The DB and I are n France for a few days. = restaurant food, etc but I'm doing quite well. I've decided again (I seem to check every few years) that I don't like ice-cream. So that's OK despite there being an extraordinary "glacier" here. I was happy just to look at the colours. I've also just left half a plate of frites (? French fries). Exercise has been walking and a strenuous round of 18-hole crazy golf. And my posture is improving again, thank goodness.

Bonsoir tout le monde.

"don't like ice cream". SB, what language is that? I completely failed to understand that sentence. Glad you stopped by and are doing so well!

Weight blip all the way back up, despite an honest 1450 calories yesterday, and 1600 or less since Monday. I had lunch out, and suspect a hidden food coloring. Eh. Will persevere and chug water.

Is it strange that even though I do like ice cream that I can go months without it and not feel deprived? But try to go a day without cheese or some carb-y food and I go insane?

I didn't really understand the "do not like ice cream" comment either. If I didn't like ice cream, I might not have found myself 50 pounds overweight (that plus my all time favorite food-- M&Ms). Now I never eat M&Ms and the only ice cream I have is the occasional frozen yogurt. Sigh....

Woke up with a massive headache today and runny eyes-- thinking it's allergies. Need to kick it though so I don't give myself ANOTHER excuse not to exercise.

I don't understand anyone not liking any dessert. I don't think I've ever met a dessert I didn't like. Although to be fair, I am no longer tempted by the packaged baked goods you can buy in gas station convenience stores.

Feet still sore from the cortisone injections. They seem to be improving at least so hopefully the injection soreness will go away soon and the cortisone will take effect. My left foot is still visibly swollen where it got injected. I called the endocrinologist's office to see if my labs were back yet but they said since they only had some of the results they had to wait for the remaining ones to come in before telling me anything. I made sure that they will call me even if the labs are all normal but I'm not a fan of waiting. I think it's taking a long time because he added a test for a rare growth hormone problem which probably has to be sent out to a specialty lab. I wish they could tell me the results they already have though!

I wish I didn't love ice cream... Sadly, I love it so much more in the last two years than I did the rest of my life...

DH and I discussed my plans...I'm diving in...We're going to do a month of Medifast if nothing more than to kickstart a loss so I can feel some success to keep at it. Wish me luck!

Yesterday I spent my entire day shoveling everything sugary in sight into my face, all day binge. I woke up feeling disappointed that I had gone up 1 kg overnight, but also with a mighty craving for sugar that did not feel related. No idea what it could "mean," I haven't had TOM in a couple months but it's normal for me since when off the pill I have extremely irregular periods. I am pretty sure I'm not pregnant, so what gives? This is gross.

Good luck, alinnell! As you know from the Regainers thread, I'm with you!

Jay

alinnell - best of luck with the jump start! Keep us fully informed ... I'm curious to hear how this works for you!

krampus - ugh, sorry to hear the sugar monster returned. Be strong! On the other front ... well, it never hurts to check and find out for sure, right? Could stress from wondering about that be triggering the unproductive food desires?

Jessica - I remember getting a steroid shot in my shoulder way back in the tendinitis days ... had to lie down cuz I almost passed out from the pain! The stuff does seem to work, though. Hear ya on the lab results, but maybe it's just because the whole set gives a better picture? That way they don't have to backpedal on a diagnosis, if any?

TM - sympathies on the allergy front. The massive amounts of rain has caused all sorts of blooming misery. My spouse has been taking butterbur/rosmarinic acid supplements in the fall for his seasonal allergies, and believes it helps him quite a bit. Here's info: http://search.lef.org/cgi-src-bin/Ms...R%20allergy%20 .

Still up, still puffy. I noticed a move downward in the body fat % - maybe the three days of heavy labor outside influenced things. Don't know. I'm stubbornly sticking to plan.

THe way I look at it, if I'm paying to do it (cost of food for a month is about $250) then I'll be a bit more motivated to stick to it. And if the month is successful, the drop in weight will be motivation to keep at it whether I continue with their program or move to my own. And with DH doing it with me, there is less temptation to cheat.

Good luck Allison! I'll be curious to see how it goes too.

