1/3 again. That usually kept me from eating seconds because I didn't want more of the protein, lc veggies and higher carb veggie.

When I was doing low carb, I actually would use this RM ratio when I went out to eat. I love eating that way when we went out to eat at Golden Corral. I actually lost 78 lbs eating this way about 10 yrs ago. It was slow as it took me about 3 yrs to lose it., but I didn't really feel like I was dieting at all. Wish I could bring myself to do it again, but it just doesn't work for me any more.


Steelslady I hope you and your daughter are enjoying CAD. I think she will enjoy eating RM when with friends as she prepares for prom and graduation.

My first day on The Simple Diet went well. Scale actually moved down .6 lbs and my FBS was back down to 124 from yesterday's 139. And that was with eating 2 pieces of cheese pizza for lunch yesterday. Today's eating is better and the fiber is good as well. So far so good.

Thanks Patty. I think whatever you decide to do you have to commit to it to make it work and if you can't commit, it won't work.

I worked on my resolve when i started this diet. I mean i spent a lot of mental time doing it telling myself about my resolve, the need for restraint and so on. I really needed to do that since i started off with a one day fast which requires a lot of restraint. And since then i get some tough days and the further i go in , the more committed i am so that when a tough day comes up, i do a bit of work with my resolve and commitment and it gets me through without breaking my rules. I feel i can't afford to break any of my rules because i'm an all or nothing sort of person and have always found that if i cheat a little here and there, it all comes unstuck pretty soon and i can't restart for months or even years.

I don't eat to anyone else's prescribed formula. I find that difficult. But i do pick up tips and strategies from this book and that book which have helped too. And since i started this diet, i have discovered that the main key rule of my diet that i figured out myself is one that people write whole books about. And i find this is key because it keeps me eating good food. And that's my quit sugar (not carbs, just refined sugars) rule. I am starting to believe, just as a theoretical point, if the whole western world gave up refined sugar, we'd all be slim again within a few years. I guess some people would need to quit or at least severely reduce their refined white flour foods too.

The other day i felt a bit challenged by eating dried figs and dates (which i had just brought home for the first time since the start of this diet) because they are so sweet but since i'm so far in to my diet, and my commitment is strong now, i am working with it. I don't want to throw them out because they are so nutritious as well as so delicious but i will if i have to. Anyway a few days in from that now and its going fine.

A couple of other key things in my diet are:
to put fresh fruit and vegetables first. Eat a lot other and vary the choices as much as possible.
one more recent one i had to add was to increase my protein intake. I didn't start out eating too much protein but with my fitness pal i realised i wasn't eating enough and with all that people go on about it on this board, it persuaded me that i should be eating more. Its a bit challenging since i try not to eat meat. For years i've been somewhat off eggs but now i am having to eat them more often. And of course i have to eat more beans and lentils.

Incidentally, i finally found the true recipe for red lentil soup the turkish way. Its even simpler than the last recipe. And i find better. I find this so good, I could eat this virtually every day. Its just red lentils, salt and water. No other vegies or spices. I love this flavour. Getting the consistency right is key and so to is the salt level. If you don't have enough salt it will be bland.

Did i tell you before that beans suck up cholesterol from the blood stream. Until recently i knew that beans were good for lowering cholesterol but i didn't know how. And then in my Don't go Hungry Diet book, i think it was, she explained this. But also i'm reading now that people don't believe that dietary cholesterol is a cause of heart disease. The body makes its own cholesterol and perhaps no one really knows why some bodies make so much more of it than others.

This long post is to make up for the one i wrote and deleted last night i guess. lol.

Patitience Thank you so very much for sharing. I think I needed to hear all of that. You have helped me a lot. I always try to follow the rules of some plan to the letter and then when I can't, I give up or second guess myself. But maybe I need to make my own way to.

Years ago when I did CAD, I pretty much did it my way and it really worked. Then I joined a low carb group where some did CAD, some did Atkins or some other low carb plan. I was doing great losing and one day I got shot down as I posted my food plan for the day and I had yogurt for breakfast. The leader let me know that yogurt was not on any low carb diet she had ever seen and I couldn't eat it. Now low carbers do eat yogurt.

