Hi there everyone,

Allison -- that stinks about getting robbed! I'm so sorry to hear it, and I wish you luck on dealing with all the red tape of insurance claims. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember reading one of your posts from a month or two ago where your business had been broken into -- if that's the case, what rotten luck!!

Barbara -- How exciting that you have baby finches! They are such gorgeous birds. We get quite a few every year (golden and house finches, which are the reddish ones), but I have never had babies. BTW, I don't know how you lose weight going to conferences... I have such a hard time sticking to my plan when I'm out of control of preparing my food (measuring, etc.). I also have a VERY hard time saying no to tempting food -- buffets, desserts, etc. More power to you!

I believe I mentioned last week that I was going to the beach (that was my first post on featherweights). Well, like Liz, I ate lots of beachy foods and only loosely stuck to my plan. Today will be the first day since last Wednesday that I'm entering anything on fitday! Man, the seafood and cocktails were so yummy ... it was a nice treat and break, but it's definitely back to reality. I had a good healthy day of eating and am having a big salad with grilled chicken for dinner. Also did an hour at the gym (weights and cardio), so I'm getting back on track.

Michelin - I'm 100% in agreement with Doughnut about calories in and calories out. I think if you stay in your range, you can lose weight even if you're having some of your calories at 2am. I'm like you, though with late night snacking. It's a trigger time for me to overeat, so I really have to consciously limit my night eating, or things can get ugly! My husband and I have been eating dinner quite late the last few months, and actually that is helping me. When I eat dinner too early , I get terribly hungry later. Eat later, feel full, go to bed. It works for me... most of the time anyway. Also, you mentioned sweetened drinks... are these with alcohol or just juice or soda? If so, can you sub diet soda or Crystal Light in place of sweetened drinks?

Alright gals... it's time to enter fitday and do a few chores. I have papers to grade tonight!

P.S. To Midearth -- What's AF??

michelinwoman, I don't think it matters when you eat. I agree with Doughnut--calories in, calories out. My meals get progressively larger as the day goes on, with my dinner being the largest. I also save calories so that I can have two midafternoon snacks because I know the time between lunch and dinner is the hardest to get through. But I definitely recommend giving up sweetened drinks. I never drink beverages with calories (unless they also have alcohol). It frees up so many calories.

walking2lose, I definitely don't lose any weight while I'm at conferences. My goal is to just maintain and most of the time it's a miracle if I can do that. Even if I bring energy bars and fruit for breakfast, avoid all the breakfast pastries, skip the afternoon cookies, skip dessert with lunch and dinner, and limit my alcohol...I still have to eat lunch and dinner and often there are limited choices. So I try to exercise every day, make the best choices I can, and hope I don't gain too much. Then I get back on plan when I get home (cross my fingers, thank goodness for SusanB's 21 day challenge--with that I'm sure I can get back on plan). Luckily I have only a few conferences per year.

Mamajones, wow, freshly caught grilled blue crabs sound awesome! You have to make exceptions to your diet for rare treats like that. And the good news is the grilled crabs are pretty low in calories.

Sorry about the break-in, alinnell. That's really a bummer and you must be feeling pretty frustrated about it. And what would someone do with $10,000 of extruded aluminum anyway (heck, I don't even know what extruded aluminum is).

I hope you are feeling better Doughnut; that headache sounds really miserable.

Hey, a time for some education!!! Extruded aluminum is used as fenestration. Fenestration is the framework for windows. We own a glass company and this aluminum had been custom ordered (special enameling process to color it to match the client's house). It was to build a huge sliding glass door.

Since this 3rd break-in, we've contacted a fencing company to give us an estimate for installing razor wire around our yard (where the break-in occurred).

Oh, and what do they do with $10,000 of custom aluminum? They sell it for about 25 to 50 cents a pound (about 250 pounds) so they can buy drugs. Tweakers, the cops called them. Meth addicts (we have a lot around here). If we could have found the salvage yard that got it (I called 2 dozen of them) we would have gladly paid the for the material to get it back. It would be so much easier, cheaper and more timely to go and repay a couple hundred dollars to get back the thousands of dollars worth of material.

Can you tell I'm more than a little bummed about this?

That would be what you had Allison. And I guess the people who did the break-in get away with it?

I think, if you smell the glass(es?) of wine for awhile tonite before you drink them, that would qualify as aromatherapy.

Hope all goes smoothly with the insurance claim and that your client doesn't get on your case. My DH works for a contractor and some clients can be quite unreasonable if their job is delayed.

Dagmar

Hey girls, back from a nice vacation in Chicago the Windy City!! And boy is it windy!!! DH and I went to Chicago we left last wednesday and came back last night... We had a great time, we at more than usual but we walked sooooo much that I'm sure the scale hasn't gone up that much, I hope

Sorry to hear about the break-in Allison Such a PITA to get things together after something like that...

