Pattygirl, just happened to notice this post and wanted to throw out an idea. I'm not much of a water drinker - even when it's warm out. I agree that when it's colder, the idea of a big cold glass of water just doesn't even sound good!

Something that is almost a guaranteed diuretic for me is green tea. I happen to like the taste and it helps me to keep hydrated.

Most herbal teas will have a diuretic effect for me as well. If you're sensitive to caffiene, try something herbal. I'm partial to peppermint tea and a brand called Good Earth Sweet and Spicy. It's a bit like the old Constant Comment tea.

Evening everyone
Nice to see some new ( to me) faces..
Hope everyone is safe and warm
Trish my best friend had weight loss surgery and for 3 wks she could only drink protein drinks (sugar free ones) 4 times a day,,,before her surgery. She lost 30 pounds in 3 wks ,,,,,,
hi Ficklehearts and Fatmad
Ruth sneaky nurse Darlene
Ok off for the night...

Well, today I am officially elderly. LOL Today is my birthday, and I am 70 years old. I am the only member of my immediate family to live to 70, so I am happy to make it. I'm not doing anything special. It's just special to still be alive. LOL

Vickie, I drink green tea and don't notice that it does anything special for me, but I drink it anyway because of the good things I hear. I don't notice any particular fluid retention. When my weight goes up, it's usually because I ate too much. LOL My rings are going round and round, but the scale isn't going down and down

p.a. I have some when protein but never drink it because I don't feel that I "ate" with a shake and would still want food.

Fickle, I realize that it seems cold where you live when it's colder than normal. I visited FL when I was younger, but don't think I could take the humidity now that I'm older. Maybe I could handle being a Snowbird.

Cindy, hope the snow storm didn't reach you this time!

Carol Sue HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! I'm 72 and don't feel elderly. I've lived 2 years longer than my Mama's oldest sister who was the only sibling that lived to be 70. Their Dad died at 45 and their Mother lived to be 80. My Daddy who is 92, his brother and some of his cousins and an aunt lived to be in their 90s. So I have a good chance of living longer. LOL You have a great day.

Vickie I have been thinking about drinking more green tea. I can't drink a lot of it because of the Metformin that I take as the two together makes the side effects of the Metformin worse.

My day of 2 shakes didn't work. Last night I was hungry after my protein treat. It has never left me hungry when I've used it before.

I joined WW online and then cancelled it. I think you have to do everything with the smart phone and I don't want to do that. Everything is online and too complicated for me. I will stick with what I'm doing. I wasn't impressed.

Edited to say that the cancellation of WW online wouldn't go through until April. So I didn't cancel. I found a video explaining how to use the site so will be doing WW to see how things go.

CarolSue
We got about 4 inches here in Boston, about half of what you got. DH turned 70 recently. Kinda blew my mind. Sorry to hear you're the first family member to reach 70. Take extra good care of yourself.

Fickle
WELCOME! Glad to have you!
Ah yes, the Metformin tummy issues. For me, they lasted about 3 months and then disappeared. So hang in there. I lost ten pounds from it, mostly because my taste buds were affected by it. YMMV.

p.a
Hi honey!

Pattygirl
I don't think it matters what plan we use, as long as it promotes health. It's the boring sticking to it when I'm bored/sad/mad that's the hard part. But every victory makes us stronger!

Hi everyone:

I had a good weekend for exercise, but not so much for eating. Too much eating out and too much birthday partying with a 5 year old. Lilia was fun and I love her, but eating properly is hard when there is cake all the time.
I did hot yoga, x-c skiing and some walking too.
Back to reality and proper diet as of now.

Fickle, welcome to you. The upset tummy on metformin will get better, but will reoccur whenever you increase the dose, but stick to your keto diet and you will be fine. If you can do low carb, you won't do harm and may do good. Its hard to stick to for some, so go for it if you can.

I am enjoying reading everyone's posts, and wish you a happy birthday too, Carol Sue.

have a good week everyone

Happy Birthday Wannabehealthy.

We get a lot of snowbirds here. I'm seeing quite a few new states these days, and of course our Canadian friends. It always amuses me because you instantly tell the Floridian from the snowbird; anything below 65 calls for a sweater and long pants for us Floridians. It was in the 40's on Sat all day and our guests were wearing shorts and flip flops! Well, I do happen to wear sandals all year long though. I can't say anything about their footwear choices LOL.

