Good job Allison and Andrea!!

Saef-- I hope you're on the mend now.

I blew all of my gains (or losses) yesterday. I did a double workout as I wanted to get my 200th bikram class for the year done. So, after spin and bikram I was down over 3 pounds from my morning weight.

However, dh and I went to PF Changs. I ordered well but still ate too much (plus sodium of course). Then I talked dh into going to this new ice cream place where you choose your homemade cookie flavors and ice cream flavors (for a sandwich). It was amazing (I haven't had any dessert in months!) but dh just can't tolerate ice cream anymore so he said he NEVER will go again.

Scale was up a pound from yesterday. Oh well.....

Great minds, Andrea! Thanks. I had got out my notebook yesterday to do a bit of tracking just in case it might shed more light. My pattern is quite the opposite of yours as I eat a good breakfast and can/should then eat progressivelt less through the day. Unless bored or annoyed.

Becky

Michele, why can't your DH tolerate ice cream any more? None of us can either (too sweet, too artificial in taste).

Allison, congrats! Just tell us the downward movements and occasional fluctuations up. I'm not broadcasting my weight either: it's never been at all helpful in the past.

Saef, be well. Yoghurt, perhaps, to replace the good bacteria?

Suspect lactose intolerance that many folks develop as they age. It upsets his stomach terribly.

I'm worried about him otherwise too. He's been back from China for two weeks and has just been exhausted. He does very well with jet lag and recovers in a couple days so it's not that. He was exposed to someone with TB in China, so he has an appointment with the doc for Tuesday for a TB test and exam. For him to proactively set up the appointment means he really doesn't feel right. I'm trying not to be a worrier and think the worst.

Congratulations !

Finally recovering. It takes a couple days. Sheesh, I can't believe that I went through not just one, but two bouts of sickness, just because I didn't figure it out about the soup.

I feel like I wasted a week of beautiful weather by being indoors, ill & oblivious.

Bargoo, I write this while thinking of you: I am not used being hampered by my body. I take it for granted usually & tend to ask even more of it -- that it do exceptional things -- it's strange to just want normality, the ordinary day-to-day functioning, and to rejoice when that seems like it's being gradually restored.

And of course, I have so much work to do, waiting around for me because I was running on half-power -- I'm picking up an assignment for one member of my department who moved onto another job within our company, and I'm taking on another for a direct report who was sidelined by personal issues during one of her busiest seasons.

I need six-day week. Or a quiet day in about the middle of the week.

WOW is there ever a lot of sodium in Chinese food. I don't think I every really paid much attention, and just figured the scale would be up a pound or so the morning after a Chinese meal. Well, I checked out the nutrition pages of PF Chang's a few days ago (because I thought that's where we were going for dinner, though we ended up elsewhere) and got a huge surprise. Calories were about what I expected, but dear G-d, the sodium counts! One dish (can't remember which now) had nearly 4 GRAMS, and virtually nothing had under 1 gram. Then, tonight, I made dinner with a Chinese friend, as her sous-chef in return for her teaching me. The label on the soy sauce bottle said 1080 mg of sodium per Tbsp, and she must have put 4 Tbsp into a single dish (that served 4) and then added a tsp. or two of additional pure salt. I think she would have added more if I didn't start visibly blanching, and commenting on how bad that was for you. I didn't even say anything about the 1/4 c. of peanut oil she used to stir-fry first the chicken, then, a second 1/4 c. of oil to stir-fry the veggies and peanuts that got mixed in with the chicken. After watching her make it (and 3 other dishes), I could barely eat any of it; put the smallest amounts I could manage without walking away from the dinner table still starving. I remember reading about how healthy Chinese food was in several different diet books. Either their idea of "healthy" is very different from mine, or there is a great deal of variation in how much salt and oil Chinese people use when they cook.

Sure enough, when I weighed this morning, I was right back to my pre-Yom Kippur fast weight. This is going to be a long haul :>(

I've been complaining about this for years: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/bu...ss.html?src=me

I finally got on the scale. The number I thought I was going to see was 140+. I came in at 139.6. My breast size and belly roll usually indicate how much weight I've put on. So I know my own body pretty well.