I like the idea of making a plan of my own with my own rules. I've noticed over the years that some of the things I have done even low carbing that we we were told years ago that low carbers can't be included on low carb diets are being done. Eventually someone comes out with another diet book and they do the very thing we were told would derail the whole plan if you did it in the past.

Today, I got up and had an Atkins shake with fruit for breakfast just like I did yesterday. I decided to eat on the way home from church that I would eat a WW frozen dinner instead of my usual breakfast we usually eat every Sunday after church. I did that because I was afraid eating the eggs would make me want eggs tomorrow instead of the shake. I did great yesterday, but I think it is because we had a regular meal. Today was different. I've been hungry all day long. I finally decided to make a tuna salad much earlier than I usually eat dinner and I was still hungry after so I had an extra fruit today. I post everything on MFP so I have the calories, but I ended up drinking my second shake earlier than usual.

Your sharing has caused me to decide to rethink how I'm doing what I'm doing. I remember seeing someone on a CAD thread on another site yrs ago who evidently didn't always want the Complimentary meals. As Steelslady said not many choices of foods can be boring. She didn't care for breakfast so she substituted Atkins drinks for breakfast. Someone quickly told her that she couldn't do that because CAD was not low carb. She left the site. I hope she was smart enough to keep doing it the way she was because it was working for her.

I have a book somewhere that was about people who had dieted and successfully kept their weight off for 3 yrs or more. I remember that they learned how to take whatever diet they liked and did it their way. Some followed their diet to the letter (I guess some people can do that) and others took the basic diet they liked and they worked with it and tweaked it until it fit their lifestyle and the way they could live with the rest of their lives. My doctor told me once that any diet will work. He said the key is that you just have to find the one you can live with the rest of your life.

You have obviously learned how to do that so that you have your own plan that works for you. I am going to do the same thing. Thanks for sharing.

Question on the lentils? Do you soak lentils like you do beans? My Mama made lentils one time but she died and I have no idea how she fixed them. I didn't know that beans lower cholesterol. I've been wanting to add beans to my way of eating. So I'm going to work at adding them too as they are such a good source of fiber.

Hope everyone had a good weekend.

Lilliann, yes, Hungry for Change was an eye opener. I couldn't get over how much sugar we consume compared to the early 1900's. You're really doing great with you fiber.

Pattience, I knew that beans were good for your cholesterol, but never realized they suck it up. That's good to know. I have also read where cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease and that it has more to do with inflammation. I also read that saturated fat is not the villain it's made out to be.

Pattygirl, making a plan with your own rules sounds good. All the rules can become tedious over time and you may start obsessing about food, at least that's what happens to me. Good luck with your plan and since you're making up your own rules, you will be successful.

Steelslady, how is CAD going for you?

Have a great evening.

Hi Aleka,

Its seems to be the low carbers e.g. Gary Taubes, who say that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease. I think the jury is still out but i thought the arguments in his book were worth consideration. A show I saw here on tv against lipitor suggested something similar too. The inflammation thing, i haven't looked into too much yet. But i do read someone on this site always pointing the finger at everything else and never at his own overeating, e.g. that overeating and subsequent overweightness may be the cause of inflammation. He was always putting it down to bread. I am pretty well come round to the notion that fats are ok. But when you take these sorts of new positions into account, we have to still remember that overeating them could well exacerbate problems so we shouldn't really rush in and go oh its alright we can eat as much as we want again. I eat saturated fats but as i'm not a big meat eater, i don't do it in excess. However when i'm in binge mode, i do eat a ton of ice-cream. So i am sure i get lots of saturated fats that way. But now i'm not eating ice-cream anymore so i feel that all my intake of cholesterol and saturated fats, wherever the truth lies are not going to do me much harm.

But i do takeaway the notion that its likely that the low fat dairy trend is wrong. It has just always felt wrong to me so its natural that i am going to want to believe the idea that saturated fats are ok.

