Hi!

Amber- oh I hate those standstills! It's hard not to get annoyed and give up. Maintaining is as good as losing, right?

Valerie- great news about the job!

My official intro: I'm 27, married with 4 kids, trying for the 5th. I've been a member of the church all my life, and I live in Cedar City, Utah. I really want to get some weight off before getting pregnant again, and I want to lose it for my 10 year high school reunion this summer.

Guess that's all for now!
Christine

Did you say 27 with 4 kids?!? How young were you when you started? I'm 23 and can't imagine having a child right now- I was pregnant last summer and had to face becoming a mom, and I never could come to grips. It was my first miscarriage, my doctor says I'll have more unless I get my insulin levels under control. As sad as I was to lose the baby (I worked hard for two months to try and keep it) I am relieved as well... I guess the lord knew it wasn't my time!

Convert question- Is it a "mormon thing: to have babies really young? A lot of the women I've met at church are my age with 2-3 of them! Also, do most mormon women get college degrees? One lady asked about when I would have kids, and instead of telling her about my health I just said "after grad school..." she made a face like I'd said something wrong! Did I?

Anyway, anyone that young with so much responsibility has my respect! Good luck on #5!

Valarie

Valarie- I got married at 19, had my first baby 9 months and 4 days later! I know sometimes I'm like, what was I thinking?? But on the other hand everything has turned out great, I feel like I'm a good mom and I'm glad to have my youthful energy for it. Also I want a whole bunch of kids so I wanted to get started right away, especially since my husband is 8 years older than me.
On the mormom question . . . okay, yes, mormon moms tend to have kids earlier. We know that families are more important than anything else, so we're more likely to put the baby-havin' before the education and career. Since the church teaches us that we should stay home with our kids if we can, I think a lot of women don't feel the need to get the education taken care of before having kids. If I were to guess, I'd say about half have their degree before 25, and about half of those have kids while they're still in college.
We're taught that having kids is the most important, but getting an education is very important too. So it's just up to individuals how they decide to go about doing each thing.

Lol, bet you didn't expect such a long-winded answer to that one!

christine

Fun! I've been a member for a while, but never seen this thread. Can I join you guys? I'm also 23, graduated from BYU in December, married my "missionary" (no one was more surprised than me...) in May (he got home in January) and I work at a community college in the area where we're both from while he goes to school (at the college where I work). We have been married about 8 months and want to start a family now but in the meantime I need to get in gear and get healthy! I have been working on my weight since 2001 (lost 40 lbs with WW) and have yo-yoed back and forth a little since then (college living isn't so healthy, but neither is being married to someone who can eat whatever he wants and never gain an ounce!). Since I lost so much my highest has been 172, and my all-time low has been 151. I really want to get under 150 for the first time, and I'm working hard to accomplish it! (Keeping track of what I eat, loosely counting WW "points", and exercising). We're probably headed to school somewhere in AZ or UT (somewhere cold please, I really hate the heat and loved Provo!) in August, but if I get pregnant we will stick around another semester because I have great insurance at my current job. Anyway, that's me. I love animals, digital video editing, keeping in touch with friends, and currently, toys. We collect potato heads, and I"m currently obsessed with Furbys. Nice to meet you all, and hopefully we can motivate each other!

Hi Sara! I saw you over on the valentine goal thread and I was planning to question you about the ctr name! Glad you're here! Where in AZ are you? I'm from flagstaff.

Well I was pretty good today . . . I only had one hamburger for dinner (few too many chips though) and I exercised this morning AND did some strenuous yard work this afternoon. (it was so warm here today! weird!)

Anybody else look forward to fast sundays for a little weight-loss boost?

Christine

any guesses why my signature's not showing up anymore? can you guys see it?

HI ladies,

Cheerio,
Suzanne posted an answer to that on another board. If you've all ready posted on this thread before it will only show your signature on the first message and not all so that it doesn't take up so much room in the forums. Some people have dial-up and it takes forever for some signatures to download so this way they are only on once and not 4 or 5 times.

Hi everyone! Sara, welcome! I love digital movie editing too! It is so much fun! We used to be really into toys but now that I have kids, I just don't have the time or money anymore! Congrats on your weight loss so far! Good luck on your weight loss journey!

Valarie, how are you doing? What meds did you go off of? I'm on Lantus, Avandia and Glucovance. I'm almost of my Lantus now because of my weight loss and exercising. When I was on a couple of different ones they had weird side effects so I switched. Maybe your doctor can put you on something else? Going off your meds is really not good for you. Believe me, exercising and getting your sugars under control give you TONS and TONs more energy. Also, on the mormon questions. I've noticed that some women in my ward had children when they were young but most met their hubbies while at BYU or while in college somewhere else. Even the families with 6 or 8 kid didn't start families until they were 23 or 24. I think it's different for everyone, member or non-member. I was married at 20 and ready for kids at 21 but we didn't actually have kids (we had infertility issues and adopted) until I was 24. I wasn't a member at the time but I was completely ready to be a mom and had been for a long time. It's an individual thing. A lot of people in the church like to have a big family but I don't feel like I'm pushed to do it. I know I could NEVER handle 8 kids, but some families do it beautifully.

