Amazing how a simple suggestion like this can inspire me! Thank you, lmickey. I have 2 or 3 packages of dried beans in my pantry but no idea what to do with them - I have a crock pot too. Today I'm going to put the two of them together with some dried herbs and water and see what happens! Thanks! jeanette

tvmetche,

You can do it! You ROCK!

I got them too, thanks FL!

Thanks tvmitche,
You can do it too, you just gotta get your mind in the right place... Tell yourself "I will do this" and then believe it, don't let any negative thinking slip in, force those thoughts out and say this time I've got this. Get all your foods, supplements, go back to the center if they were supportive in the past and ask for the help you need. Set up a game plan/goals and launch forward with faith!!

Karen

For the HNS, I got a "shaker cup" from GNC and it works great for getting out all the chucks.... here's the link to see what one of them looks like (my husband has this one, and I have a cheaper one from there but they both work well) http://www.gnc.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3017359

For the pudding, use warm water to start (just a little to get it dissolved) then you can add the cold after you've worked out the chunks. I personally make my pudding with very little water, and just mix it the consistency of cookie dough.... but that's just me.... and I'm weird!

today i decided to eat something other than hard cheese for breakfast, hehe... i had melba toast dipped in cottage cheese. it was really good! for lunch i had 8 oz. of tomatoes from my garden, an apple, and some leftover chicken breast that i made in the crock pot last night (chicken + mrs dash + some vinaigrette dressing for marinade). yummy! for dinner, i'll probably eat more leftover chicken and melba toast and more tomatoes. does that all sound OK? i feel like i must be misstepping somewhere because my losses haven't been as spectacular as they were the first week.

also, a question for all you veterans: what exactly do the soy crisps count as? are they creamies (please say no, hehe)? or just a regular HNS? they're suuuper tasty...

Melba toast and cottage cheese is good, isn't it? The only thing I would watch out for is that cottage cheese has a lot of sodium in it so you might retain some water (I do) with it if you have it too often. Have you tried the breakfast sausage? It's really good and it's a lean protein which is good to have in the morning to get you started.

i haven't yet, but i'm thinking that's next on my list. i didn't realize that about cottage cheese! sodium is the thing i always, always forget to look for. thanks for the advice!

what do you have for a starch when you eat the sausage, out of curiosity? i have so much trouble just eating plain melba toast (which is why i enjoyed it so much with cottage cheese), so i'm curious what i can do instead. i think i must be a really picky starch person :S

I can barely eat the Sara Lee lo-cal bread. Maybe because I am not a bread eater. I can handle the melba garlic rounds....I had that this morning with two boiled eggs...that wasn't too bad...maybe because I was starving by ten this morning since I had to fast until my Dr. appt. today. Now my meals are all screwed up. I am going out to meet a friend for dinner at Village Inn, so I looked and I can have several of their salads except have to remove some of the items on the salad....but this will be the first time I will try eating out...I hope I don't embarass my friend when I mix my HNS with a glass of water, and bring my own dressing...lol.

Speaking of my Dr. appt., which I am so excited to see what my cholesterol will be....I truly hope the eggs don't mess me up and put me over my normal 200, otherwise, I will have to switch to egg whites...which will be harder for me yet to get through breakfast. I was so disappointed that my Dr. didn't even notice my weight loss on my chart. The last time I was in he looked at my weight and said I needed to lose...not a word this time...wth???? I could of kicked him off his rolling stool. So, I mentioned to him that I had started MRC and he was not familiar with it, but he said if it is working then that was good....I wanted him so much to ask questions about MRC...but nada!!!! I guess I just wanted his opinion about the plan and the HNS's I am drinking, just to validate that this is a healthy way to lose weight....oh well....I guess that's what I get for going to a "male" doctor.

No problem, I was eating it for a while (like every single day) and hit a plateau.... when we (the center and I) looked through my food diary, they explained it to me. I had never really paid attention to sodium content before either.

With the sausage, I eat it with the La Tortilla Factory Tortillas (http://www.latortillafactory.com/jad...welcome/Home); the wheat ones are the ones I like and they are 50 calories each (the smaller size). Check in your local store, but mine are located by the bakery on a special stand with low carb "stuff"; just ask at your market for them... They are really good. If you wanted you could make breakfast burritos with them also, or could the sausage based on the ingredients, but just don't put them into patties (leave them just as ground turkey with the seasoning when you cook it down) then put them in the tortilla that way. Very tasty!

I may have to try your croc pot recipe..I'm always looking for different chicken recipes. Vinaigrette dressing..is there a specific kind/brand? I've never bought actual salad dressing before as weird as that might sound. Never been a dressing fan...until now, at least with the dressing I make.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news...but soy crisps do count as a creamy.

I love having turkey sausage and a piece of toast for breakfast. I posted the recipe I use on the recipe thread last week I believe. It's very yummy.

My fav. bread is the Sara Lee 45-calorie bread that's the honey wheat flavor.

I'm so sorry that you doc (of ALL people) didn't notice. I'm excited to go for my annual physical in December and see what my doc says (of course she's a female lol). But what matters is that you are doing so well!! We all know how hard you're trying and how well you're doing. Keep it up!

thanks. i bought some of the garlic & herb tortillas, but i haven't tried one yet. i am extremely picky with tortillas and actually didn't really even eat them before starting the diet! so i'm kind of nervous to see whether i like these or not, since there are so few starch options to begin with.

i do wonder, though, if it's possible to make up for some of the sodium in cottage cheese by drinking extra water?

oh nooooo, i was afraid of that bad news!! bummer. they're so tasty! i think i'm going to have to rethink my practice of having hot chocolate every morning with breakfast because it's really limiting my creamy options elsewhere. the hot chocolate is just so good! but i haven't even tried the pudding or the cream of chicken or anything yet, so maybe it's time to branch out with my creamies. and now i know that having soy crisps before my workout on monday was a bad move since i'd already had hot chocolate that morning. whoops!!

as for vinaigrette, it was some sun-dried tomato dressing from kraft. i didn't use very much, and really not much of the dressing makes it onto or into the chicken, so i wasn't too concerned. i suppose maybe another option is to just season the chicken with mrs dash and then use the chicken bouillon HNS to keep it moist in the crock pot? i just really like the flavor that the dressing adds to the chicken.

regarding the bread: i have some of the sara lee stuff but i'm just not much of a bread eater--especially if i can't put peanut butter or jelly on my toast--so it's been tough for me to figure out how to make it more palatable. starches are apparently a really big struggle for me! i have a hard time figuring out yummy ways to shoehorn them in.

i'm super nervous for my appointment on thursday... i feel like even though i've lost some weight from the diet in the past two weeks, i'll still be up a few pounds from where i was at my last appointment in january and i'm scared of getting a talking-to or being told to go on a diet and thus having to explain MRC. i'm almost tempted to call and reschedule for a month down the road or something, you know? my doctor is nice, but i don't want her to lecture me or (heaven forbid) tell me that she doesn't agree with MRC.

maybe i am being a worrywart for no reason, hehe...

Well, maybe it's good my Dr. didn't say anything then...tee hee. I wasn't going to bring up MRC just in case he would have said I shouldn't be doing that...but he didn't...so I breathed a sigh of relief. I even took a cutout of the ingredients from one of the boxes and my menu...he just wasn't interested...but he was interested in talking to me about my past due colonoscopy that I have been putting off. So I guess I had better follow Dr's orders.