I think that anything that ruins natural foods has got to be wrong. But if saturated fats are a problem, then its only because people are overeating them that they are a problem and it seems that all the low fat dairy is not preventing people from getting these terrible diseases, diabetes if not heart disease, so it can't be worth it to my mind.

Still one of the local bank managers had a heart attack recently and he was not overweight or old. But he probably did have a bit of stress. Still it must have been largely hereditary or congenital with him. (It didn't kill him btw).

When i make up my rules to do a diet, they are often fairly strict. But as i've gone along, over the last few years, i've loosened them up a bit, taking into account some of the information that i've learned along the way from reading and my own personal preferences. My earlier diets had much less fats of any kind and now i read that they actually help more.

Right now i'im reading french women don't get fat. I have a bit of experience with the french way of eating and i know her approach is good. So i've just started to make some of my meals a bit more frenchy (i.e. with courses), but i'm currently on the chapter on chocolate and i don't think i'll be going down that road. First, while i love good chocolate, i don't really want to eat it, unless its a super fantastic and expensive truffle but even those i don't crave for and feel i can live without most of the time. She talks a lot about the dark chocolate. Actually its quite an interesting chapter because she talks a bit about its history and how its made. But i don't like most of the dark chocolates that much.

Cream on the other hand, i do like. And last night i had a tsp on my ratatouille (french vegetable stew). I would prefer to avoid cream most of the time and it won't be a regular thing.

I've decided when i'm feeling vulnerable (bingy and bored) is when i have to be most careful and even strict - and load up on vegies and fruit and sardines and stuff like that.

Trish, i'm glad to hear that you found my post helpful. I find that having a fair sense of what good nutrition is, i feel confident about coming up with my own plan. So my diet is based on good nutrition and breaking bad habits. I've done the moderation thing with sweets in the past, i just can't do it. And when i decided some years ago now to quit sweets, i found it so liberating, just making that decision. Of course i've done it a few times and reverted back but each time i feel i've advanced a lot in my thinking about it and my attempts to do it. Which suggests i will probably make more advances in my thinking about it in the future, but hopefully no more backwards steps.

About lentils. Red lentils don't really need soaking but if you can remember to do it, it will reduce the cooking time further too like all the others. All the other lentils and beans need soaking really. It just takes too long to cook them. Also don't add salt until the end and add enough til it tastes right to you. Cooking beans in a pressure cooker also reduces cooking time.

I think if you are going to do a ketagenic diets, you have to try to follow them pretty closely to get the body effects. I mean in order to bypass the usual insulin process and the way the body creates most of its energy from carbs or fats, you have to do what they recommend. But i'm not attracted to those sorts of diet because it sounds so painful and ungastronomic. But definitely learning how to limit carbs would matter to all of us. For me to be able to live on a diet, the food should taste good.

One of the diets i tried to follow pretty closely was the CSIRO total wellbeing diet. Some time later, i heard the women who wrote the diet say that they were sort of a bit disappointed that people were trying to follow their meals plans so strictly and that it wasn't really meant to be followed that way. Rather they were trying to teach people how eat nutritionally balanced meals that tasted good. They had 12 weeks worth of menus and the problem was that their meals were so diverse that people trying to follow the meal plan exactly were racking up huge expense completely unnecessarily. Their meals plans were meant to give people lots of options and to show what was possible. Because it was a high protein diet and i was a vegetarian, i had to alter it . But i was trying to follow the calorie intake the same and in the end that was the main problem for me. It was too restricted and i felt hungry which causes me to fail.


Anyway that's again too much from me. I didn't mean to write so much this second post but there you go.

Pattygirl, I hope you didn't get any severe weather from that storm. I just can't get over the destruction. Hope you're safe. We're getting the northern edge now and it's damp & raw. Are you still doing the Simple Diet? I read the posts on the Simple Diet thread. It sounds like a doable plan.

