Hi Jessica! (Interesting typo, when I typed out your name, I typed "Jessi can" space and everything, take it as you will)

Also, I just want to say how awesome you guys are and that I love how active and supportive this little group is.

Btw, traveling these next few days (I'll be home Wednesday night). Tuesday I'm designating as a "cheat" day, a "free" day, whatever you want to call it... because potlucks are such a crap shoot, so I won't be logging on Tuesday. Monday and Wednesday we'll be on the road all day, and I've decided to limit our fast food stops to sub shops and Arby's.

Welcome Jessica and Happy Monday to all!!!!

I hope everyone had a great weekend! I had a rough start to my morning....overslept, discovered I have poison ivy, flipped an entire bottle of calamine lotion all over my bathroom and I'm heading into TOM for the end of the week.... regardless of that and the oppressive heat and humidity I'm feeling great. I'm not letting the rough starts get me down anymore because honestly this is my life... it's messy and hectic and I need to learn to roll with it in a more positive way! I've got an awesome salad for lunch, I'm going to make up my missed early morning workout this afternoon and make the rest of the day an awesome monday.

I've got some great projects that I've finally started working on which is all really focused on healthy food, eating and exercise and I think that is totally helping me boost my mood and drive. I am am really into gardening and homesteading and cooking from scratch (despite my work days being spent in a major city in commercial entertainment) and last year we bought a house in the middle of the state with a huge yard with garden visions and earlier this year we tore down a big above ground pool and I've been staring at this empty sand pit for about 2 months. I finally had some time to start getting to work on the area which I am going to be turning into a massive garden. Needless to say that sand shoveling has become my summer version of snow shoveling trying to clear it all! It is hard heavy labor but great exercise! I'm also starting to get my recipes all in order and start using them.... I have a ton of digitally saved recipes that I never use now that they are trapped in my computer....it's a nice idea cooking from an ipad but the reality is more like a sauce smear on a $600 piece of technology because my screen goes to sleep before I can get to the next measurment. I've also got stacks of cooking light magazines waiting for me to cut out and organize my favorites.

All and all it feels good to finally have some time to work on these projects that have been piling up and stressing me out and I love that they are helping me focus on healthy eating and exercise in a way that is enjoyable for me and not just obsessive calorie counting during the daily grind!

Hi all. Well, good weigh in today. Not quite as good as I expected, but that's ok. Not that far off either. I'll just keep up with scale obsession for awhile. I'm pretty happy with where I am right now, overall. I would love for the weight to just fall off in one big lump, but I know that it won't happen like that. Just need to keep taking it one day at a time.

Kind of in a flux right now with my workouts. I have to make a decision on the Friday class. I found out my favorite spin instructor will be teaching the MOI spin classes on Friday. I thought he wasn't, so I was going to make a change to BodyFlow. They do have a BodyFlow class on Saturday, right after the other MOI spin class. I don't know if I want to do both, or just one or the other. I'm overthinking it. But, that's what I do.

Uber: That is so great about your weight loss! You are so close to breaking through that 260 barrier. I know you can do it and then you'll start that downward trend on the scale!!

SunnyMac: Wow, that's quite a project with putting in the garden. I think that's great! Shoveling sand isn't a fun thing, but once you can start rebuilding it, that will be awesome!

Jessica: Welcome! This is a great group of supporters so I think you'll enjoy being a part of it all!

Mandy: Hope you have a great trip! I think you should enjoy that potluck. Nothing better than a good church people potluck!!!

Have a great week everyone!

So much support! So much activity.

Mandy - I will be rooting for you and your husband as you go into this next stage of the interview process. Hope you love the community as much as I am sure they will love you, and that you settle into a routine that will support your life goals as well as your weight goals (which are pretty inextricably tied together, at least in my world).

SunnyMac - I love when the things that I want to do coincide with the things I need to do. Would love to see pics of the garden progress. What a great goal and great motivator.

Jessica - So great to have you here! This is a welcoming and wonderful space for support. I can't wait to get to know you better and to cheer you on as your progress.

Martini - I so relate to the love/hate with the scale. I actually have done periods and achieved good success with not-weighing periods. The theory behind it is that I know if I am on plan, I will have success over time. The scale messes with my mind and can motivate me to either go super low on calories or want to give up and go super high on calories. I think these times have been very good for me.

Uber - It's so refreshing when food does not define our days. I hope that life is so good that you forget to eat more often. =) And, I know it's controversial, but I am not a believer in a calorie floor. Weight loss surgery is so effective for so many people, and most people right after the surgery are only ingesting 400-600 calories. That's a decent sized sandwich for most people. I am not an advocate of 500 calorie diets (largely because I don't like to watch my food intake closely enough to avoid malnutrition), but I don't think there's any harm in busy days that wind up super low cal.

