Hi maintainers,

Back after the holidays with a couple of extra pounds. I am now 10 - 15 pounds over my personal goal weight, so I'm back to watching what i eat & sticking to 5 small meals a day & continuing the exercise. Food wise it's hard to keep focus, exercise wise I've mangaged to do 5 hous this week.

Kery - 7 hours of tests, big ouch ! Good for you that you did the exercise

Shane - Glad to hear you are OK. No fun, falling of that bike. Did you nail the test ?

Lily - I love to hear about how you are doing. Your stories are so vivid!

Hi to all the other maitainers,
Rabbit

Shane, helmets helmets helmets! Bad for the hair, good for the brain. I'm sorry about your crash, but glad to hear it was relatively minor--as Allison pointed out bad bad things can happen.

Haven't been feeling so hot this week, and really have no idea how my eating is going. A strange place to be. I'm off to the OB this afternoon, and will get thoroughly checked out.

Anne

Hi all,

I was only gone for 3 1/2 days for my conference, but it feels like a week! I am very proud that I made good decisions about food and exercised the whole time I was gone. I had to eat out a lot and really tried to order the best thing on every menu, and saved leftovers for other meals. Since I was hungry for every meal I think I did ok guestimating portions/calories.

BF and I both arrived home from our respective trips Wed. night. We hadn't seen each other in 3 weeks, the longest we've ever been apart, and it's as if we've been apart for a year (even though we spoke on the phone daily). We're planning on spending a lot of qt together this weekend.

Shane, eek, get a helmet! I'm glad you weren't hurt any more seriously.

Kim, how great your son loves veggies. Reminds me of a story my mom tells. When my (older) sis was about 2-3, my mom had her in the high chair eating a snack while on the phone w/ her boss, trying to act professionally. My sis finished her snack and started to fuss. Finally my mom had to do something, and said to her boss "excuse me just a minute, I have to get my daughter some more alfalfa sprouts and creamy cucumber dressing" (this was in the day when all phones were corded and couldn't travel far around the house). Her boss's answer was "my, what sophisticated tastes your daughter has!"

Kelly, welcome! Don't worry about not being quite to goal yet - I joined the maintainers a few years ago and have since gained a little, so I'm not quite at my maintenance weight, either. I look forward to getting to know you!

goalsuccess, I hear your frustration, but stick with it! You are doing everything "right", and sometimes it takes a little time for our bodies to respond. Also you say you're upping your workout intensity, so perhaps you're gaining a bit of muscle mass, and/or your muscles are retaining a little more water than normal. Don't give up!

Lily, good news that your son will be getting additional training and you will spend a bit more time with him before he is deployed. Hrmm... watch out for that dog! I still don't like this situation!

I've missed quite a few people here, I know, and I want to say hello to everyone else. I need to get to work and go through my week's worth of emails. Have a great FRIDAY everyone! (Yay for Fridays!)

Good morning everyone!!!

Rabbit and goalsuccess~I, too, am way over goal weight. 16.5 pounds. I've been on plan for about 3 or 4 days now and I'm finally back into the 140's (only by half a pound, but I'll take it!). My problem isn't restaurant food--it's comfort food. When it gets cold that's all I want. I'm trying to make more soups (as they are somewhat comforting) but DH said yesterday that he was once again "souped out". So we had ravioli last night--not a great choice, but not terrible. I didn't over eat.

Lisa~take care of your knee. I have knee problems, too and I really thought that I'd never be able to run due to it. Surprisingly, running doesn't bother it. Power walking can if I'm not careful. But transitioning from sitting to standing and vice versa is what really hurts. Guess I'll never be able to do squats!

Kim~I hear ya! My kids do love most veggies, however DD could do without peppers. Hmmm. Growing up, I hated green peppers (still do to an extent) but I love red and yellow peppers. Perhaps she'll grow out of it.

LisaMarie~I'm thinking that walking with your neighbor will actually give you more energy in as much as it will at least wake up your brain. You might feel refreshed rather than tired after a good walk (and then you'll have energy to correct more essays!).

Megan~WTG on the good food choices while out of town.

Gotta run--DS needs breakfast (and I have to wake him up first).

Hi everyone! I think going to sleep an hour early the past couple nights has helped a lot, I'm feeling better today (cold-wise -- my joints are no better, but at least I don't feel like I'm sick anymore).

Kelly - welcome!

Rabbit - join the club, I'm working on 10lbs myself!

Goalsuccess - 2lbs in 2 weeks is a perfectly respectable rate to lose! That's 1lb/week!