Pattience, I enjoy reading your posts. They are very informative. I like to read about nutrition, but never retain what I read. My DH tells me I read too much. LOL If you do a search for Weston A. Price Foundation, they have a wealth of information on nutrition. I believe there is an article about saturated fats and fats in general. There may be something there about cholesterol too. I haven't been in their website for a long time.

Steelslady, how are things going with you? Hope you're still going to the pool. DH & I have to take a ride over there and get a pamphlet and see about joining.

Lilliann, I hope you're doing ok.

Have a nice night.

Well, CAD didn't last for my daughter and I. She, too, has low blood sugar like me, she was getting dizzy mid-day- not good, considering she's doing her observation at a dentist's office for her college program. Myself, I was getting sick of all the protein again- low carb just isn't for me. Even though CAD is much more liberal than the other low carb diets out there, apparently too much protein on any low carb plan makes me feel sick. Breaks my heart, as I had wonderful success with CAD in the past (I did the original CAD, not the newer version called CALP, which is balancing your plate with the 1 low carb veggie, 1 carb, and 1 protein with a small salad to start the meal off with). I do recommend it highly for anyone who needs a change in diet or wants to try it- while the weight slows down in terms of loss after the second week, it is a nice plan for folks who love carbs and want to still have them while following a low carb plan the rest of the day.

We are now just counting calories- I know, I know, I said I would never count calories again. I am just trying to help her stay motivated, and she's doing a wonderful job, sticking to every diet we have done so far. She's a very disciplined girl, and I am proud of her. I don't know how much she's lost so far, as she keeps forgetting to weigh herself first thing in the morning. She looks good, though- you can see she's lost some weight in her face, neck, and stomach areas.

Best thing of all, counting calories with her- I get to eat my high fiber foods still (I was thrilled on CAD being able to eat them again!). It is a much much easier diet in terms of cooking and planning than the other two diets, I must say. While I love to cook, Paleo kept me in the kitchen for more time than I ever expected. CAD wasn't too bad, but you did have a bit more cooking on that diet than calorie counting, because of the protein at each meal.

Trish- hope you are ok and no harm came to you and your family during the severe weather!

aleka- Try the pool a couple of times to be sure you enjoy it before taking out a membership. Lots of people love it like we do, but I recommend trying it first, to make sure you and hubby enjoy it first. I'm hoping to go tomorrow. It's been a long week, and I've had to ride my recumbent bike at home to get some exercise in. I used the Tabata Timer website to do 32 minutes of interval training- 30 seconds as fast as I could peddle, then 4 minutes of moderate peddling. I love that timer- it has fight bell to let you know when you start peddling fast, then it dings when you are done. The fight bell cracks me up, lol! They have other sounds you can use instead, but I haven't tried them. My daughter thought it was a riot when she tried it out yesterday.

Pattience- very interesting about Gary Taubes theory. I have heard that elsewhere, too, but not sure where, sorry. While it may not cause heart disease in general (cholesterol), there's no question in my eyes that a diet high in cholesterol that is not monitored closely can indeed, cause problems for the heart. Enough people in my family have had to have surgery because of the damage it did to their vessels. As I always say, one size does not fit all- I've seen people with the most horrific diets be very healthy, and I've seen people who eat healthy and exercise have problems with cholesterol and sugar. Go figure! Look at me, I can't eat low carb foods for too long, it literally makes me sick to my stomach, and is not healthy for me. Yet, many others have great success with it. To each his/her own.

Oh, and I do love Red Lentil soup. I add some ham chunks to ours with some honey at the end of it- delish! I do soak the lentils for an hour before cooking. Otherwise, they remain hard. Still, it tastes so good, especially on a cold winter's night- I love it with a nice Kentucky ham sandwich on Pumpernickel bread, mmmmmmmmm mmmmmmmmm!!!!!

By the way, I absolutely love your posts and enjoy reading every one of them. So informative and well thought out. So glad you joined us in this thread, you have been a wonderful addition to our wonderful high fiber family. I truly love this group here, and I promise I will be around much more now that the stress of not cooking all day is off my shoulders. I miss chatting with all of you ladies. Even when I can only read the posts real fast before I'm off to another errand or chore, it really makes my day reading them all. Please keep the coming, everyone!

