Yesterday ended up less than I had anticipated too, Jessica. Love it when that happens, esp if you're satisfied with what you ate.

B - oatmeal (.5 cup dry), with 1/3 cup 1% milk, 1/8 cup raisins, 7 walnut halves, tbsp brown sugar

S - 4 oz Dannon "all natural" blueberry yogurt; ff latte (to get me through a 2 hour dept head meeting)

L - spinach salad with red peppers, avocado, ff refried black beans, ff sour cream/salsa dressing, low-carb ww tortilla

S - ? I have some natural applesauce in my desk if I don't get by the store for something fresh

D - the challenge. Meeting friends - including one visiting from FL - at a local Greek/Italian place. My plan is to order the chef's salad with oil/vinegar on the side. It has turkey, ham, hb egg, and a little bit of cheese. It is all iceberg lettuce, sigh, but on the whole should be fine. I figure you have to balance life out....

To be fair, we have very few restaurants in town. The Greek/Italian, a Mexican, a Chinese, a vegetarian (soup, salad, bread), plus an "international" buffet at one hotel, and a regular American coffee shop menu at the other, plus a couple of fast food places: Subway, McD's, Taco Bell, and a DQ Grill under construction. Oh and there's another "basic American" type place out on the highway. For good or bad, we have no chain restaurants, though they're building an Applebee's about 10-12 miles from here.

Hi everyone,

Hope you don't mind me just jumping into this thread. I'm trying to tackle my weight gain with a combination of "back to basics" and reminding/re-training my brain about a few bad habits I've returned to since I started maintenance 2 years and 4 months ago. Here's what I'm telling myself:
- get enough sleep! - besides helping the body metabolize correctly, when I'm not cranky I make much better decisions about food & exercise
- 5 days of some type of 1-hour cardio a week, 2 of weightlifting - and yes, my body loses a lot more when it's high intensity, like running, duh
- must go back through my "healthy" recipe collection and start cooking for myself, don't rely on take out no matter how much BF likes it (really he isn't to blame - he will happily eat anything I cook and when he's cooking he will readily take my suggestions for healthier meals, so I shouldn't use him as an excuse)
- work conferences, vacations, and staff meeting are not a good enough reason to eat that doughnut, etc. I used to be able to resist this stuff. I need to start again!
-Stop lying to myself about what my "losing" range is, keep a food journal, stick to my calories, and STOP TAKING BLTs. I've been writing down (most of) what I eat, but too often I'm just not filling out my journal, or writing down my poor choices after the fact and shrugging and saying "oh well" - where's the accountability in that?
-eating dessert every day and eating a 400 calorie breakfast in one sitting at 7am are not inalienable rights - i need to spread my food out a bit to help me feel full all day, so I eat less

Well that's a start, anyway. I ate 1760 calories Monday (there's my high cal day for the week) but only 1215 Tuesday. Food is good so far today. Lots of high fiber, lean protein, fruits & veggies, water, and I've been to the gym for two days in a row now.

Pat, my local place's chef salad comes with way too much "stuff" on it. I usually ask for no cheese (they put what must be a cup of the really salty, processed, shredded stuff on it!), and will divide the rest of the meat & hb egg into 2 servings. They are so yummy, though! Enjoy your meal out. You have a lot more restaurants in your town than mine!

Jessica, I love it when you eat less than you thought!

Mmm, makes me think of twizzlers...I'll have to go make some Crystal Light now!

OK back to maintenance...whew!

Oh my Pat - that sounds like my town. We have 2 pizza. 3 bars with food (hamburger, fries, fish and chips), 2 "upscale bars" (expensive version of the above + cheap steak & ribs) 2 mexican & 3 (icky) chinese plus DQ, McD's , quiznos & a local fastfood place. about 20 miles away is the sit down stuff like applebees.

I guess we have MANY places, but they all serve the same food! Nothing with any healthy choices

LOL about the restaurants. After growing up in LA I feel like Indianapolis is a small town, but it's nothing compared to that!

I think I'm going to go back over my food entries from this week and try to calculate calories for each of them, to see what I've been eating... I'm starting to think that I am actually eating in a losing range during the week, and it's my weekend screwups that are preventing me from losing.

Exactly the problem! And I should consider what Megan says and take a good look at how much "stuff" is on the salad before I dig in! Easier to remove it from sight than to stop eating....

LOL Here we can get a pizza at THE gas station. Not alot of variety.

Hey, my gas station has pizza too! It's actually pretty good...er....not that I know from personal experience (liar! yes I do!). We've got 2 pizza places, plus the gas station, 2 subways, 1 burger king, and about a dozen seafood/burger/steak joints that fry about everything, and everything comes with fries and hush puppies (some have a pathetic-looking iceberg salad if you ask to substitute, with limited dressing choices), 2 "nicer" restaurants that are yuuummy but not as good for your waist. That's why I like eating at home.