Pattygirl63 - I hear you on WW's. I do everything on my phone these days, but I really really do not like their new plan or the fact it is so smart phone heavy too. I haven't liked any of their plans since points plus. I get the need to shake things up for new members and money, but points plus worked really well for me and wish they could just leave well enough alone.

And thanks Watercolor and Fatmad for the advice and welcome. Hello p.a.

I increased my metformin dose on Friday and so far haven't had any extra tummy issues. In fact, they seem to be clearing up. Of course, I've been pretty much eating salad, grilled meats, and broccoli. I don't think there is much there to upset :P I'm doing keto, but watching calories too. Time to dust off my recipe book and go back to my yummy low carb meals I was preparing. My fasting BG was 114 on Sunday, which is the lowest it's been in months. So here's hoping the diet and the met will keep the Dr. happy next week.

6 lbs down so far. 13 more to go to get back to pre-Christmas weight which was the 207 (I refuse to change it because I am stubborn). Blah. I guess I have proven it is very much possible to gain 20 lbs in two months LOL I didn't think I ate that badly!

Fatmad I remember when little Lilia was born. You always felt she was yours. I can't believe she is 5 yrs old. How time does fly.

FickleHearts When I married DH he lived in Coconut Creek in So. FL and we lived there for about 3 or 4 years before we moved to S.C. I lived in Central TX before that so I was used to the cold weather we have here. However, once I lived in So. FL and my body became accustomed to the weather there, I have had a difficult time getting use to the cold weather here. Although I am better this year, I still nearly freeze. Just haven't got my thick skin back. LOL

Now that I've figured out how to use the new WW site, I think I'm going to like it. My beautician/friend and I met for coffee at Bojangles this morning. I went WW and checked the pts for their breakfast foods and saw really quick that I was NOT going to eat there. I could have done a lunch there and if I could figure out how to count without the bread I might have had a ham/cheese w/o biscuit, but I couldn't figure it out so I made one here with Canadian bacon w/Sarah Lee Multi-grain bread and spent 6 pts instead 12. I knew DH has been wanting a burger so I made me one on the multigrain bread and had a 2 oz fries and a glass of 0 fat milk all for 12 pts. So much better than eating out. I really don't like a lot of fat and DH is picky about the fat he eats so I believe this being lowfat will work out better for us. He does eat a lot of butter, but I can counter act some of that with lowfat foods.

The fact that I am weighing and measuring will work out better for me. This is the way I ate the first time I was diabetic and got it under control within a couple of weeks. I cooked a whole Thanksgiving Dinner with desserts and all that everybody loved and raved about. Most of them never knew it was mostly a lowfat low sugar foods. DH will like this way of eating better. And I'm still staying relatively low carb while doing this. Probably less than 100 grams a day. I remember telling my doctor that I try to eat healthy foods and he said "Then you probably are eating too much of it and need to learn to eat less of it". I think he is right.

I agree WW is more low carb friendly because of the way it counts the protein in foods. I love how it doesn't count most fruits and veggies. I can actually have the low glycemic fruits. I love grapefruit and will go back to eating it again. I am having a home made turkey/cheese chef salad for dinner tonight. I've walked enough today to earn 3 pts. I think the other thing that is helpful to me that I didn't like about MFP is that I don't see sodium counts in red. Since I drink a lot of water, tea and coffee each day, I don't really think I have to worry about that.

My weight has been the same for 3 days and my FBS was back down. I think I need the fiber in the multigrain foods. I'm thinking that my body is adjusting to the new way of eating and hopefully I will start losing. I noticed with my experiencing with things that my bs seems to do better when I eat them. I plan to have a SBD Phase 2 kind of eating tomorrow and have oat meal for breakfast in the morning.

Ruthie I've been leaning more toward South Beach Diet and realized this morning that WW Smart pts would work great with SBD Phase 2. In fact, I'm thinking of combining them. My problem with SBD was the lowfat part of it, but since the Smart pts works best with lowfat, there is no reason why I can't do SBD and use the WW SP with it for portion control.

Guess I've bent y'all ear long enough.

I forgot to share about the Metformin and tummy problems. I have noticed that since I've cut way back on the fat content that I take in that I am not having the problems any more.

I remembered that I couldn't understand why I had suddenly heaving problems when I had not had problems for years. When everybody started talking about adding CO to their coffee etc and that you need to eat more fat. Well, I began to notice that if I ate a lot of fat that I had the problem, but if I didn't eat much fat that I didn't. Fat is the culprit for me. I just can't handle eating much fat while taking Metformin. I did read info on Metformin the other day and found that it does cause gas. Oh well. LOL

Any way, for future reference if you or someone you know is having tummy/potty problems with Metformin you might check how much fat you are eating.