Thanks for the concern about my joint problems guys, I really do appreciate it. I have been taking thyroid medicine for almost one month now which is really not long enough to make a major difference (or so I'm told) but I'm hopeful it will help with the joint pain. If the joint pain is being caused by the thyroid, then the medicine will definitley help!

I have to run to a meeting, but I have to report that I was at 141.2 on my weigh-in this morning. Woohoo! I'm losing 1lb/week which is about the fastest I ever manage to lost. Hopefully I won't screw it up this weekend. Still no junk!!!

Hi everyone!

Kim, love the veggie story!!! You must be doing a great job with the cooking!

I'm also still trying to ditch my holiday weight, plus a couple more. I'm currently fluctuating between 139 and 141. I want to get down to 135. I don't eat in restaurants often enough for it to be a problem, and I don't have a problem with off-plan eating at home. But I have huge troubles at social occasions and dinner parties. And also drinking (including off-plan drinking at home). I'm fine under almost all other circumstances, but when I go out, I have a really, really hard time staying disciplined. This is fine during those times of the year that I eat away from home only once every week or two, but times like now are almost impossible. Also, I really, really need to cut down on the amount of wine I drink. I can't afford the $ or the calories.

Lisa, can you not run anymore? Are you too tired or is it s a safety thing? I imagine you will be miserable without your favorite hobby!

Good morning! I am surprisingly NOT sore today! I thought I would be hurtin' like h-e-double-toothpicks, so when I woke up relatively pain free, I was quite mystified.

I got sent home at work today... for my pants! At my job, everyone dresses VERY casually with the exception of the front office employees. There are men at my job who have huge gashes in their jeans and no one has ever said anything, so I didn't see the harm in wearing a pair of fashionably ripped jeans. They're ripped primarily in the knees, a little bit in the thighs, and have one rip in the back a little below the butt. The pockets cover the butt and the rip is small enough that you really can't see anything, but I got sent home anyway.

Funnily enough, I wore this pair of pants as soon as I started to fit them at 155 pouinds (though they were much tigheter then!) and NO ONE said anything about them being inappropriate. Now? I wasn't even at work for an hour when I was sent home for a change of clothes. Oh well, I am back at work now with non ripped jeans because if I don't stay, they don't pay.

Megan - rock on - good food choices while out town can be tough to make.

Kim - that is REALLY awesome that your kids love veggies! You're getting them to develop healthy taste buds now that hopefully will not disappear later... good job... really cute, too.

Hi, Kelly, and ! I definitely relate to a lot of the things you've said: so many people I know are now trying to feed me things that are loaded with fat and sugar just because I'm "thin now" and when I turn it down, they just don't get it and ask, "Why not? It's not like you're FAT or something, so you're off your diet, right?" And your bchy MIL sounds just like my SIL... to the T! I lost weight and she got fatter, she was totally unsupportive, and now she wants to start losing weight also! *rolling eyes* Anyway, of COURSE you are welcome here... post any time.

Wendalyn - training wheels ...training wheels on my bike would have to be awfully large, and just picturing it is making me giggle a little You're a biker chick, eh? That's AWESOME. I want to get a motorcycle eventually. In the meantime, I will just pose on other people's motorcycles, instead! Ha.

Allison - I remember you told me about your brother hitting a pothole... Ouch! That is really sad about his friend. I think that little story really made me make sure I bought a helmet yesterday. It's terrifying to think of what could have happened to me if I hit my head. I got lucky.

Allison, I agree that walking should give me more energy. I'm excited about that!

Baffled, I can't run because I had a few little scares after running in the early weeks. The doctor says running is not a good idea for me, unfortunately. I definitely miss it, but it's ok!

Jessica, good job with the weight loss!

Everyone else, hi and have a great day!

Hey Nite,
Geesh girl, don't you know your holy jeans are to be worn only on SUNDAYS to church!

Welcome Kelly, we always love it when people join the group. None of my in-law family has said boo about my weight loss either. I have a difficult time with my MIL and would hate it if she were to join a group that I'm in. It's enough that we have to socialize with her at the yacht club in addition to weekly dinners.

Shane - I'm glad you weren't hurt and that you got yourself a helmet. My DH needs one if he's going to start biking to the train station again once his collarbone is healed from his bad bicycle accident. He was very lucky not to get a neck or head injury after going over his handbars.

The scale went down another pound today! So I'm only one pound away from getting back to goal. It's all due to my stopping eating sugar after all the holiday treats. I was worried that the new med I'm on which has a side effect of weight gain.

