Hi all. Nothing to report today except my son's surgery went well. (did I mention that he had some minor surgery planned? I think I did.) I didn't work out because we had to be at the hospital early. And, now I'm just tired. So, we'll try again tomorrow.

Hideehi! Back from our camping holiday, tanned and tired lol. Oh and a little chubbier but thats to be tackled this week. I'm actually excited to get back into routine. Have decided to set myself a 30 day challenge since thats how many days I have til I'm on holiday again lol. I can assure you its not normally this bad but I have my cousins wedding at the top of the south island and decided to make it a caravaning holiday for a couple of weeks. Its the middle of our summer so thats it for the year, well till Easter anyway so I put on a pound this week but with the addition on the Christmas pounds I'm up 6 pounds since my lowest Christmas day, not too bad my aim is to get that back off and any who would like to follow by 20th feb.

I've had a quick read back so hi to new faces and the returning ones! Cheers to a new year full of positives!!

Good afternoon, everyone!

Just a quick check-in as well. So glad to have Kelli and Toasted back, and hope your son's surgery went well, Diane.

I am in one of those moods where I just don't want to do it. Really, there's always tomorrow. But for now, I think I'm going to honor my future self and not make her deal with my today indulgences. Going to hit the gym too, cuz my future self loves being able to run at a decent speed without getting immediately winded and loves being able to show off her Hulk-like strength!

You are awesome Laurie - just know that

Hi everyone!

It's been a while since I last said hello and I wanted to apologize for pulling away slowly and then all at once. It's been a very, very difficult few months.

I'm so happy to see so many friends still posting. I'll slowly ease back into the reading/commenting routine and for now I'll simply say hello again.

MARTINI!!! - I am so excited to see you back! Now, if we can just get Uber posting again, this thread would be even more exceptional than it already is!

Kelli - Thank you for the kind words! All y'all see all my crazy, and still say great things to me. It is a great place to be. And, dude! I am super jealous of your millions of holidays, though I think it would be challenging to have to continually reset.

Diane - To be able to take a day (or a few) off to deal with real life situations, like your son having minor surgery, and to just get back on the exercise routine without guilt or recrimination - that is what the seeds of lifelong maintenance look like, I think. I trust all went well with the surgery.

TooWicky - Glad to hear that you're healing, and that your neighbors are caring for you. I think if I thought of food as medicine for our bodies, continually nourishing us and making us healthier, I would get better long-term results. (Yes, Mandy, I hear you in my head. "Food is not the enemy.") Hope your recovery is speedy and as painless as possible.

Carter - Fie on the binges. It's impressive that you have been binge-free for so long, though, and even more impressive that the two-day binge doesn't translate into a week, or a month, or a year, of poor choices. I am not sure when either you or I will have this weight thing permanently conquered, but it still feels so much better (at least for me) fighting the good fight at 200 pounds than 280.

Toasted - Returning from vacation is the hardest. Glad you squeezed in a quick post for us, though. And I hear you about the processed sugar thing. It never seems to satiate my hunger at all, and often leads to full-on binges.

Lyn - Can't wait to hear about your on-plan days, and hoping the scale rewards you in the way that it should!

ChrissyBean - LOL about your high-fiber, anti-zumba days soup! I love Zumba, though I have only done it once or twice. One of these days, my sexy dancing is going to cause a riot, though. ;-) I can feel it coming. (Especially if I indulge in Colon Blow cereal prior to dancing.)

Julie - Been there. Done that. In 2007/08, I went from about 250 to about 160. Then, by 2012, I gained back up to 278. Maybe I'm an overachiever? Glad to have you here. It's a great place to be. I've taken my 278 number to around 200 (I'm on an anti-scale kick, so don't know precisely what it is), and am going to keep on trucking. I also vow to be Toasted or Carter, who caught regains early and are now re-losing those last 20 pounds or so, rather than trying to relose an entire 100 pounds again.

Went to the gym yesterday. Saw the Biggest Loser pot is now $600. I'm totally renewed now. I am going to get that money, dang it! (And if I don't, I am going to feel like I did what I needed to do to compete, which should translate into a nice loss.)

I think I am stuck at my old job until Feb. 4. And I think I'm kind of excited about it. I am going to commit the next 3 weeks to doing as little as I possibly can at my old job, and using those 16 days to engage in some hardcore weight loss as a bit of a kick-start. It will be freaking awesome! My favorite evil show is Extreme Weight Loss. Those people lose anywhere from 30-120 pounds in three-month periods, and they exercise for 4 to 5 hours a day. Not in the cards for me, but I bet I could squeeze in 2-a-days for a bit. =) And if I get down to 180 pounds by March 11, that will be freaking awesome!