LotusMama - Hope the out of town weekend was a success! Even if you went off plan (and who doesn't from time to time?), I hope you had a good time and learned some stuff. And thanks for the words of support on trainer boy.

And Diane - You are a paragon of consistency and hard work. I love reading about your exercise exploits. And I get the whole scale obsession. The first time I lost about 100 pounds, I became obsessed with the scale, and had to challenge myself to weigh only once a day. It was a great tool, but the second time I lost a significant amount of weight (about 80 pounds two years ago, 40 of which are still gone!), I made specific goals to avoid the scale. It's total love/hate with me. But I did just buy a scale last Thursday, and plan to make it a part of my daily routine for now.

Had an interesting weekend. I went camping for the weekend with the husband and the stepsons. We also went to the amusement park. For the most part, it was really fun.

And the food thing was a nightmare. I resolved to eat as "normally" as possible, but I couldn't eat everything they were eating every time they ate, so I resolved to eat one big meal with them and eat a token amount at other meals. But he fed them dinner at 11 p.m. Twice. Okay. Deep breath. By 11 p.m., if I haven't eaten dinner, I would rather just skip it. Yesterday, I had saved calories so I could have a "normal" dinner, so I was very low on calories that day. And at 11 p.m. last night when we stopped at McDonald's, I just decided to skip it. The younger one said, "I don't know how you can make it when you didn't eat breakfast or lunch or dinner." When I reminded him that I had eaten lunch with them (no one ate breakfast), he said, "Yeah, but you didn't eat very much." Sigh. So much for "normal" and wanting to avoid an 8yo discerning my food issues. It would have been different if I had actually wanted to eat with them (or realized the younger one was noticing something askew). But 11 p.m. McDonald's just did not sound even slightly appealing. Ongoing issue.

On the bright side, trainer boy was in my mind this weekend when I debated whether I should just chuck my goals and eat everything in sight. (I think everyone should do this sometimes, but I had a reckless weekend just last weekend, and I really struggle to get back on plan.) I had an active, relatively low-cal weekend that nonetheless included s'mores. I also decided to forgo the scale this morning. I didn't sleep until 2:30, and a low-sleep, sore-muscles morning can easily translate into an artificially high scale number, and I decided my tired mind did not need to be subjected to the "This number doesn't represent real gain. It's not impossible to lose weight." internal discussion this morning.

And, to add to an excessively long post, the thing that trainer boy said that I didn't post, but that kept popping into my mind this weekend. "You were coming to the gym for a while, and I said to myself, 'Laurie's looking good.', then you stopped coming, and look what happened." You know what, trainer boy? I have never and will never do this with the hope of looking good to you. More importantly, fat people are every bit as beautiful as thin people. Go spew your fatphobia elsewhere, please.

Jessica: Welcome! If you are looking for an active and supportive little group, this is the place! I find it so much easier to do this with support (as you can see from my FREQUENT posts, lol).

Sunny: Hooray for gardening! I've never had a garden before, but right now, I'm living in SoCal and there was this huge garden all ready to be planted. I have to admit that I spend most of my time sitting on my butt on the couch writing while my DH does most of the heavy work, but for the last few days, I've been able to fill half of our plates with food from the garden, and it is SUCH a great feeling!!! You are so right that there has to be some joy in all of this. It can't all be about SLOGGING.

Mandy: Have a great trip! My potluck strategy is to take whatever I want, but only fill up the plate once. No matter how yummy, you just can't do much damage with one plateful of food.

Diane: Good luck deciding which spin class to take. Your scale is looking GREAT. So happy for you that you are solidly into the 240s. It does feel like it takes forever... but you are just reaching the point where you are going to start to really get the payoffs for all this work... it seems like it takes forever to drop a size up in the 260s and 270s, but then all of sudden, you just start to look and feel so much littler! You are getting really close to that point.

