I didn't know you were allowed to fudge obviously on your DL weight - never actually tried it though. Is it a US thing? lol.

Work tonight, so here goes another 4-6 km walk - had a fat lunch and will do a carby supper, & snack for 1 AM.

Liana

Maile! I'm LOLing at your driver's license story. I last had my driver's license renewed a few months after having my daughter and just kept my pre-pregnancy weight on it, intending to be at the weight again. WELL, finally 4 years later I can say that I am within 5 pounds of driver's license weight (I renewed mine earlier this week) and actually upped the listed weight from 130 to 135 since that is my goal weight. AND, I actually LIKE my picture now! That made watching my family eating pizza and treats all around me SO worth it!

Ugh... came home sick today. Went in at 6:30 so I don't feel too bad about that but man do I feel rotten. My ears hurt, my throat hurts, my whole body aches. WAAAAA!

Wonder if the resident chef is up to making chicken soup. That sounds really good.

What does make me feel good though is remembering that before IP being sick was a reason to eat a bunch of junk because I was sick and if I'm craving something it must be what my body needs, right? Yeah, glad that thinking is gone.

Thanks for reminding me Maile - I got stopped the other day and the cop told me I needed to go get a new drivers license. He said there's actually a law that requires a new one if there is any major alternation in appearance. But we got into a good conversation about weight loss and I didn't get a ticket!

Ruth Ann: Hot shower, cozy robe, feet up, chicken soup, extra vitamin C and zinc for your throat. Oregano oil too, if you can stand it

Hope you are feeling better soon...
Glad you didn't get a ticket, the RCMP here have quite a bit of leeway as to how or if they ticket. If one is an idiot, or has previous run-ins and belligerence you'd better believe they are going to get the book thrown at them. I did a ride along with a constable for my security work and it was very enlightening. You were just a 'nice lady' and the cop was probably overjoyed for your weight loss success!

Liana

Skinny Margarita - summer drinks from Shape magazine:

http://www.shape.com/healthy-eating/...ipping/slide/3

100 cal, 3 g carb, 2g sugars

Well there is nothing but extra strength Tylenol. I always try to look on the bright side. If I am not taking an opiate I will be able to drive sooner!! This allergy is taking its sweet time to calm down.

Oh Drd, I am so sorry about the allergic reaction Last summer, I broke a bone in my foot. The bone is part of the pulley system for your tendons. My blood pressure was sky high from the pain-triple digit/triple digit. The Dr. put me on a anti inflammatory/pain killer. The med worked, but I broke out in hives all over my body. Had to take 2 rounds of prednisone to make the reaction stop. Silver lining for me, the blood pressure numbers scared me so much that as soon as the allergic reaction was gone, I started IP. I hope the Benadryl helps soon. You are one strong woman!!!

Maile, ugh! I am just about at the one month count down, second half always goes by more quickly.

Sylvie, your plans sound fun,

Ruth Ann, hope you feel better soon.

Lisa, wishing you success back on Phase 1.

Liana, my CT drivers license does not include weight. If it did, I am sure I would have had to step on a scale before recording my old weight, lol! Hope work goes by quickly for you.

Eva, love your happiness about the new license picture.

Oh, drd.

Ruth Ann -- Feel better!! You sound miserable. Good going, getting out of a ticket.

Maile -- LOL on the driver's license coup. What a switch. I have been getting comments on mine -- I am 125 lbs heavier and look about 20 years older on it.

Okay, QUESTION: So, I made pizza for myself for supper tonight following a recipe for crust made out of cauliflower & cheese. (Maile, I think you once referenced the recipe.) For topping, I used fresh tomatoes, some cheese, and a few slices of turkey pepperoni. The nutrition breaks down this way, and it looks like bad food combining if you look just at the numbers: 572 cals/37 carb(22 net carbs)/ 29 fat/ 51 protein/ 15 fiber. Do I have to be concerned with fat/carb combining if the carbs come from select (P1) veggies? Hoping not. I'm confused. again.

Not an optimal ratio...22g net carb to 29 g fat. I bet your turkey pepperoni was higher in sugars & starch carb than you thought. In this case better to use regular salami or pepperoni as the fat ratio is higher - the lower fat choices usually sub in sugars & starches as filler and flavour enhancers. You don't need to worry about the veggie carbs now that you are on maintenance, no veggies are really high. You can also use full fat cheese and a decent amount of it. The dairy, meat, oils, nuts & avocado choices are really what control your fat amounts so if your carb count is a little higher than you want at your 'fat meal' you will have to try upping the fat content.

If this was your carb meal, I would have used a real crust and just lessened the cheese, making it low fat, ditch the turkey pepperoni and use chicken breast pieces and BBQ sauce or use shrimp & pineapple - then you have higher carb and low fat.

Hope that helps The ratio is the main thing!