Trish, the new big thing is the ketogenic diet and 85% fat. My son is on it.

Carolr Good to see you. How are you? I know I see on low carb sites that a lot of people get break their stahls using extremely high fat, but I can't do that. Makes me physically ill. I don't cut out all fat, but I just cannot eat a lot of it either, because my body doesn't like it. Go figure.

hi all: For those who don't want to use the smart phone apps for ww, you can use your laptop or other computer. The advantage of the phone apps is that you can track as you go. But I just do the laptop at the end of the day.
I miss the veggie track and water track from the old tracker and asked them to replace them. For me, it was like counting down. The new system may encourage those things by not counting points, but thats different from encouraging them by asking you to track them specifically.
Did not exercise yesterday, too tired after an all nighter. But slept well after my early bedtime. Will get on the treadmill later if its too rainy when I am done work.
I will be disappointed if my nice snow all goes away, its supposed to go above freezing and maybe rain. I would like to keep the snow.

I'm doing the keto diet. It's pretty much induction level Atkins with more emphasis on fats than anything, but I have a hard time eating that much fat too. I don't like the bulletproof coffee with the cream and butter, so really my only fat intake during the day is from butter on my veggies, cheese, and oil that my food is cooked in. I do eat fatty meats like ribeyes/bacon occasionally. It's nice not to buy fat free anything and loading a plate of steamed broccoli down with butter seems counterproductive, but I lost a lot of weight on keto before the holidays. It works if you can be happy with little to no carbs.

I'm also watching calories because it's easy to over do it on Keto with all the fatty food. My typical day is coffee for breakfast, lunch with the hubby with some sort of meat/salad or veggie, and then pretty much the same for dinner.

I notice the tummy problems are especially bad if I eat something cooked in too much oil, which is a problem sometimes when we eat out (here's looking at you local Mexican place). They seem to have tappered off the last few days though.

Having weird BG readings. Last night before bed about 3 hours after dinner it was 108. This morning after fasting, it was 133?? I get the dawn effect and all, but geez. I took met before bed too. Is my monitor just screwy? I'm using two bayer contour next ones, one at work in the mornings and one at home for weekends and nights. They shouldn't be that off from each other. :|

Thank you all for the birthday wishes. It was quiet, but enjoyable.

I am so happy seeing all these posts here! I can't believe I didn't post yesterday. I don't know what happened. LOL

Mad, I have packed up all the snow in our area and shipped it to Ontario. I'm sure some others would be glad to do that, too!

Fickle, take your home monitor to work some day and check them at the same time to see if they're the same. One time mine were way off from each other and when I opened a new bottle of strips they were the same. Sometimes you need to do a test with control solution, too.

For years, I was a very hot person, and I don't mean that in a good way. LOL I was always warmer than everyone else in the room. In the past 5 years that has started to change and I'm freezing. I know my thyroid might have something to do with it because my numbers have changed, but not enough to put me on meds. I was never able to wear sweaters. The best I could do was long sleeve light weight tops. Now I have to wear a cardigan around home and can no longer take my coat off when we eat in a restaurant. I wear an extra tee shirt under my nightgown, and might have to start doing that every day, too. I think I would do well in FL and I would not be wearing shorts in 40 degree weather! Brrrr

Trish, I guess the reason I never had much problem with Metformin is because I don't eat high fat. I cut back on fat years ago when I was having trouble with Gerd. The Gerd improved without the fat. I don't eat low fat foods, but don't purposely add fat. I read somewhere that even though high fat helps some people lose weight, it should not be done by diabetics. The fat has some effect on how your body works. I don't remember the details.

Did you see something that said Green Tea interacts with Metformin, or is that just your own experience? I googled but couldn't find anything. I have Green Tea and drink it off and on but don't notice any difference.

The past couple days I have been having dizziness. If you remember, I went through that a while back and it stopped when I started drinking more water. I haven't been drinking much water because it's so cold, but today I am starting back on my water. I let the bottle sit out for a while to get closer to room temperature.

Cindy, I lost 15 lbs from the initial dose of Metformin. The only side effect I had was nausea. I could only eat a few bites before it set in. I was so disappointed when that went away because I really needed to lose more. I wasn't even 100% sure that the Metformin caused the nausea because that was right after my heart surgery and that could have been the cause.

Hi Carolr, p.a., Ruth, and everyone else!!