I think I've realized that Sundays are a bad day for me. I tend to over eat. I get a lot of water in, but I over eat. BAD JESSICA.

Well first day back on plan down, can't say it was fun but needed to be done. I think its the journaling of food I hate the most. Got on the rower but was a little lackluster so I did a dance workout, with 2 little boys sitting on the couch eating crackers watching me lol. Aaand now for day 2 ... onwards and upwards!

Hey everyone, okay so this weekend was kind of a bust. I mean, not as much of a bust as it could've been if I'd turned full on binge-meister, but it certainly wasn't the weekend off which re-losing was built. Friday night tasty steamed veggies turned into steamed veggies with a whole (thankfully small) box of nougat for afters, I mean can you say failed fast... And then yesterday, I ate myself sick again... I mean literally ate myself till I needed anti-nausea medication. That's my new year resolution guys. Not to be super fit or super slim, I'm going to be those things anyway (#positivethinking), but to stop eating myself sick. I think that's basic. It seems "sick" to eat the way I do sometimes to the point that I need medication. I've already given up a lot of stuff I like for my irritable stomach- peanuts, pineapple, tropical fruit and juices (even though hey I live in the tropics where fresh tropical fruit grows), spicy food, so I think yeah the big back-riding monkey that's up next is eating to the point of sickness. I've figured out that anything over 17-1800 calories in a day even spread out makes me feel quite unwell, indigested, and nauseated by evening so I need to work on keeping that in mind, and not just for weightloss- even on my free days, just so I can be healthy and happy and sleep at night rather than sitting up all night in agony.

All that said, the weekend was the weekend and it's in the past and I'm super excited to rock this week out on-plan. One last note, I did a weigh in on Sunday to see what damage vacation did. Guys, I gained only 1.5 lbs from my December low of 177- shout out to 5:2 WOE. It made my wild vacation days balance out. I didn't get my workout in this morning because I was still feeling sort of fragile in the belly but I am going to get back into things tonight, I am determined. I'm all caught up with you guys' posts and people have been rocking out this January, I can't be left behind.

So much has gone on with you guys but I'm so glad you all are still here/ back (Hello martini you were so missed!) and still plugging away. Today I'm kind of meh and it's supposed to be a fast day and I was going to blow that and send for a light lunch but I decided to come on here and just check in and as always I'm so inspired by each and every one of you who are going through challenges and still keep going so yeah, I'm going to rain check that lunch and have a cup of tea instead and stay on plan. Maybe I'll even check out that dietbet challenge I've been rejecting because the very idea of losing 4% of my body weight (~7lbs) in 4 weeks seems a little overambitious given my recent weight loss record but nothing ventured, nothing gained- I've spent worse $30 many a time plus the prospect of losing money might just kick my butt into continuing C25K which I restarted on vacation. Nothing shreds me like running does.

So Jenni you mentioned wanting to start over C25k again, well, I started over on vacation trying to work on my speed but I'm restarting again tomorrow from week 1 so if anyone wants to C25K with me and be partners, #matchmade.

Okay so I'm going to stop now before I continue my fit plan monologue here unchecked.

TooWicky, I'm sooo glad you're feeling much better- intestinal surgery is THE PITS!!! Please look after yourself, time enough later on to rock out this year.

Slashni, I'm glad your son's surgery went well and you're otherwise rocking those workouts out as usual!

Laurie, you go on with your bad-a** super-hero self! Wonder Woman probably didn't want to get up and kick all that butt either, but someone had to for humanity! You can do it for your future self! YEAAAH!!!

Jessica: Sundays are my "free" days and so they tend to be the food-iest as well so I totally identify.

Kelly: getting back into the swing of things is NO fun at all. I've logged through my vacation but now that I'm focusing on the numbers again, it's extra not fun. Yay on getting a workout in. I'm inspired into definitely doing one- however short or half-ars*d when I get back from work.

Anyway in the interim 5 minutes between saying maybe to the dietbet a couple of paragraphs ago and doing personals, I've decided to gamble on myself. I'm going to do that diet bet and I'm going to win. I know I CAN do it, it's just that I know it won't be easy, breezy and doable for life and it will require an extra push. I can push for a month, can't I? Plus, mama needs some cash- vacations aren't cheap.

Good morning folks.

I hope everyone is bright-eyed and ready to face the Monday. I am not quite yet but the will help.

I had a lovely weekend, though only so-so foodwise. I had a very pleasant houseguest, and some overeating came along with that although I did not devolve into the full-on binge territory I'd been in on Wednesday and Thursday.

It's distressing what a few days of off-plan eating and overeating can do to the bottom line, though. All the way up to 184 this morning, ouch - that's a month's work erased. And I am feeling old and achey, and these 25ish extra pounds seem to make a bigger difference to my overall well being than they did 3 years ago.