Actually, the turkey pepperoni had no carbs. All but 2 of the carbs are from the cauliflower and the tomato. The other 2 carbs came from the cheese. Soooo, that is what I am unclear on. 20 of the 22 carbs are from the veggies, so, if I don't need to worry about the carbs in veggies, am I good to go on this meal???

I am struggling with adding fat into a meal just to "outrun" the carb grams. If the carbs come from veggies and I am happy with the lower fat version of the pepperoni (which had no carbs in it), it doesn't feel right to me to simply throw fat (and, therefore, extra calories) into a meal in order to over-power the veggie carbs. Do you know what I mean? Am I wrong on this? I get that simple carbs need to be heavily outweighed in the fat meal, but is that also the case when they are "incidental carbs" (my term), as in carbs coming from non-restricted veggies?

Sylviegirl - I count all net carbs when figuring the ratio. What I have done is just switched out low fat cheese with full fat, added an extra tsp of olive oil, or added some nuts or other fatty food as a dessert. I try to get the 3:1 ratio, but if I'm off by 2 or 3 grams either way I don't stress it. And sometimes I goof totally.

It takes some practice but you'll get there!

Sylvie instead of thinking of fat as bad think of it as a micronutrients you need to be healthy.

Hives and rash are much better and pain is managed without the opiates and I am more spearheaded which is nice.

Hi SylviesGirl: Fat isn't always the culprit - here's the study that was referenced in one of the videos from IP about losing weight on low carb or low fat diets. Your veggie carbs are also offset a bit by the fiber in them so that can help with the ratios.

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/26...6-11004c84f4f3

This was shown to be true as far back as the 70's where people lose weight even though they raise their calories by adding up to 6000 extra calories of fat a day. That much fat, eaten continually, of course, is not the best diet for us in the long run, but you have to work pretty hard to add that many fat calories to your meals in a day, lol. In the study, normal weight people did not gain, and obese people lost weight... with both groups having improved (lowered) serum cholesterol counts. The whole lesson from it was keeping insulin from storing the fat in the meal by means of proper ratios.

This way of eating is truly different from just counting calories, which most people do who lose weight but are unsuccessful at keeping it off have tried. The thing is - when you have a fat meal, you'll find that you just can't eat as much of it - the richness of it satisfies your gut/brain connection and you just stop. The way I think of it is - ice cream is pretty easy to overeat on for a lot of people because there is a mix of fat & carb - 1 cup of ice cream is no problem at all to eat. But can you eat 1 cup of butter at a sitting, or 1 cup of granulated sugar at a sitting? Your body reads these separated foods differently and even thinking about it sounds icky.

Fats are nutrients that are very important for proper brain & nerve function. For instance in the disease Multiple Sclerosis the body attacks the fatty myelin sheath that covers the nerves and signals are distorted or interrupted.

Try not to stress over it too much though, from MFP you still seem to be losing weight in maintenance, so you are doing fine. And you know how to solve any problem that creeps up, right away.

Liana

drd: Glad things are working better for you meds-wise. Gotta laugh at autocorrect: you are spearheaded (you must have a 'sharp mind'), lol

As I rolled over in the middle of the night, it dawned on me that I had counted twice as much cauliflower than I ate in that pizza crust. I decided, while cooking, to make 2 crusts out of the 1 head of cauliflower and forgot to adjust my recipe on MFP. That makes the carb count 14 net with 29 g fat. Better.

I will read that article, Canadjineh, because I guess I am having a problem trusting the concept of that much fat. I didn't realize I was thinking that way, but now I see it -- and it will take some reading and thinking on it to think it through and change my preconceptions. I still wonder about the incidental carbs in veggies, though. Back on P1, I would have had 2 cups of cauliflower + 8oz lean hamburger + 1 tsp of olive oil on top of it and would have lost weight on that meal and food combination. So that confuses me. As I said, I will have to do some thinking on this and work on it. Thanks, everybody.

Had an even better weigh in this morning and I am "back in the box," so I feel a bit better about things in general now . . . maybe I'm not completely botching this maintenance thing after all. That said, still lots to learn.

That sounds better SylviesGirl: 14:29 will definitely work, not optimum, but I've done that more than a few times and things work out fine. I find the trickier stuff to work with is actually avocado and certain nuts and high fat yogourt which still has natural milk sugar carbs, because their ratios are much closer than full on fats/oils or major carbs like pasta or potato.

Avocado is 8carb:14fat for a half fruit, but it does have about the same amount of fibre carbs so net is OK. If you decide to use pasta in your maintenance plan you are probably better off getting the whole grain style as it will at least cut net carbs via fibre.

Re: the 2c of cauli, 8 oz of lean burger and 1 tsp of oil = net carbs are 6 & fat is 14 and that's with Extra Lean 96% fat free beef - so with Lean the fat content would be even higher. Likely 18g so 1:3 - there you go. Figured from my MFP list.