Jessica, I have lots of trouble on the weekends, especially since I work Mon-Fri so am home more (=more access to food) on the weekends, and the gym is closed on Sunday and only open until 1:00 on Saturday. It's definitely worth calculating out your calories to see how you're doing. How about we both try to stick with our plans this weekend?

Yesterday went well. I went to the gym after work and actually ran a few miles, and walked a few at a higher pace than I've been doing. Ate leftovers of my lightened version of Pad Thai w/ tofu, and artichoke for dinner.

Today's plan:
B - Fiber one, skim milk, banana, coffee w/ 1 Tbsp h&h
S? - peach
L - pita bread w/ turkey, carrots & celery, ff yogurt or string cheese
S - peach? & plum
gym - either run/walk or elliptical for 1 hour
after gym snack - ff yogurt or string cheese
D - not sure yet...possibly lean turkey burger on lt. wheat bun, sauteed zucchini & squash
D - sf ff jello if I want it

Megan, I'll give it a shot! I will probably have one "cheat" this weekend because I did that when I was losing too and can't manage to survive the weekend without it, but the trick is going to be to keep it to ONLY ONE TREAT. Not, like, five.

Wednesday:
B - raisin bran (200) w/skim milk (85)
S - apple (150)
L - another sloppy joe (338)
S - banana (105), green beans (30)
S - few swigs of OJ (45)
D - spaghetti (197) and meatballs (turkey meatballs w/sauce, 300)
S - big spoonful of PB (210)

Total: 1660
Exercise: I walked a lap around my office building, does that count?

It's going to be a challenge not to snack today, that's for sure. I just unpacked my lunch and my fiance gave me such a tiny portion of leftover spaghetti and meatballs that I know I will still be hungry afterward. There's like 1/4 C of spaghetti in there and two meatballs (my usual serving is 1 C spaghetti and 3-4 meatballs). Plus we were running low on fruit, so instead of three pieces of fruit I have a banana, an apple, and a slice of bread.

Our little town here has a Pizza place and a Sonic and one home-town cafe that closes up each day after lunch. So, we eat at home every day. Even the cafe doesn't have any healthy food options except Oats or a salad.

I've been logging all my food in Fitday and sticking to my plan calorie-wise. The highest I've had was 1600 cal's and lowest was 1175. My wt. is finally back down to what my ticker says. My exercise has been great with lots of swiming and lots of walking. I have even been doing leg exercises and push ups and some arm exercises with weights.

I love this post! I reached 135 (my goal then) for my wedding a year ago. Then, like most other newleyweds, I began to take on my husbands eating habits. He is about 6'3 180lbs and must have the metabolism of a hummingbird! So the lbs came creeping back on and I found myself looking at a 149 on the scale. This was not acceptable! I am now back down to 134 and have set a new goal of 115, now that I realize it is okay to have different eating habits than my husband and he is so totally supportive.

Thanks for the post, and remember, we all know how to get back to goal, we've done it before!!

Good luck all

There are homemade scones staring at me from the coffee table, but I don't need one! I'm trying to think about the sugar low I'll get if I eat one. Bah. Don't need it.

Thursday
b - whole wheat toast, light jam, ICBINB spray, sk milk, coffee w/ 1 tbsp h&h
s - banana
l - wh wheat pita w/ turkey, lettuce, & hummus, carrots, celery, plum
s - peach, light yogurt
d - ? i'm going to try to talk bf into eating a weight watchers chicken cattiatore recipe...
Hopefully I'll get around 1400-1500 calories today.

I stuck to my plan yesterday and had 1188 cal (1200 is the lowest I'll go on a low cal day - doesn't happen often but I'm shooting for 2-3x/week right now to lose). Woo! I also went to the gym and was sooo tired, but I still ran and walked (and went to bed early last night so I wouldn't be so tired today).

Jessica, you're right, one indulgence is ok, not five! Having a treat is such a slippery slope for me - one just immediately becomes 5. I think I will try to have one higher cal (~18-2000 cal) day this weekend, not think of it as a "treat" day (I try to cycle calories - keeps me from getting too hungry).

Lily, all the swimming & other exercise sounds great. WTG!

Lisa, welcome to the oh !@#$ thread. We can do it!

Pat, did you have a nice dinner with your friends?

Thursday:
B - multigrain cheerios (135) w/blueberries (8) and skim milk (85)
S - apple (150)
L - small portion of spaghetti (60) and meatballs (175)
S - slice of bread (110), banana (105)
D - cooking light quick & easy pansit (chicken/noodle dish), about 1.5 servings? (450)
S - 1/4C raisins (100), slice of ww toast (110) w/1tsp tub margarine (26), swig of OJ (15)

Total: 1529
Exercise: 35 mins elliptical (total body crossramp, cross-training program)