I have two daughter's graduating soon- my oldest from her two year college, she's transferring to a four year in the fall to become a teacher. Youngest daughter is graduating high school and we have the prom, senior banquet, two concerts, her graduation, and then her graduation party in late June. Oy, I'm dizzy from all that we have to do in the next few weeks.

Liliann, how are you doing, my friend? Thinking of you and sending you strength. Let us know how you're doing when you have the time. I miss seeing you daily on here, you were always such a warm and fun person, cheering everyone on every day. Hang in there, kiddo.

I forget who recommended the Fiber Gourmet products in this thread- was it sluggo? I just wanted to say, thank you, thank you, thank you! Their pastas are fabulous (the spaghetti is out of stock and has been for over a month, so I haven't been able to try it yet *sigh*), had some Aspargus Lasagna Bianco last week, it was delicious. Chicken Alfredo Bake with Broccoli another night- delightful! Oh, and I bought small packages of their crackers- the cheese ones do taste like Cheez Its! I am dying to try the Nacho flavor- they're out of those, too, gggrrrr. I also bought some regular high fiber crackers that I plan on trying sometime this week. Can't get over how low in calories this food is but the fiber is phenomenal! Tastes great, too! So, whoever recommended the Fiber Gourmet, THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am also using no calorie Shiratake noodles for stir fries- yummy! I rinse the heck out of it before I cook it. Doesn't taste good as a spaghetti or a pasta dish, but it is awesome for stir fries, and zero calories per serving, unless you get the tofu kind, which is 40 calories per bag. Can't beat that!

Have a great day, everyone! Looking forward to seeing my Bruins play in round two tomorrow night! My son was trying to win two tickets to tomorrow night's game- he said to me- "Mom, if I win them, you and I are going, so be ready!" Oh, that sounds like fun! However, every play off game I go to, the Bruins lose. Is it something I said?

Thanks Aleka. Last night i started doing a thread where i'm going to write my weightloss tips and strategies. I have attached a link to it in my sig line. I'll add to it regularly in the beginning and then i'll probably peter out with my ideas.

To tell the truth i have the same problem remembering what i read. But because a lot of what i read is already somewhat familiar when a new idea pops up, i tend to remember that. With my article reading, the ones on the hormones particularly i tried to read them a couple of times and will want to read them again because it was all fairly new information.

I don't really read a lot of diet books. I did get a stack from the library but i think i've only read two from cover to cover. One was far too technical. One was too junky. One needs a lot more time and i'd still quite like to get to the end of it but it might take a few attempts.

Yesterday i had to take my car in for repairs. The mechanics was at one end of town and the library was at the other end of town. I decided to walk there and back instead of getting a lift from the mechanic. I think it was about 35 minutes each way. I've been sitting on my backside so much lately so it was good to do that.

Also yesterday, when it came to dinner and i was gearing up to two or three courses in the french manner [I was going to have red lentil soup, then rice and ratatouille - vegetable stew- and a little side salad, and maybe followed by a piece of fruit if hungry or whatever] to my astonishment the lentil soup was so filling even though i had thinned it a lot, that i had no room or inclination for anything else. The scale is down again this morning. Its funny how motivating that is. I have not been feeling inclined to any restricting but with that little loss, i am thinking maybe just a little more reducing effort is on the cards after all.

I find i like my red lentil soup, thinned because when its thick it has quite a rich taste which i found i get tired of whereas the thin soup is super yummy but you have to get the salt right. If its bland, you have to add more salt. I don't worry about my salt intake at the moment because i don't eat hardly any processed foods and only small quantities of cheese.

I'm thinking its time to start doing a little resistance styles of exercise. And others. So i have started doing squats when i go to the toilet and push my weight against a wall. I have been getting round shouldered in recent years and my father told me that my upper back muscles need work. that made a lot of sense to me. I don't like being round shouldered so i'm doing those push up against a wall as a started. And yesterday i got a book on pilates out because my stomach muscles need some work too. I don't like sit ups though.