I hear you both, which is my motivation to keep going here. I wish I could have tackled this when I was at your weight, JoAnn, but I just kept going up and up and up....well you get the picture. It was so hard for me to start and now...it seems very easy to continue.

PS I think WW pasta is pretty tasty. I'll bet your kiddies would make the transition just fine if you mixed for awhile, then just made the switch. When I make a casserole I just make a corner that is SB friendly and put all the non SB ingredients in the rest. It works just fine.

My success in losing has not been that great BUT my blood sugar levels have stabilized and my blood pressure is excellent. My doc is picky and he's even happy about it. This plan works!

Whole wheat pasta is wonderful once you are on phase 2. I make it quite often. I choose recipes where you mix vegetables into the pasta (asparagus or broccoli or other ones) and then I add extra veggies into my portion so that I am eating more veggies and less pasta. When I make lasagna (Target sells no bake whole wheat lasagne noodles that are wonderful), I make a portion of it that is spinach and zucchini only and then part that might be all meat and part that is a mixture depending on who I am feeding. I use very lean ground beef so the meat is healthy anyway.

Try the Taco Bake recipe that is on the recipe forum. It is wonderful and perfectly on plan. I quite often mix low fat refried black beans and Rotel and heat it and serve it on whole wheat tortillas with just a bit of cheese for my 12 year old and I. Tonight I have chicken tortilla soup in the crockpot. It will be topped with some 2% cheese and I have some tortilla chips my son will add to his. As far as rice, Uncle Ben's converted is on plan so I use that when I use rice.

Whoops sorry it took me so long to reply!

I wasn't a sugar addict- I was more of a carb addict (still am- I don't crave as much but the smell of bread is the most WONDERFUL THING EVER!).

I definitely would stay away from sugar if that is a weakness- good luck!