I am also in a stage where I'm finding 3FC hard to read - sometimes the amount of distress and sadness shown by women on other parts of this board, especially young women, really gets to me. Trying to articulate my feelings on that tends to lead me into a feminist rant. Today I'll limit it to this: It's appalling the extent to which women's bodies are commodified and policed, and the extent to which we (as a class) internalize that commodification and policing.

Such are my musings for the morning. It looks like we will need a new thread soon - I'm so delighted to see that, since I started this regainers' group a year ago, it's carried on so well and attracted such thoughtful and kind people. Good luck and good strength to all today.

Good morning, all!

Toasted - Hooray for challenges! I find that challenges really do make a huge difference in my commitment levels. So glad you're investing in yourself that way. And I TOTALLY relate to the eating yourself sick thing. I have had too many incidents of waking up during the night/early morning feeling like I needed to throw up and laying on the cold, hard floor of the bathroom to have the immediate access to the toilet that I felt like I needed. And the food has never once been worth it. It's not like The Hunger Games where I had unlimited amounts of delicacies and just wanted to try everything. It's mundane things like fried chicken, where I felt compelled to pull every last bit of greasy meat off the disgusting bone, even when the grease was starting to slosh heavily in my stomach.

And I'll join you in your C25K challenge, if you'll have me! At least for a little bit. I'm doing intervals when I run, and it feels like it would be more productive if it was a little more structured.

Kelli - Yay for showing your little ones that exercise is FUN! I actually love picking up my kids and dancing with them, although now that my youngest is 11, that's become more of a challenge. I still dance with them, though, in my goofy, untalented way.

Jessica - Yay for getting your water in and identifying a problem to tackle. That's what it's about, right?

Carter - I hope that you didn't really lose a month's work over a few days. Hopefully, the added weight will come off fairly quickly and easily. And please, feel free to engage in feminist rants when the urge strikes. May I just add that I hate how body size and shape seems to define so many women in the eyes of other people, and too often, in women themselves. The whole "I'm fat so I'm miserable" thought is enough to make me crazy crazy.

So, I am officially in BEAST MODE. I am eating my fiber cereal in moderation. It's fairly low cal, and very filling, and though it's keeping me surprisingly regular (okay, I mean prolific), it's not causing the face-melting gas. I am eating fruits and veggies (though probably still not enough), and I am eating lean meats. And that's it. Today is Day 3 of beast mode. I am also hitting the gym really hard. Yesterday, I ran outside for 4.25 miles (though a slow 4.25 miles, as there were spots along the route that had thawed and refrozen, forcing me into ginger walking on occasion), and I hit the gym in the evening for some weight lifting. I solidly benched 80 pounds (I know it's not great, but it's an increase, and I think I'm ready to move up), I deadlifted 135 pounds, I did single-point rows with 30 pound dumbbells, and I either increased weight or rep on almost everything I did last night. (I want to increase on the lat pulldown machine, but my only interval option is to go from 100 pounds to 120 pounds, and I can't quite get the 120 pounds yet.) Beast mode until February 4, baby. I can do this. And right now, I'm really loving doing it, so that's a bonus.

Today's cardio, and another very nice day for January. I plan on running on a treadmill in the afternoon, then doing my 4.25 mile second-cardio session when I get home. I am fully stocked with good, delicious, low-cal, nutrition options. And really ready to rock this Biggest Loser Challenge. The pot is up to $600 now. Like Toasted said, Mama needs the cash, cuz vacations aren't cheap, and I'd like to get this honeymoon vacation fund going f'reals.

Exactly right, Laurie. I did strength today. Not a lot because I have to work, but I did enough to be pleasantly surprised that in spite of my lack of strength training, I'm still maintaining the progress I made. I was able to hold a 60 sec plank with minimal quivering. And by minimal, I mean I quivered most of the minute, but not to the point that I felt like I was going to fall over.

Also took Luna for a quick walk and did some ab exercises. I need to get back on that. The whole work out thing. It's hard right now because unless I close at work, the sun is pretty much gone before I can make it home. So whether I get a walk in or not, I need to make sure I'm doing some sort of strength training. Because I have one goal. ONE. GOAL. If I can, I'd like to shave and inch or two off of both my hips and my gut between now and ComicCon. That's eight weeks! EIGHT WEEKS! Can I do it? I think I can do it. It's just a matter of really buckling down.