Michelin what works for me is to eat every 2-4 hours, a portion of carb and a protein, 5-6 meals/day... Since I've been eating this way I never get ravenous and eat everything in sight... We are an experiment of one, so experiment and do what works for you...

I'm back on track today, ran to and from the gym, did back and bis, and biked 19k tonight, in the wind, again!

Hi Allison, sorry about the break in. Your break in made me think about something that happened at a company I worked for many, many, many years ago. I worked for a poured concrete wall company. For those of you that don't know what that is, it is a company that builds your foundation or basement to your house. Well in order to build a basement, you had to have panels made of aluminum to form the basement and then pour concrete in them. Well our small company decided to take inventory of the "Aluminum Panels" and there were a lot missing. We called around scrap yards, as you did Allison, and we actually found that one of our top guys had loaded up a truck on a couple of Saturdays and took a lot of the panels to the scrap yard. He was married and had 2 young children and did I mention a cocaine habit that no one knew about? It was pretty bad and cost the company (or should I say the insurance) a lot of money. I don't know your guys . . . but something to think about.

Anyway, hope everything works out

hi everyone, hopefully I can be more active in 3FC this week -- have been quite busy the past few weeks, and as noted before, been working on regularizing my sleep schedule -- so I maintained over the last few weeks rather than working on loss - but now I'm ready to get back on slimming those last pounds!

This week I'm going to look into buying some new running shoes (my current pairs is an appalling 4 years -and gosh knows how many miles- old). I may even spring a little extra to get ones that fit really well.

For some reason my hamstrings feel pulled today, so gonna go easy on the lower body exercises for the next few days and more time on stretches.

Hope everyone else is doing well

140 lbs.

Good Morning!
Hooray for Mudpie! Now inch it down to even 139.7 ... it'll feel sooo good to get rid of the 4 altogether!

Thanks for the advice everyone. As for the sweet drinks, I try to substitute crystal light or unsweet tea. I have never been a big fan of diet soda (I think it tastes too DIET--except for Diet Dr. Pepper, which I can handle). My problem is sweet tea (yes, I live in the South).

I ate raisin bran for breakfast yesterday, slimfast for lunch, V8 for a snack and was able to stay pretty well on track with a grilled ckn pita (just a few fries) for dinner. There were 2 glasses of sweet tea involved throughout the day also

Allison: Sorry to hear about the break in. Go breathe in the Gardenia candle--or maybe the wine suggestion would work better I love scented candles, but have to be careful not to get vanilla or the kind that smells like frosting (it just makes me crave a treat all day!) My DH is a plumbing contractor...hope your customers understand the situation and doesn't make matters worse.

Barbara: I love finches. I had 2 canaries a few years ago, but had to get rid of them when I moved. My daughter has a Cockatiel now (he is really comical!) named Fred. She made the cutest pic of him --I'll include it in this post. It always makes me laugh!

Mudpie: CONGRATS....you have the same mini-goal as me. I would LOVE to see 140 again! SusanB is right...those .3 lbs would make a big mental difference

Sorry, that little picture didn't do it justice. Here's a bigger, brighter one....

Good morning everyone! Today will be a much better day than yesterday (work-wise!). Actually, with all the stress going on, I had little to no appetite and it shows! I'm back to 141--only 1 pound to ticker weight. I think having my berries in the morning is what does it for me--they're filling and satisfying and I feel more in control when I start with something that I know is good for me. I actually didn't open a bottle of wine last night (yay for me!!) but did have a martini (but just one).

Dagmar congratulations!!!! Wowie! 140!!!

Ilene glad you didn't get blown away!

Abby I really don't think that any of our guys were involved in this break-in. We treat our guys well and pay them well and they look up to us, so I just can't think it could be any of them, but I guess it's always a possibility.

Warlock welcome back! You HAVE been absent a lot lately!

Micheline I like my tea also, but handle the sweet stuff any longer. I did like it when I was younger. Now I prefer it plain or with a little lemon (much fewer calories that way, too!).

Well, I guess I ought to get some work done. Leaving work early due to DS and I have dentist appointments this afternoon.

Have a great day everyone!!!

instead of the usual gazelle this morning after doing my leg workout i strapped the little ones in the jogging stroller and headed to the grocerie store to get fruit and milk we also had stop at the dollar store 9I think I like this store as much as the kids if not more lol) So I killed 2 birds with one stone instead of taking the bus I used this nice weather as a chance to get out.

I got hollored at today from a passing car....man i feel like a teenager again...lol

Allison - yea, hopefully I have more time to be active on 3FC again and catching up on old threads and bummers about the break-in

Pulled a hamstring yesterday (was doing buttock lifts with 8 pound dumbbells when I found out) - eek! Thankfully after a few stretches it got better and I was able to finish my lower body exercises.

One thing I feel good about this week is that one of my networking meetings turned from a caloring raising (drinks / snacks / meal) into a calorie burning affair. Instead of chatting over a cocktail or some fatty finger foods, we are going to go hiking at a canyon in the morning. Woohoo!