So, pondering a bit what Mandy said, about food not being evil, I have been thinking about something regarding my own approach. I know there was a point during my last weight loss journey that I started to feel like I was punishing myself. I exercised even when I was tired. I avoided food even when I wanted it, instead of just eating it but trying to work it into my overall calorie count. The problem was that finally I just felt as if I had pushed myself TOO HARD. It felt like punishment instead of health-promoting behavior. I thought I had really figured things out last time-- but in the long run, I really hadn't. Because eventually, the thought occurred to me-- and the thought was "who cares? Do you really want to live like this...?" And I didn't have an answer to that question. I loved being thin(er) and fit. I loved how I looked and how I felt, but when I was completely overwhelmed, tired, stressed, and had way too much on my plate, I just thought to myself for god's sake woman-- eat the french fries already, enough is enough. So, I've got to find some kind of middle ground between "eat whatever you want all the time, hang the consequences..." and "be super careful around food, count every calorie like a nut job, beware one tiny little mistake might send you into a death spiral... etc." There MUST be a better way.

Thank you all so much for the incredibly warm welcome. This was just the sort of little group I was hoping to find again. Some background info... I've fought with my weight all my life. My poor self image can probably be traced directly to my mother telling me I was fat when I was in the 1st grade. I wasn't fat, I was taller and more developed than other girls my age. But when you're that young and someone you trust calls you fat, you believe them. And thus it started. I've lowered my weight to about 210 lbs several times in the last six or seven years. Unfortunately, my fear of being alone lead me to make some poor decisions, like marrying a man I knew didn't really love me. I found that when he wasn't around - he was military - I could lose weight, eat healthy and exercise without a problem. When he'd come home, the combination of his terrible eating habits, my feeling like he was judging me every time I worked out, and the stress that came with being married to a man who started cheating on me months into our marriage and only furthered my depression, anxiety - at one point he literally made me feel like I was going crazy - caused me to balloon. The last two years in particular was the worst. I don't know exactly how much I weighed in at at my heaviest, because we didn't have a working scale, but I know that it was at least 270 lbs.

In January, he dropped me at my father's house for a "visit" and proceeded to ignore me for about two months. Needless to say, I've since filed for divorce. My stress level has greatly diminished and I am finally able to live a lifestyle I enjoy again. Do I want to eat spinach? YES, I do and I can because it doesn't matter that he doesn't like it. He doesn't like Greek yogurt? Who cares! I don't have to make things for you anymore. I can take my dog for long walks. I can do pushups, planks, yoga, without you making snide comments. I've lost nearly 30 lbs since April 21st. I've lost 6.5 inches since July 1st alone. The fact is that I am finally free to be me again and I'm going to take that joy, that freedom and run with it.

Martini: Well, I've still got 0.2 lbs to hit 30 lbs, but I'll still take the praise now.

FeraFilia: I'll take that as I can do it. Personally, I don't like to think of things as "cheat" or "free". It's not a diet, it's a lifestyle change. It's something I firmly believe in and embrace. If you don't allow for the wiggle room for things like potlucks, all you're going to do is end up beating yourself up and feeling guilty. And that doesn't do anyone any good. So good luck with your road trip and potluck! Hope it'll be fun!

SunnyMac: Sauce smears on iPads. Lol. I don't have a lot of experience using them with cooking, but I can imagine that when the screen goes to sleep in the middle of recipe it can be a pain. I think replacing that sand pit with a garden is a fantastic idea! If I wasn't living with someone else, I'd definitely try to have one.

Slashnl: We all have those days where you have to remind yourself to take it one day at a time. I'm glad that you're happy with what you did lose even if it wasn't quite as much as you were hoping for. Sounds to me that with all the workouts you're doing, you're definitely going to be building some nice, lean muscle along the way.

LaurieDawn: You know what? It sounds to me like trainer boy is a real piece of work and you don't need that. I'm not going to a gym. I can't afford it. It doesn't mean that I'm not losing weight and toning up. I've spent my life with people making me feel worse about myself and believing that I'm not as beautiful as the next girl. When you run into someone who shames you, I say mentally punch them in the face and then remind yourself about all of your features that you love about yourself. I'll add this about your 11pm non-desire to eat fast food. I'm with you. In general, if someone mentions grabbing fast food to eat, my default reaction is "ugh". I do eat other things at 11pm, but I don't get home from work until 2am most days, lol.

ubergirl: That is what I think every person on this journey has to learn eventually. I know there are people out there who just cut things out completely - starch, sugar, what have you. That's not something I want to do. Ever. If someone asks me if I'm dieting, my answer will always be no. Dieting is temporary. What I am doing is living a lifestyle that I prefer. I like walking. I like swimming. I like eating healthy. Realistically, I don't enjoy fast food. Every once and a while, maybe. Like a Wendy's Berry Almond Salad maybe. But in general, I don't like it. I will admit that I am a calorie counter. I have to do it, not because I have a tendency to eat too much, but because, when I'm not careful, there will be days I don't even hit 1000 calories and we all know that's not healthy.