Krampus-- hugs. I hope you can scare away the sugar monster. I try not to let him rear his ugly head around here!

Krampus, it couldn't hurt to take a pregnancy test if you there there's any chance you might be.

My weight is down today. Calories have been under 1600 but not at 1400 where I want them. I think weight is only down since I haven't been able to exercise and I'm losing muscle mass. Got another call from the endo, labs so far are all normal. Feet still hurt from the injections. Wrists getting worse again. I called the tailbone doctor to see if I can stop taking the NSAIDs since I think they're making things worse. This is really stressing me out because I feel like something is wrong with me but nobody can figure out what it is. Why do I not heal from tendon injuries? Why are none of the medications or treatments effective? Now I'm stuck in a limbo where I have so many things hurting that I can't do much of anything, and all the doctors are telling me is come back in 3 months.

Allison, good luck with medifast!

Well, here I am in South Beach, Miami, where no one around me seems to actually be eating the South Beach Diet way. I came on Thursday to attend a conference, and will be heading back to MI tomorrow morning. It's an interesting place, full of energy and tourists, and a ridiculous number of restaurants. I have no idea how many calories I'm consuming in some of the foods I've eaten (e.g., grilled fish tacos in some kind of mayonaise-ish sauce, encased in a small corn tortilla) so I can only pray that by limiting portions and eating mostly salad/veggies for lunch, I'm keeping the calorie count below 2000. Oh well, it's only 3 days.

Krampus, is the sugar binge done now, or has it continued? Sometimes, when I have a really bad day like that, I have to ease back off the sugar/carbs over 2-3 days because when I try to cold-turkey, it just triggers another binge 24 hours later...here's hoping you've kicked it.

Jessica, I' m sorry you seem to be in such pain all over. Try to take comfort that you are unlikely to lose pounds of muscle mass in just a week or two, so a weight loss probably represents true fat loss. As for something being really wrong, I hope not. As you know, I'm a doctor. I've been pondering your set of symptoms which seem to boil down to small joint pain (sacrum feet and wrists, if I have it right), and no diagnoses "jump out" at me either, though the Mixed Connective Tissue Disease label is the one that makes the most sense if you have a +ANA or ENA. If not, well, you may have a series of "overuse" symptoms from exercising vigorously. In the former case, the dreaded prednisone is very effective at treating the pain (though you don't want to stay on it longer than you have to). In the latter case you mostly have to be patient and lay off the exercises that caused the problem.

Alinell, is Medifast where you replace 2 meals a day with a nutritional drink? If so, how does that square with your "need to eat carb-y things" every day?

Neruo, thanks. I was tested for ANA a few years ago by a rheumatologist and it was negative, not sure if ENA was ever tested. At the moment I'm thinking this may all have been from the NSAIDs. I talked with the tailbone doctor's office on Friday and they said if they weren't helping I could stop taking them, and they're going to schedule me in to see him sooner. I'm suspecting the NSAIDs because things started going downhill after I went to the doctor for my initial problems in January and got prescribed the NSAIDs for the first time. (Well, she gave me a steroid dosepack for 1 week first which made me feel much better, but then transitioned to NSAIDs after the dosepack was done.)

They've basically had me on one form or another of them since then and things just seem to stay the same or get worse. My dad can't take NSAIDs since he has a sensitivity that caused kidney damage when they gave them to him years ago, so while my kidneys are fine maybe I just have some kind of bad reaction to them. I also found a study that suggested there may be an interaction between NSAIDs and thyroid hormones, and in the past getting on the right thyroid meds was what fixed my joint pain so maybe it's just getting screwed up again. My thyroid labs were still in the normal range but just barely.

In any case, I stopped the NSAIDs, started taking a multivitamin (since that certainly can't hurt anything), and am hoping for the best. I'm considering also going off of birth control just to cut down the number of medications that might be doing anything negative to my system, but I would want to talk to my OBGYN before changing that. Feeling a bit better since stopping those pills on Friday so I'm hoping that was the whole problem. We'll see what the tailbone guy says. If the injections end up working for my feet, maybe I will go ahead with the tailbone cortisone injection too.