Amber


WEll, I'm off to the races. Lots to do on Saturdays! Good luck on keeping on your plan this weekend ladies! I hate weekends, they are my worst times to stay on plan!

Hey girls!
I am in Thatcher currently, which is about 2.5 hours southeast of Phoenix. We like Flagstaff, and might go to school up there later this year. That, BYU, BYU-Idaho, or Western New Mexico (silver City). ANywhere cooler than here! (We're just a little cooler than Phoenix).

Amber- thanks for the siggy info. I love the small signatures on this board, another board I post on has no limits on sigs and some of them are SO HUGE, I'm talking scrolling through 5 screens! It's ridiculous.

sara- is thatcher where EA is? My little sis was there last semester.

I think I'm going to make myself a weight-loss chart to print out. With a graph to chart what I weigh every day, somewhere to write down how many minutes I exercise, and something simple for the eating part. . . I can't handle counting calories or carbs or points.
I TRIED to exercise this morning . . . I was about 2 minutes into my video when my littlest woke up. I think I got 15 minutes in all together. I'm trying to get another kind of exercise in every day too -- just something active. Like yard work or a hike with the kids. We shall see.

Oh hey, I've got a mormon question for you gals -- what's everyone's calling right now? I am currently calling-less, just got released after 2 1/2 years of being primary secretary.

Christine

Christine-
Yep, I work at EA, and my husband's going to school here still. I went to EA too, before I went to BYU. My husband and I teach the CTR-8 class. We just said good-bye to 8 kids that were SUCH a handful, but so full of personality. We miss them, even though our 6 new ones are much more reverent.
I DO look forward to fast Sundays for that, but I tend to end up eating just as much during the day, it's just restricted to the afternoon/evening. Sigh.

Ahhh.....it would be so nice to have so many active members and be able to have team teachers. My brother and sister in law are team teachers in Utah. I'm 2nd counselor in the Primary. We're lucky to get one teacher to show up every week here in Indiana, so much 2. I was put in 2 1/2 years ago as Secretary then after about 6 months I became 2nd counselor. Our President changed in March but I stayed under a new president. I love primary. It is so much fun. It's my favorite place in the world to be!


Well, I'm finally back on my exercise track. Gotta get this eating under control.

Good luck ladies!
Amber

I love primary too! It's weird that I'm not going to be in there anymore. My little girl just started sunbeams and I can't sit in there and watch how she does.

Good news, I'm on my way to my valentines goal! I was down 2 pounds yesterday, and I'm even lower now because of a hidddddeous stomach flu . . . we'll see where it ends up evening out.

Amber- what are you doing for exercise?

Christine

For exercise I like my exercise bike. It doesn't give me the workout I would get from an elliptical (I want one of those so bad) but I love to read and it keeps my mind off of the workout. Right now I'm doing weights 3 times a week (I hate weights for some reason but I can definitely see a difference since I started) followed by 1/2 hour on treadmill (doing running intervals) and 30 minutes on the bike. On the other 3 days I either do 60 minutes bike or 30 treadmill and 30 bike. I sometimes do a WATP tape but it's hard to tell the kids they can't watch the TV and I wake them up if I do it after they go to bed. I usually try to work out after they go to bed and for awhile I was doing a morning 30 minute bike routine along with the rest but I've kinda dropped that in favor of sleep! I would like to start it back up though. I think I talked my hubby into getting me a heart rate monitor so that I can make sure I'm working out in the right range and not wasting my time.

What do you ladies do for exercise??

Amber

I am lucky - though my living room is a little small to do work out tapes, (and there is no wall between it and the bedroom, so doing whily DH is sleeping is out) the community college I work at has a wellness center (small gym) that I can use for free. I usually do 20-40 minutes on the elliptical, or if it is occupied I use the treadmill and the stair stepper. Not usually the bike - I find I just get lazy. Once or twice a week I do the weights circuits, and almost every day I do crunches with the abs roller, as well as some mat-work (that I learned in 9th grade aerobics class . Yesterday I tried a new machine, and loved it. It's like a mountain-climber. You can do program, or manually set the speed and incline, and it goes up to 50% incline! (most treadmills only go like 10%) I love it because I miss hiking all the time (like I did when I was at BYU with those wonderful mountains in my front yard). Sometimes my husband and I go on walks.

Right now I mostly do videos. For a quite a while I was walking an hour every morning with my friend across the street -- it was so fun to be able to chat while we walked! And for a while we were doing weights in her basement too, but ever since Christmas we haven't gotten back into the routine.
I like dance aerobics, anyone know of any fun dance tapes?

Christine