Mandy - It sounds like you have a good plan for eating over the next few days and that you're aware of the potential pitfalls with being on the road and the potluck and all that. You can't do anything more than that. Good luck with the interviews and have a safe trip!

SunnyMac - You're definitely making lemonade out of lemons, but maybe that's my inner city dweller talking.

Diane - Isn't that a pain with how the weight comes off at its own sweet pace? I have a... ahem... long history with being on a diet for a day or two and then looking into the mirror expecting to be 100lb lighter. Part of me still thinks like that, but at least now there's a countering voice in my head that knows better.

LaurieDawn - I know exactly what you're saying with your inner dialogue with that fat shaming **** trainer. When I hear negative comments on my weight from people, I tend to first get angry (&!$%%^#$#$ jerks!!) and then internalize what they said (yes, I am fat and lazy and etc). When I hear positive comments about my weight from people, I tend to get happy (yes, I am awesome!) and then I mentally discount what they said (I'm not as awesome as they think I am).

The only way that I've been able to deal with any of it is just to block everyone out. No exceptions. If someone thinks I'm attractive, fine. If someone thinks I'm ugly, fine. If someone wants to make a fat joke or a fatshaming comment, they're the ones who have to deal with the karmic fallout from peddling in that negativity. I won't engage in any of it and just continue on my merry way. It's hard because there's an element of shutting the world out, but it's still easier than having to try to hit the moving target that is other people's approval.

Uber - When you find that better way, please do let me know.

Jessica - How much did your husband weigh? Theoretically, you can make the argument that you've already lost something like 200lb with the divorce.

Oh, Martini I have lost about that much from the divorce alone! I try to constantly stay positive and look for the silver lining. When people say something, or give me a look that says what they're thinking, about how I look, I try to remind myself of at least three things I love about myself and the way I look. Usually, it's my eyes, my hair, and my breasts. I will say, though, trying to dig yourself out of a hole when you've been abandoned can put a damper on my positive outlook. Like the struggle to find a second job that I'm going through right now. I'm trying desperately to get to a point where I can make the ends maybe, possibly, sort of meet. Needless to say, it's not working out so well.

Just dropping in real quick to let y'all know we made it to our hotel in Indiana!

I was good today! I managed to keep calories to around 1500. We hit Arby's. I got *just* a sandwich (I LOVE the smokehouse brisket sandwich). I skipped fries (and that was hard, Arby's has such good fries!), got ice water, and had a 100 calorie pack of pringles instead. And for my sweet treat after I had a 100 calorie pack of special k brownie bites. Not the most healthy eats, but better than fries, a turnover, and a milkshake.

No logging tomorrow. I might just indulge a bit and enjoy it. I haven't really had a no logging day in several weeks. I'm so iffy though, because I REALLY want to see 299 SOON. It's so close. It's taunting me. We'll see how it shakes out.

I'm taking the rest of my cookie dough truffles to the potluck. Maybe my ability to make yummy sweet treats will bribe them.

I'll check back in when I can (maybe tomorrow night?)

Later!

Hello, everyone. I broke my leg last fall and that episode led to me packing on over 20lbs. My scale has been out of batteries for the past few months, and not weighing in has let me pretend that my weight hasn't been creeping up. I finally replaced the batteries and now weigh 173lbs! I feel so depressed, because I haven't been this weight since 2011. I do about an hour of cardio 4 days a week, and I think I thought that the exercise would help me offset bad eating, but no. I really need to get back on track, but it took sooo much motivation for me to lose the weight the first time around, and I just don't feel that same energy now. I'm trying to get motivated again, because I know the scale is only going to go up if I continue like this. It seems this is a spot where people can understand my pain!

Guacamole - You are so right! Welcome! We definitely understand the challenge, and it's especially hard when you get that first jarring reality. You maintained for a lot longer than I ever have, though, so you absolutely can do this. And even maintaining at 173 is so much better than letting it continue to creep up. I am finding that weight loss vids have become so motivational to me right now. Diane posted one a few pages back on this thread that I loved. Just a thought.

Mandy - I will be thinking about you today! And remember - today is about the interview process and enjoying yourself. The weight loss crazy can come back tomorrow. ;-)

Jessica - I scoped out your blog for a bit yesterday. Yay for getting rid of that man! Hope you're able to find the second job. And thanks for the trainer boy comraderie. It's great to have you in my corner.

Martini - The voices in my head often pick up the echo of the negative voices out there, and that tends to be in all facets of my life. I've become quite adept at blocking them generally, but sometimes, it's really hard. I love your concept of letting karma take care of it. I know that the things I regret most from my past tend to be related to careless words I have said about people.

