exhale, You should try Rachel Ray's Sausage Lentil Soup. It was very, very good and my first time cooking lentils from scratch. I used cooked ground turkey instead of sausage. It made a lot though, so the next time I will make half of the recipe.

Today I am making black eyed peas from a recipe on skinnytaste.com . I don't have ham, but used the rest of a container of chicken broth I had in the fridge plus water. In reading the comments I opted to use a can of rotel tomato with chili. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Hey Philly, thanks for the suggestion. I have lentils waiting on the shelf for this

Ak, take 'before' pics of yourself because you will lose way more in fat inches than pounds. Stay away from the scale for a while. Good luck!

I still feel a little off today, I think by tomorrow I am ready to start back. At least I have been really good with food since I still have almost no appetite. :/

Have a nice night, all.

O.M.G.....I am working on no sleep!! I could not get to sleep last night and was up all night. I am not exaggerating...no cat nap, dozing off, nada! Since I couldn't sleep I decided to start my day early and got to work at 7:15am. I fear that It's going to be a long day.

I apologize in advance for any babbling that may be written today in an effort to stay awake.

Happy Hump Day, everyone!

Teacher Appreciation Week treats continue to tempt me over here! Yesterday I ate 1/2 a blueberry muffin, 1/2 a carrot raisin muffin & a brownie against my better judgement. The bf had a good idea, though - he said if there is a treat at school I really want, I should bring it home for later, where I can be more rational about whether or not I actually want it/can fit it into my daily nutritional goals. I'll try this today & hopefully won't have to deal with the guilt I've been feeling the past couple of days!

Other than the temptations this week's been going pretty well. I'm preparing for my trip to L.A. this weekend and am REALLY looking forward to it. Haven't been there in almost a year and am very excited to see my cousin and college friends. Also looking forward to a break from this dreary Seattle weather!

Philly - I read your blog pretty regularly! I love all the pics you post and the new food finds. I really want to try those Moist Molasses Bran Muffins you posted about a while back - they look so yummy & a very reasonable calorie count. I can't believe you didn't sleep at ALL last night. Hope that you can get through work and get home for a nice nap and/or a very early bedtime tonight.

Exhale - Thanks for the encouragement! The treats at work are certainly tempting & I'm giving in, but less than I would have before this journey. I think that's all I can ask for at this point. If you make that lentil soup let me know how it is!! Have a wonderful day.

novangel - I keep forgetting to take some before pics of myself! I know that there are just general photos at events & stuff on FB that will show me a change but no actual 'body' pics. Will have to do that tonight after work! I hope you start feeling 100% very soon ... it's a bummer that a virus like that can throw off your whole system for what feels like forever. Sending good, healing thoughts your way!

Have a great day, all!

Well, my suspicions turned out to be correct. I figured I picked up this demon virus at the school play last Thursday; got a note home today from school that there's an outbreak of Gastroenteritis, possible Norovirus prevalent in the 3rd grade class. Thanks kids! It's been a fun week, really. :/

Anyway, my stomach still feels yucky and I slept a lot today. I am hoping today is the last day of this, I really want to get back to Jillian before I get too out of shape. If I can't manage tonight then hopefully tomorrow it is. I just want to feel 100% again.

Morning all!
Another beautiful grey day, lots of great 'London' mist, sun clouded over mold !

Novangel, Ugh, so sorry that nasty bug is still hanging on. Instead of fretting about getting back to Jill 100%, can you do a couple of crunches/push-ups and call it a day until you're back to your original vigor? Maybe some nice stretching or meditation to keep happy. Wanted to ask you - is that a seal in the lower corner of your avatar?

Philly, hope you got some good sleep last night!

ak, good luck with the Teacher 'sweets'. I bought a bag of Hershey's miniatures (SGS) and after thinking they were SWEET, I figured out that each has about 4 grams of sugar = 1 tsp! And you know I don't stop at one. So by the time it's over, there may be a couple of tablespoons of sugar ingested.not healthy at all!

Angelsmom - Hi! How's it going?

Have a great day. Happy Thursday...almost there

lol Yeah, that's a happy seal photo bombing the penguins.

Alright, virus is done. I slept 4 million hours and I believe it's run it's course. I have some shopping to do today and then it's back to Jillian. I see some of you have slid off the wagon a bit with exercise during my departure with death so um.. Let's go, ladies! Back on the sweat wagon!

Gabi....the sweat wagon made me literally laugh out loud when I just read it at work. Bummer about the nasty germs, but aren't they sending notices out a bit late? Glad you are almost over it.

ak, kudos to your sweetie for trying to help you come to your senses. Awwe, I'm glad you read my blog. I even gave some of the molasses muffins to my aunt and she loved them too. It still boggles my mind that the dunkin donuts, supermarket, bakery sizes are at minimum 3 times (500+) the calorie count of the regular size muffin tins that I have.

exhale, ummm, I will confess and say that I just ate a grilled sticky bun with nuts from the amish market. It doesn't help that its across the street from my office building. I just wanted something gooey, yummy and decadent. Turned out it wasn't all that great though.

angelsmom, what up lady?

I was listening to Jillian's podcast where a caller with the last 10lbs asked her opinion of what to do. Well the caller brought up Body Revolution and Jill told her that program is for greater weight loss. She suggested Ripped in 30 for her. It appears she really did have those with lots of weight to lose when she designed Body Revolution. It makes it hard to believe because of the crazy body positions that people with bellies and extra fat really can't get into. Knowing that the program was indeed designed for the amount I want to lose it makes me mad at myself that I abandoned it.

Hey - Anyone here remember me?

I was pretty active here for a while but had a huge flare up with some health issues and stopped frequenting the forums. I'm ready to try to get back in the swing of things, (but I'll need to be much more careful how hard I push, I'm so sick of crashing...). Is there still room for me here?

Bunneh

Since notices just went home Wednesday I'm assuming I'm one of lucky first few that fell victim to the child spawned germ warfare... Yay, me.

WB Bunneh!!

BUNNEH!!! Welcome back I'm so sorry about your flare up and health issues. You are in a better place now. Just take it easy.

So yeah...Jillian level 1 accomplished after not exercising for a week. My work is done for the day. See everyone tomorrow night.