No excuses here. I've been eating without thinking about it. Particularly in the evening. Reacting to all the past year's events.

And to DH. I won't go into it here - we have the usual issues magnified by the reno and by the upcoming move. He's pigging out every night and I'm finding that to be justification for me to do the same.

I will reset by cutting out the $%^& energy drinks (they are the opposite of energizing for me in the long run) and by eating my measured 1 cup of cherries and 1/2 cup of low fat yogurt in the evening. Period.

Dagmar

I haven't weighed myself in several weeks. I will do it tonight...maybe tomorrow night. The past few weeks since I got back from vacation have been a whirlwind of work stress and vicious PMS, and I know it will show on the scale.

Neurodoc: I absolutely concur with that article. Dieting does make me "dumber" - my mental bandwidth is already exceeded and adding that constant running nutritional tally does not help. What an interesting concept.

I managed to pull this day out of the dumpster. Two years ago it would have sent me running for the big box of cookies at the grocery, followed by a "chaser" of Haagen Daaz.

The days events "drumroll please":

9 a.m. Go to the new house. Find the flooring guy sitting in his truck eating a sandwich. he can't proceed due to a number of factors. Call DH and ask him to come down and see to it. He grumbles but is willing.

11 a.m. Take 5 dogs to the off leash area. When unleashed 3 of them sprint to where there is a 30 lb. rotting salmon carcass in the sand. The fluffy golden retriever rolls in it - both sides of his face and neck before I descend on him, bellowing like Jake Lamotta. Then, as I'm running after him (with 65 lb. lab on leash running beside me trying to jump and bite me) to leash his stinking now considerably less golden hide, I look back and big black Tex is peeing on the fish carcass. I grab the stinking golden and see that Stella (yellow lab) is now preparing to roll on the rotten fish and Tex's marking urine. ARRRRGH! The scariest Dagmar in the world manages to stop Stella. The other lab (on leash) picks that moment to bite me in the thumb.

There are clouds of steam now coming out my ears .

I get everyone on leash and hitch them to a post. I walk away, $%^#& running through my brain. I get them back to the car and the golden is stinking so badly that, even after a good dousing with marigold spray (the only thing I have in the car), my eyes are stinging all the way to his home and several of the other dogs in the car are sneezing and hanging out the wide open windows.

I manage to calm down by the time I come to the last house. Open the door and . . . the alarm is beeping away. OH SH*T!

I did manage to recover my equilibrium, do all the remaining walks, and then went down to the beach with a shovel and a big industrial garbage bag to deal with the fish carcass.

I am going to eat my bowl of cherries and yogurt and call it a night.

Dagmar

Sorry Dagmar but I had to laugh. Hopefully it will be funny to you one day far far in the future!

It never takes long for the dog stuff to be funny michele. It was pretty comical last night when I told DH about my day. He sits at a desk with a computer and a telephone so my "adventures" are always good for a laugh.

The trick for me is to see them as funny when they are happening and relax into them, rather than getting . I think that will be a goal for most of my other life as well - "relax Dagmar, it's not the world ending".

Dagmar

I lost 2.5 lbs between yesterday and today. All I did differently was eat my bowl of cherries in the evening and then stop. That's why I don't weigh daily - the fluctuations are too nerve-wracking . It's not "real" weight loss.

I will weigh daily for this week to kick-start the diet process and because I won't have a scale for the next 11 days afterwards due to dogsitting.

Dagmar :

I jumped on the scale after a week-long hiatus; the news was actually pretty good for not having many data points. Last week's average (a single day, Monday) was 151.0, and this morning after a week in the north country - danged if that random number generator didn't produce that 149.0 that I've been longing to see! I only have tomorrow to average it with for this week, and then I'm off to Florida to enjoy some sunshine and waterparks. I have been, for me, hyper-aware of my food choices because there have been a lot of restaurant meals and fast-food type stuff (Jimmy Johns, Subway).

I am back at work and horrendously swamped. Hope to find some time to do some personals before I leave again - it's been busy around here! If not, I will catch up with everyone next week.

Becky Enjoy the sun and water!

Dagmar