Uber - I, too, have been pondering what I did last time. While embracing the fact that IT WORKED, I have also been acknowledging the fact that it DIDN'T WORK long-term. However, I am also recognizing that I don't have to have all of the answers for lifetime maintenance right now. I just have to have the answers to my right-now issues right now. When I get down to 190 (which, to me, seems way skinnier than it really is), I am going to focus on how to tie a knot in the rope before I focus on how to get down even further. Maybe. I got plenty o' time to decide what I will do when I am 45 pounds lighter. =)

Scale victory today! I weighed in for the first time on my new scale last Friday morning. I was camping for the weekend, and I intentionally did not weigh in yesterday because I didn't want to observe the effects of low sleep coupled with sore muscles. So, my second weigh-in was this morning. From Friday morning until this morning, the scale moved down <drum roll, please> from 239.8 to 234.0 - a 5.8 pound loss. Ridiculous, right? But I have to keep it in perspective. On my first weigh-in, I was experiencing both period and sodium bloat, and I managed to couple that with my first few days of being seriously on plan and add in a long high-activity weekend. Excited as I am to see a huge drop, I am resisting the urge to let up and let go. I am also resisting the urge to mentally calculate how much less I will weigh in two months based on a 6-pound-a-week loss pace. ARGH!!! The mental part of this is the hardest part.

Hi all! Had a good workout this morning in Body Pump. I had been struggling a lot because I had increased my weights, but today I felt stronger and it wasn't quite as difficult. It still was a challenge, but not to the point of overwhelming. Well, except for the bicep workout. Still working on that.

It is kind of funny the different ways that you can get support from people. I have been pondering a couple of changes to my workout program. And, no, it isn't a major life-changing event, but I just have been thinking about it a lot. Well, last night I was talking to my husband and told him what I was thinking and the possibilities of what I could change. There are about 3 options I'm debating. So, what does he suggest? The hardest one. I told him that I kind of thought that's what I should do, but leave it to him to push for the hard one. He said that he wouldn't suggest it if he didn't think I could do it and if it wasn't the best possible choice. And he's right. He's not one of those cheerleader, positive reinforcement types, but when he gives advice, he is honest and thoughtful about what he suggests. I appreciate that! My son and I have both said that there are so many times he doesn't say what you want to hear, but you also know that he is right.

LaurieDawn: NICE scale victory! Don't downplay it at all, you've worked hard and that is a nice reward! Oh, and I love the new ticker you have with your trainer challenge!

Guacamole: Oh, don't we know how hard it is to start again. We can definitely feel your pain! But you can do it! Stay strong and you'll get there again. Glad you are joining us!

Mandy: Have a great time today! And you know what might happen? If you do go over on calories, sometimes a little jolt like that can actually help your weight loss efforts! Gotta confuse the body sometimes. Either way, I hope you have a great day and I know you'll impress them with those truffles!

Jessica: Hang in there! You have a lot that you are going through right now. It is hard to stay positive. I hope that coming here, you'll find a little support just for you! You can do this!!

Martini: I think that's the best thing to do. We can't please everyone, so you have to please yourself. (good song!) But really, everyone will have an opinion. So, we can't stress about what "they" are saying/thinking!

Uber: You make some good points. It is a fine line between obsessing over calories and just giving in to all indulgences. I get that. I am really trying to get to the point that I can have those times when I give in to a higher calorie day, without making it a higher calorie 3-4 months. I do wonder how that will be when you get to the point of maintaining, to not let yourself totally relax. I haven't had to worry about that yet, but I hope that I can stay mindful enough to check the scale occasionally to keep it in check. I hope!

Diane - Yay for choosing the hardest exercise shake-up choice, and WOOT! for getting stronger to the point that what once seemed impossible is now doable. You'll get that for the biceps too, I have no doubt. =) Thanks also for the encouragement in the trainer boy challenge. My "downplaying" is really about not allowing myself to believe that I will lose 6 pounds a week if I keep working. I know I won't, and I have the tendency to get discouraged even while seeing positive results if they're not the results I expect. Oh. The head games that scale plays on me are unbearable sometimes. =)

Hello ladies I would like to join your group. I lost 65lbs last year and became lax and gained back 40. I am getting to the end of my cloths and WILL NOT BUY BIGGER ONES. So here I am back on track. I know what needs to be done. Just getting the motivation was difficult.

I have the afternoon without kids (camp) so am going to the Y again. We bought an Xbox one and I have been doing those exercise video's. They kick my booty.

I need to go back and read when I get some time.