Hello again everyone. Le sigh, y'all! I honestly thought I'd be home before 7pm today, would get a workout in, then eat dinner and have the evening before me. Errr not working out that way. It's already past 8pm and here I am still at work with at least an hour commute ahead of me whenever I choose to leave thanks to staying late enough to get caught up in the post-happy hour traffic. THIS is why I need to work out in the morning whether or not I'm a morning person because the days get away from me. I'm tired and headachy and hungry (today's a fast day) and wanting my dinner and really what I'd like is to get home and eat and the curl up and read something till I fall asleep. But nope that's not what I'm going to do! If Diane can get her workouts in every single day and Laurie can be in beast mode, then so can I, people! I probably won't do anything that strenuous because looking at the time between workout, dinner and bed, it's a little tight with timing, but I'm going to do something. It's not always what or how much you do, sometimes the very doing of something is more than enough. So yeah... Or something.

Laurie: Please join in with the C25K. I've never been more than a 3-miler at best, nothing near 4+ miles but I'm re-starting week 1 tomorrow and we'll see where we go from there. I'm coming to beast mode too! We're going to do this!!!

Jessica: You need to see me do a 30-second plank... I'm like wobbling then crying, then I just put my knees down and do the modified planks and I'm all like "eh... good enough." So that you can do a 60-second plank speaks strength to me, strong woman! AND I think a couple of inches sounds doable in the next 8 weeks! Go go go!!!

Alright I'm about to leave now. Good night/have a great rest of the day everyone!

Hi all. Need to catch up, I didn't get back on here after Friday. My son did well with his surgery. The recovery is kind of lengthy, but he's being a very mature 18 year old and doing what he is supposed to do. He was being a little more mature about it than I was. I'm over it for him. I just want him to get back to normal now. But, thankfully, all went well.

I missed working out on Friday. I was planning to go after we got home from the hospital, but I was really wiped out. So, didn't go. Then Saturday, I had a lot to do, went in to work for longer than I anticipated, so I didn't go on Saturday either. Ugh. On Sunday, we had a home health nurse come by to check on him. She was really aggravating to me, talking to him like he was 95 years old rather than 18. (I'm sure their normal patients aren't as young as he is....) He took it all in stride, but I was all kinds of irritated by the time she left. So, I went to the gym and did Body Pump. Felt so much better after that. My avatar on MyFitnessPal includes the saying "you're only one workout away from a good mood". It is so true! Today was spin class. It was tough, as usual, but good. Oh, and one thing I noticed about my body pump class on Sunday was that it really was much easier and I did really well. I was talking to this guy at work and he said that he thinks it is easier to work out in the afternoon because your body is completely warmed up. I think he's right, but I'm still going to continue my morning workouts. I just thought it was interesting.

Toasted: Funny thing. I just added the C25K app to my phone and was planning on starting it today. I want to do a 5K in April, and I figured I better get back on track with some running. I'm going to try to do it from my house after work. It is barely light enough, but I think I can do it.

Jessica: Heck yes, you can do it! You definitely have what it takes in you! Oh, and planks.... I'm wobbly as heck with them, too.

Laurie: Oooo! $600! You can totally win it! You've got the attitude you need!

Carter: It's hard to avoid other people's posts, sometimes. I know I have to reign it in at times. Sometimes I am really sympathetic, but other times... not so much.

MissLoud: Ahh, camping! Can't wait to get back to it in the summer!

Martini: Good to hear from you! Sorry you've been having some difficult times. You've been missed!

Hi guys!

Thank you for the well wishes

Slashnl, I am so glad to hear your son's surgery went fine!

Toastedsmoke, I'm intrigued by your fast days. I'm not sure id ever have the will power to be successful. My Achilles heel is nighttime snacking.

garnetrising, hi!! I remember you from some threads we crossed paths in a while back . I hope things have been going well for you. It's nice to see a familiar face. A ComicCon deadline sounds motivating and fun. I went to DragonCon a few years back.

LaurieDawn, great job on your beastmodeness-ness . Right now my beastmode is walking slowly around my house.

carter, I've only been in the thread a short time, but can also tell its full of supportive and just plain nice people. I am nearing that age and place in life where all I want is good health, and couldn't care less about what shape my body takes as long as it's reasonably healthy. Young women today have it tough when it comes to body image.

MissLoud, now, a dance workout is something I think I would actually enjoy lol!

martini, I'm newish to the thread, but wanted to say Hi and Welcome back

I'm embarrassed to say, but I'm feeling a bit down about this recovery from surgery :/. I am getting better each day, but it's in tiny increments. I get tired very easily. All I'm doing is walking slowly in laps inside my house. Because of the incision size and placement, I can't comfortably wear a pants waistband in the proper place, or a bra. I feel like a slob! I think I would feel better if I could get dressed like a normal person. I look very bloated. I assumed I had gained fluid weight from surgery, but I got on the scale after lunch while fully dressed and I have lost 4 lbs o.0