My jeans fit much better then they did 3 pounds heavier. My weight always goes to my lower half.

Now that the heavy rain has sub-sided, I'm going to scoot out the door and make the 2 hour drive up to our apartment. We're heading into NYC tonight for dinner and a show. Then we're going to a Blues dance/house warming party on Saturday. Everyone has to bring some type drink container - a glass, a coffee mug, a beer stein - to use at the party and then leave behind for the hostess to keep. She wants to the containers to have some special meaning to her guests so she will think of them when she drinks from them. We're bringing a pair of pewter ale mugs with our yacht club burgee on them.

Sunday night I start a set of basic West Coast Swing dance lessons again. It's a complicated dance and I've been getting many comments from the guys I dance with on Wednesday nights that I need to work on my technique, especially my 'connection' which is the amount of tone and tension in my arms.

Shane! I just popped in here 'cause I hadn't seen you posting for awhile outside of this forum, and what do I find!!??? You better be wearing that helmet, young lady! Mom is gettin' cross here!!

Jay

Hi everyone,

I just made a wasted trip to my gym, I didn't know it closes at 8PM on Friday nights. The rest of the week it stays open til 1AM. I may just walk on my treadmill at home tonite. Really all I had planned on doing was stairstepper and swimming anyway cause my muscles need to rest again after my workout yesterday.

I had a horrible time with insomnia last night. I figure it's the stress over this dang dog situation. Everything else in life seems to be pretty calm around here right now.

My son is going tomorrow to spend 2 days with his bio dad. I'm sure Gary will ask Shane his usual question "is your mom still fat?" (the last time he actually saw me I was about 230 lbs).

Kim, that is great that your child loves veggies. My son will eat pretty much any veggie, but my daughter is quite the opposite. I thought I was the only one here that loves asparagus but I learned Shelbey loves it too.

I mentioned to DH on Tuesday that my dryer door hinge was messed up and it kept popping open. Yesterday was laundry marathon day and I noticed DH had fixed the dryer, He had duct taped it! I could have done that much myself, LOL. In my next life I'm gonna pick a husband that knows how to fix stuff, instead of one that just looks pretty!

Gotta go walk my dogs again, so hope everyone has a good night.

I can't believe it's 10:00 pm here and I'm just now getting a moment to sit down and surf! I'm so happy with myself that when I had some time this morning I put it to use at the gym instead of putting that off until this evening...I'm not sure I would have squeezed it in, or at least not as much time as I did this morning. I'm also sitting here thinking, "Hmmm, maybe I could hit that elliptical over on the other side of the room for 15-20 minutes." That's an NSV of a totally new kind for me, I've never contemplated working out twice in one day, even if it is for only a few minutes!

I'm still trying to keep everyone straight, but it's getting there!

Tomorrow morning is the dreaded WW meeting. This is the first one that I haven't looked forward to and I need to get past this mindset that my MIL is going to taint it for me. Wish me luck!

Stay strong everyone! I'm just starting the maintenance learning process and I look at all of your posts for ideas and motivation. You haven't let me down, so thanks!

I hope that in my next reincarnation I never have to encounter repairmen who use (A) duct tape for everything, (B) caulk guns for everything.

Jay

Hi Finally - after 10 pm - I have a chance to pop in.

On the good side: my DH got home last night, well this morning, about 1 am. He said that the cat and I were dead to the world, and he dozed on the couch as he was still on the wrong time zone. Lily - next time I want one who likes to go dancing - I have the repairman.

On the not-so-good side: work was a day from he$$. Gosh it just got worse all day. Started with an 8 am meeting, and went from there. At one point this afternoon I was crawling into an old trailer -that's stored in a storage yard - and it's zero degrees out - and has no stairs to the front door. And it was FILTHY! inside. Yuck, yuck, yuck. It belongs to the city and someone had the great idea we could use it for an office/pilots' lounge at the airport. Um, absolutely not. Then we went and looked at some empty space in a building on the airport property. Much better, but it has no bathroom. Sigh. Then I had 2 reports due, which I finished about 5:15, and I still have a disciplinary letter which needs to be finished on Wed., but I still have a couple people to interview about their dealings with this employee. I am sooo glad it's the weekend!

Tomorrow we're going to Anchorage with another couple for a full afternoon class of advanced square dancing (gosh, I feel like Carolyn, talking about dance lessons - I love it!) The other gal and I were both surprised our DHs agreed to go. I think it'll be fun.

I think I'm off to bed. DH and the cat are there.....